gone. - DISCONTINUED.

{30}

He paced his bedroom quietly, hand rubbing his face occasionally out of stress. I remained silent as well, having calmed down significantly but still vulnerable to a tight breath or two. I stayed placed in a corner, unmoving, not wanting to sit on the bed and mess his spread up. This felt exactly like before. It felt the right thing to do was to go to the police. I remember the rape kit. I was instructed not to bath, not to change, not to do anything that would mean tampering evidence. But he was dead, and we ran a drug cartel. They would charge us before even thinking about worrying about whoever he was. It wouldn't even begin to matter at this point, his fate had been sealed.

"Shit....fucking shit...." He cursed under his breath, stopping once to take off his coat, rest it on the chair, and again to rub the top of his heads. I looked at the way his braids frizzed up at that, and again, another flashback. The first night he had sex with me. I folded myself back into the corner, letting my thoughts stop at one checkpoint to the other. "This shit is all my fucking fault..." My eyes quickly went to his face, narrowing unnoticeably. Of course it was his fault. All of this was his fault in actuality, but just now was the first time he would ever admit that anything was his fault. He met my eyes, directing me to sit on the bed and slowly, I shook my head. "It's okay. We got other sheets. Just please sit down." He spoke lowly, and I remained still, unsure of why my body wasn't moving. "Hazel." He offered more sternly, and I peeled myself off of the wall, making my way past a dresser and an arm chair and pausing, taking a ginger seat on his bed. It didn't squeak, like I was used to at my place. Speaking of that, I wanted Shaela and I wanted Lani. I wanted them now. But I kept quiet, looking at my blood stained hands and feeling my face itch at the dried substances against it.

"I thought you just wasted time...." He started, standing in front of me and I backed away some. "Stop it.." I whispered, looking up at him slowly. "You weren't thinking of anything.." He opened his mouth to speak, paused, then closed it. He shook his head, sitting in the arm chair that was beside the bed. "Will you tell me what that...what he..." He was trying to find the answers, the words to somehow make this okay. I knew what he was going to ask and I averted his gaze, looking at the floor. "I met him at the card table. Juiced him. He bought me a drink. I spoke German." I began answering his questions, feeling his eyes turn towards me once the last statement was mentioned. I disregarded it, continuing to speak out loud to him. "I saw Cali. I was gonna get him on his balcony, I swear I was...but in the elevator...he just..." I began to fidget, messing with my hands in nervousness. I felt the waves of anxiety shaking me to the core, making me feel sicker and sicker. "You don't have to finish, it's okay Haze..." He murmured, scooting closer to me as it was possible while still in the chair. "He told me it's what I was always after. People like me. That I was a whore who wanted money. And I bit him he told me to take it...just like him..." I swallowed, my voice still barely above a whisper as I stared past him at the floor.

"It felt like that...that time. The tight spaces. His hands. His hands, he put them in me." I took a shaky breath, closing my eyes as soon as the tears began to well and pressed my legs together so my knees were touching, feeling as if they were still in me. "He didn't stop...he slapped me...punched me...he didn't stop until I finally shot him." I looked him dead in the eye, and I already felt my lip swelling and the bruise forming just under my eyes. His softened at the sight, but his lips were closed, mouth silent. "Once. Then twice. He started choking me..then I just...it was a blur, I..." I began, feeling choked up then just like that, I stopped. Narrowing my eyes some at the floor, I gripped the edge of the bed. "I blew his fucking brains out.." I whispered finally, closing my eyes to signal the end of the trauma. It was thirty minutes. That's the least amount of suffering time compared to the two and half hours of sodomy and lacerations that the precious caused me.

He stayed quiet for a while, feeling like the hospital room when Shaela was first born until he stood up. "This is your last job." He stated, going towards the window. I opened my eyes slowly, looking up at him and following him with my eyes. "What are you talking about.." I croaked, clearing my throat quietly. "You're not working anymore." He answered simply, leaning against the wall to look out the window. "You're not running. There's something else that you can do." I tilted my head in confusion, looking down at my legs again. "I don't know what you mean-" He cut me off by turning to face me, walking over and squatting down in front of me so that we were eye level. "You can count?" He asked as if I dropped out during kindergarten instead of Senior year. I still nodded my head, the same confused and anxious look spread on my face. "Then you can handle money."

