The Hard Bounce - страница 72

Cassie smiled and took her cards off the table.

“Does this mean I get to bite you on the hand now?” I asked.

She delicately offered her hand and batted her eyes at me.

Dammit.

I grabbed her wrist and blew a wet raspberry on her knuckles.

“Ewwww!” she squealed as she wiped the spit on my shirtsleeve.

“There. We’re even.”

After a few more hands, Cassandra looked like she was having trouble focusing on the cards.

“You want to hit the hay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said drowsily.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Me and Junior are gonna play some more cards.”

“Mmm. Okay.” She yawned wide enough to swallow a football and shuffled into the living room.

“Nice kid,” Junior said, as he flipped the cards out of the deck. “But it’s over.”

I didn’t reply.

“You hearing me, Boo?” He stared into his cards as he said it, but the words were weighted with lead. “We hand her over to Pops, hand the address to Dog, and cash our check.”

“I wasn’t…” I couldn’t think of a good way to end the sentence, so I just said it again. “I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were.”

You can’t argue with someone who knows you as deeply as Junior knows me, so I didn’t bother.

I reached into my pocket and handed him two of the crumpled singles.

“What the fuck is this?”

“Your half of the fee for job number two. Enjoy the riches.”

His lips pressed together white. “You lousy fuck.”

I lay my cards on the table. “Triple eights. What you got?”

“I hate you.”

Junior and I agreed to split shifts on the recliner next to the couch Cassie was sleeping on, still not completely of the belief that Cassie wouldn’t make a bolt in the middle of the night. Junior got my bed first. As I quietly stepped into the living room, I looked at Cassandra asleep on the couch. The Boy was on his knees next to her head, running his fingers gently through her hair. The black strands over her forehead didn’t stir as his hands softly smoothed them over. With a sad expression, The Boy looked up at me standing in the dim yellow hallway light. His small mouth bowed downward and he shook his head.

“I know,” I whispered as I pulled the throw blanket over her thin arms. “I know.”

As quietly as I could, I slid the chair into the recline position and tried to read an old Needle magazine by the streetlight. Less than half a story in, I’d given myself a massive eyestrain headache. I closed my eyes tight, trying to will the headache away. Instead, I fell right asleep.

It certainly came as no surprise to me that I had a dirty, dirty dream about Kelly. My dream finally nude-ified the body I’d been thinking consistently about for the last week. And for once, my overtaxed and overdisturbed brain didn’t disappoint by giving her va-jay-jay fangs or replacing my dick with a dachshund. All was as it was supposed to be and where it was supposed to be.

I had surrendered myself entirely to the dream when just enough reality crept in through the sleep that I realized too goddamn slowly that something was, in fact, manipulating my dick.

I bolted awake, my hands touching skin. Reactively, I pushed it off. Cassie hit the floor with a thump, falling in enough light from the street for me to see she was naked.

I covered myself, my pants unbuttoned, underwear open. “What the fuck?”

Cassie scrambled off the floor and pulled the throw blanket over herself. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Jesus, kid. What the fuck?”

She pulled herself into the corner of the couch, huddling against herself under the blanket. “I’m sorry. I thought-”

“Thought what? What the fuck could you have been thinking?” I couldn’t suppress the anger in my voice. Some of it reflected my roiling shame at enjoying whatever was happening down there before reality threw a bucket of ice water on my libido.

“I thought… I thought you liked me.” She didn’t cry. She just said the words softly, coldly. I was expecting tears. Tears would have been expected. Tears wouldn’t have been as disturbing as the cold.

“Listen, kid-”

“Stop calling me that,” she hissed.

I heard my bedroom door slam open. “Yo, Boo! We okay?”

“All under control, Junior. I- I just rolled off the chair.”