I crossed my arms.
“I’m going to figure it out,” he said, “and when I do, Vince isn’t going to be part of the equation. Trust me.”
He closed the door.
CHAPTER 19
CARTER
The problem, as I saw it, was that I had two areas of concern with Emily. One was the fact that she was my job. My specific job. She was what I did for a living to support my family. Phin’s mother’s residual checks got smaller every quarter and did little more than cover his education. So I had to work. If I started fucking Emily, I wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t protect a woman I was sleeping with. If I was doing my job, and I always did my job, we’d both be vulnerable at the same time.
The second concern was Phin himself. He was everything, and a relationship would divert me from the attention he needed. I’d made the decision long ago that my mother had raised my sister and me already, and it was too much to ask her to raise Phin full-time.
I had two hours to really think about it.
Two hours of pacing the property inside and outside the gate, getting angrier with every step. Who was I pissed at?
Yes. I was just pissed. Me. Vince. The lapsed order of protection. The circumstances. My decisions. Darlene for putting me on as principal. Me and, again, myself. I spent an extra five minutes standing outside her dark bedroom window. Was she sleeping or hiding from me?
This really didn’t have to be so hard. I didn’t have to tell her about Phin. Not yet. He could stay an anonymous Los Angeles kid for another few years. As far as her being my principal, that could be rectified.
And Vince?
He was going to have to get rectified too. Every time I thought about all the things keeping me away from Emily, my brain held up a picture.
Emily clutching the fabric of her dress, hiding the X.
The look on her face.
The shame. The humiliation.
The fact that he’d gotten close to her.
He could do it again.
Everything else got pushed out.
Vince had to be rectified.
“You fell down a flight of stairs.” I turned Vince over with my foot. He flopped onto his back. I’d taken out the light at the top of the garage door, but the streetlights filtered in through the trees. The blood bubble forming at his lips looked black. I crouched by him when he tried to get up and pushed him down.
“Once your face is healed,” I said, “it’s time for you to find yourself a girlfriend. A new girlfriend. One who likes you.”
I might have gone too far on him.
“Fuck you, man.”
I kept my voice low so he had to keep quiet to hear me.
“I want you to consider me her order of protection. If you’re in my eyeline, I’m going to assume you’re there to hurt her. There will be consequences.”
He smiled, and his mouth was so blood-soaked he looked toothless in the blue-cast light.
“Sucks dick like a champ, doesn’t she?” His smile was blood red. “I taught her that.”
I stood up. The heel of my shoe could come down on his face so hard, I could break his jaw before he could even think about another dick-sucking comment. But I got control of myself. If he wound up in the hospital, I’d have to answer questions.
“You really should hang on to the railing when you come down the stairs. Good habit.”
I turned to go without looking back.
“She’s always mine. No matter how much you bang her. She’s mine.”
I almost turned around and gave him a final kick in the face. Emily wasn’t his. Not even a little bit. And she wasn’t going to get “banged” by me. She was better than a quick knockoff.
I hurried to the car. My right fist ached and the knuckles were raw. They’d be so stiff in the morning I probably wouldn’t be able to move them. Worth it. All worth it.
But not to be repeated. I couldn’t do this again. Not unless she was in immediate danger. I’d avoided a life of violence, avoided prison, the wrong side of the system. I could just as easily get sucked back in.
I’d had a rough time in high school, getting into more fights than I should have. Detention was my stomping ground. My sister was busy getting eaten alive by Hollywood, and my mother was busy crying over my dad leaving. Detention meant I didn’t have to go home to see it. Mom’s tears made me want to kill my father and any man who ditched his family. Getting into fights kept me from going home and gave rage a release. By the time I was old enough to come and go as I pleased, I was just getting into fights because anger was a habit.
My sense of injustice and entitlement started with my neighborhood. Torrance sat on top of swank Rancho Palos Verdes and right below Redondo Beach, but Redondo was cut into a weird shape so it got all the beachfront. Torrance got a token mile of beach, but the rest was landlocked. Not that we couldn’t go to Redondo and cause trouble. But I felt a kinship to Torrance. Like the shape of the world had been cut to my disadvantage.
I made my own way. I was the king of Borrance and Crenshaw. At sixteen, I’d avoided getting arrested. I was ready to drop out of school out of boredom, and yeah, I was obviously as dumb as a box of rocks.
Devon Muldoon was a classmate on the days I showed up to school. He was as much of a little punk as I was, but he didn’t have the chops to back it up. He came around the parking lot I pissed in and talked trash in front of all of us, and I took him down. Not too hard, but enough to send a message.
His father showed up at my door in full uniform and punched my clock before I’d even swung the door open all the way. My mother screamed and clawed at him. He brushed her off like a gnat and stood over me. I knew exactly who he was. His son had his snarl. He took me by the back of the collar and dragged me to the police cruiser. Threw me in like a sack of potatoes.
We were driving ten minutes before I could shake the stuffing out of my head.
“My son tells me you’re quite the tough guy,” he said from the front. There was a metal screen between us, but I heard him as perfectly as if he were staring right at me.
“He’s a little bitch,” I said, because you don’t back down, even when your life depends on it.
“That may be.” He wasn’t mad at all. I thought he’d pull to the side and work me over for calling his son a bitch, but he didn’t seem flustered. His calm unsettled me. I didn’t know what to expect. “But he’s mine, and I protect what’s mine.”
I had plenty to say about how well he protected a son who got close enough to the likes of me to mix it up, but I didn’t answer. Just looked out the window, watching the night city. He’d book me for assault and resisting. Mom would cry and blame Dad. My sister’s last acting job would pay the legal fees. I’d want to die, but instead of dying I’d just wake up and do whatever/nothing/the same.
“I’m going to make you a deal, kid.”
“Oh yeah?” I acted bored, but I wasn’t. I was curious.
“You go two rounds with me, and you can go home.”
“Two rounds? You mean boxing?”
“Yeah. Boxing.”
“With gloves?”
“You ever use gloves before?”