I blinked at him, my brain feeling stressed. Everything was happening at once and I had only been back for one fucking night. I could never catch a break here anymore. Again, I began to understand completely why Brittany made the choice to leave. "You're trusting me...with your money..." I piece together slowly, not fully wrapping my head around it. "And you trust me with your life. The day I brought your ass in here and you took this job, you trusted me with your life. Your ass almost died a few months ago, and you still here. I let your ass down tonight, my bad, but you depend on my ass a lot and I do the same. As long as you alive with my baby, I trust your ass."

I wondered why he said what he just said, and it was only when he handed me the small silver key that I regained my sense of touch. My body was less numb as my eyes went from the key to him. "Clean yourself up cause it ain't shit we can do about that. Then come back in here. I don't them hovering over your ass." He turned away as he began to undress and I shifted slightly, leaving the key on the bed as I pulled out things from a drawer he set aside from me. Walking inside of his bathroom, I rushed to get out of the blood stained dress and remove the rest of my clothes, staying in the shower for longer than needed to before finally scrubbing the rest of the blood and brain matter off of me, watching as the red color swirled down the gold drain. I scrubbed and scrubbed and I still would never be clean enough, the feeling I knew all too well as I washed my hair, my body, then my hair again. It was repetitive, until my skin became raw then I finally shut the water off, lazily drying off and switching into my pajamas before silently padding into the bedroom, seeing him already in bed clothes and waiting for me.

He came up to me and wiped my face before grabbing my wrist, walking me to the small closet I had been in once before. "Don't you-" I began, and he shut me up my squeezing my wrist once. I stayed quiet as we ascended up the staircase, into the library and studio I ventured into while still pregnant. It looked almost the same, except for some of my books now being home to his shelves. I glanced at them longingly as he moved some things aside, including old milk crates from decades ago before pushing against the concrete wall, watching in awe as it moved aside lightly and there it was, a large safe. Not just a small one either, it covered almost the entire wall and he punched in a pin code, the light on the door turning green.

He stood aside and cut on a light switch, waiting for me to creep closer as I peeked inside. It was everything I was never used to seeing. What looked like years of money and jewelry, all organized here by who it came from and how he got it. What gang took them, who we took out and reclaimed it back from. My eyes trailed each of the shelves before looking back at him. "All you have to do is wait for our call, pick up the bag when we come in, and put everything where it needs to be." He explained, and I took a breath, nodding my head. He closed the door once again, locking up everything before leading me back down the steps and into the bedroom, getting in the bed before me. I stayed put for a moment before speaking.

"Rakim..." I called out quietly, messing with my hands out of nervousness. He glanced up from his phone to me, finishing typing out something before locking it, waiting for me to continue. "Do you...do you seriously trust me?" I whispered, as if it wasn't possible for him to do so. Because it wasn't. He wasn't a trustworthy person, and I knew since the first night that someone like him doesn't just trust any person he meets. It didn't make sense to me, in spite of everything. "You want to know something?" He answered my question with a question, tucking his hands behind his head as he laid against the pillows, waiting for me to actually get in the bed. When I didn't, he started anyway. "You could've left before morning and took your ass to the police station." He stated smugly, shrugging a little. "Or gotten an abortion behind my back." At that I grew uncomfortable, even flinched. "Come here."

I walked to him slowly, getting in bed and leaving a good amount of space between us. He accepted that, nodding his head as he looked at how far I was from him. "Your ass stayed put. So if anything, I should be treating you better." He finally said, moving his arms from behind his head. "I'm bringing Shaela here in the morning. You need to try to go to sleep." He didn't try to touch me, which I became grateful for as my anxiety was replaced with an overwhelming feeling, not used to seeing sides of him like this before. He cut the lights out and was asleep for a while until I finally stopped crying and laid down. Not out of sadness, but because I actually started to appreciate him for who he was again.