I barely finished the sentence when he rol ed, his weight settling on me and pushing me into the bed.
“Quiet!” The word hit the room like a gunshot and it shocked me so much, my mouth snapped shut.
Even in the dark, I could feel his eyes on my face.
Then he said, “You’ve been talkin’ to Jet.” I nodded but didn’t speak.
“Jet and I were havin’ a conversation about an internal struggle she was having. We were talkin’ about some people we know, friends we both like, friends who deal drugs and run games and likely murder other people.” Holy cow.
What friends were those?
And what conversation was he talking about?
I didn’t have a chance to ask, Hank continued. “What I said about them in no way… Roxie, hear this right fucking now… in no way does it transfer to you.”
“Hank –”
Now he was on a rol and he was angry.
Way angry.
“You need to learn to give yourself a goddamned break.
You’re so fuckin’ hard on yourself, I wouldn’t even begin to be able to make you feel as badly about yourself as you do.
Even if I wanted to. Christ!”
“You don’t understand.”
“I think I fucking wel do.”
“No you don’t!” I pushed at him but he wouldn’t budge so I carried on anyway. “You didn’t see us together, when we’d visit my folks, the looks on their faces. My friends who’d try to be nice to him even though they knew he was a piece of dirt. I knew they wondered about me. Why was I with him?
What was wrong with me?”
“What was wrong with you?” he asked.
My head jerked like he smacked me in the face.
Then I started struggling. “Get off me, I’m going home!” He caught my wrists and held them over my head.
“Answer my question, what was wrong with you? Why were you with him?”
“I thought he loved me!” I shouted. “He promised me everything. He was ful of grand dreams. He was going to show me the fucking world. I was young and stupid and believed him.”
“So, you’re sayin’ that you’re stupid because you believed a pack of lies some shithead fed you?”
“Yes!”
“It’s you who’s wrong in this scenario, just because you loved someone and since you did you trusted him to tel you the truth?”
I blinked in the darkness.
I hadn’t thought of it that way.
“That’s what love’s al about, Roxanne. You love someone, you trust them always to tel you the truth.”
“Hank, please, get off me,” I begged.
“Did he get you to deal drugs?” Hank asked.
“What? ” I screeched.
“Did you deal drugs with him? That’s what he did. He was a drug dealer. Smack.”
For some reason, the last word he said jarred me out of the moment and I became confused.
“What’s smack?” I asked.
I could almost hear Hank’s teeth grinding.
“Jesus. You don’t even know what it is. How in the fuck can you think you’re gray?”
Then it hit me.
“Oh… smack.” I said with dawning understanding.
“What is it?” Hank asked.
“Drugs,” I answered.
“What kind of drugs?” he persevered.
I thought about it, trying to remember what they were referring to on the TV cop shows when they mentioned it. I didn’t want to sound uncool that I didn’t know what it was but I kinda didn’t.
For some reason, as I was silent and trying to think, Hank’s body started moving like he was laughing. His hands loosened from my wrists and he buried his face in my neck.
“Sunshine, you’re a nut.”
Yes, definitely laughing.
“Are you laughing?” I asked just to check.
He rol ed off me, to his side, but took me with him, his arms locking around me.
“Smack is heroin,” Hank’s voice stil sounded amused.
“Oh God. Sid Vicious died of an overdose of that,” I told him.
“Yeah, a lot of people die of overdoses of that.” It took me a moment to realize that our conversation had taken a drastic, and very weird, turn.
I felt it important to keep on target.
“I don’t deal drugs, Hank. I design websites.”
“I know,” he replied and lifted a hand to run his fingers through my hair at the side of my head, then he tucked it behind my ear before his arm locked around me again.
“Roxie, people in six different states have been bringing up your name and no one knows who the fuck you are. On my desk, I got copies of employment records, apartment leases, phone bil s and credit card statements a mile high with your name on them. I can track your life for the last four years and none of it was even a little shady. Whatever Flynn did, he protected you from it. Every piece of paper and every report that comes in shows you’re as pure as snow.
You’re about as gray as the North Pole.”
Oh… my… God.
“You checked up on me?” I asked, horrified.
“I checked up on Flynn. Doing that meant I had to check on you since the only thing we got, except arrest reports and his name linked to various pieces of scum, is the trail he left through you.”
I tried to process that but Hank interrupted my processing by asking, “Did you know he was dealing drugs?”