Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54059 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 270(@200wpm)___ 216(@250wpm)___ 180(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54059 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 270(@200wpm)___ 216(@250wpm)___ 180(@300wpm)
“No,” he clips before I barely get the words out of my mouth.
“No?”
“Sleep here for the night.” Niki softens his tone.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Then why can’t you not sleep here?” I shrug. “What’s wrong?” I shrug again. “Andy.”
“You don’t want me here,” I blurt out in a rush. “I get it. You’re being all nice or whatever. It’s fine. You feel sorry for me. Thanks for everything, but I can handle it from here.”
“Nice?” He looks as though no one has ever called him that before.
“Yeah, nice, sweet, whatever.”
“Sweet,” he repeats. Oh my God, is he a parrot?
“Yes.”
Then he does the last thing I thought he would. Niki throws back his head and laughs. I fold my arms over my chest and glare up at him.
Not sure what’s so funny. In fact, everything is a freaking mess. I fight a sting of tears, hating how stupid I feel. I want to go home, but honestly no place actually feels like what I think home is supposed to.
Chapter Eleven
NIKI
She doesn’t laugh with me, but it’s okay because it’s not a joke I want to explain at the moment. Nice is not a word anyone uses to describe me. Asshole. Soulless. Cruel. I’ve heard all of those before, but nice is a new one.
“Come on.” I place a pair of my hightops next to her feet.
“These are too big for me.” One set of sock-covered toes comes to rub against the others. My body tightens. Good thing I’m kneeling and I’ve got baggy jeans on or she’d probably hit me over the head with a pan and run out screaming.
“The laces will hold them around your ankle, and the soles aren’t going to fall off the second you stumble over a rock.” I circle her ankle and push the shoe onto her foot. She helps me with the second one.
“I can tie my own shoes. Learned that in kindergarten.”
“That late?” I joke. “Jules still has Velcro shoes. She doesn’t like laces. Told me they were funny and only old people used them.”
“She’s five, you say?”
“Yeah. Everyone is old to her.” I finish looping the laces around Andy’s ankle and then straighten up. I fish a hoodie out of the closet and hand it to her. “You can pull up the hood and cover your hair.” I mime the action of flipping the hood up.
“You embarrassed to be seen with a girl?” she says. I think she’s teasing me. There’s a slight upward tilt at the corners of her pretty lips.
“Nah, but it’s…” I hesitate. I’ve already beat up two people and made her hold my bloody hand. Since she hasn’t run away, I’m trying to tone down the scariness on my part.
“Safer?” she says. “You don’t have to pretend with me. I live here. Well, not in this area, but you’ve seen where I come from. It’s not pretty.”
I nod in understanding. Her mom’s a stripper and junkie, and they live in a place with paper doors and no lights. Her room had been tossed like the rest of the place, but it wasn’t the break-in that I didn’t want Andy to see. The person who was searching for money or drugs got distracted by Andy’s underwear drawer. It wasn’t just jealousy that made the hairs of my neck stand up. It’s not something I plan on sharing with Andy, though. If she has trouble sleeping now, this piece of info won’t help her bouts with insomnia.
“There aren’t many places around here that are pretty.” I gesture for her to follow me out the door. It locks automatically when it shuts, but I tug on the handle to make sure. “You always have trouble sleeping?” I ask as we’re walking down the street toward the river.
“No, usually I’m wiped out and am unconscious two seconds after my head hits the pillow. This time”—she shakes her head—“my brain was full of stuff, and don’t ask me what because I couldn’t even say. It just felt like my head was buzzing.”
“Unfamiliar place,” I guess.
“Probably. Speaking of unfamiliar, where are we going? I don’t recognize this part of town.”
“This is Rider territory.”
“You say that as if it explains everything.”
“You aren’t familiar with the territories setup?”
“I didn’t even know the name of your gang.”
“We’re not a gang,” I correct. “It’s more like a business. I get jobs and am paid for those jobs.”
“The jobs are to collect money?”
“Sort of.” I scrub a hand over my skull. It sounds bad, but I can’t really hide from her. She’s already seen me in action. “It’s not the only thing I do.”
“You don’t have to explain. We’re all just trying to survive.”
“Right.”
“You still in school or graduated?”
“Last year. You?”
“Same.” She gives me a once-over. “I thought you might be older.”
“I get that a lot. Because of my size.” People look at my big frame and my shaved head and assume I’m in my mid-twenties. It works in my favor most of the time.