Page 16 of No Gemini Does it Better (BLP Signs of Love #2)

I rolled the window down to get a better view of the damage.

The police car had veered off to the right side of the road but was facing our direction, indicating that it had spun around before hitting a guardrail.

From the passenger seat, I could see a brown figure in the back seat.

My heart somersaulted in my chest. Could it have been my brother, or was it just wishful thinking?

“Pull over!”

“What? Right here?”

“Pull over, Sawyer. I gotta check.”

“Are you serious, Kareem? You’re willingly about to walk up to a police car right now?”

“I can’t explain it, Sawyer. I can just feel it.”

Instead of wasting time talking any further, I figured it was better to show her.

Kadeem and I had a connection like no other.

I jumped out of the car into the rain and eased up to the back passenger side of the police car.

I gripped the handle and pulled. I shot thanks up to God when it opened on the first try.

My heart nearly vacated my chest when I saw Kadeem inside.

His head was slumped to the side, and there was a bleeding gash on his head from what I suspected happened during the accident.

The officer in the front was also knocked out cold.

To God be the mothafuckin glory. He had cuffs around his wrists, and to my surprise, he was wearing regular street clothes.

Without hesitation, I pulled my brother out of the back seat.

“Don’t worry, twin. I gotchu.”

I put him in the back seat of Sawyer’s car as quickly as I could before hopping in with him and telling her to speed off.

“Oh my God, you found him? I—I can’t believe it!” she shrieked, glancing up at me through the rearview mirror every few seconds. “Is he okay? Do we need to go to the hospital? Oh shit, what am I saying? We can’t go there.”

“The only place we need to go is back to your crib. Once we’re there, I can assess the damage, but I think he’ll be fine. Nigga gon’ have one hell of a headache when he comes to, but he’ll be aight.”

I held onto him tight as she drove. The only thing that mattered was that we were back together—double the trouble, double the fun.

“Okay.”

Once we were a reasonable distance away, I looked up at her through the rearview. “If it makes you feel better, you can call in the accident now.”

Kadeem’s brown eyes slowly opened a couple of hours later. He was groggy as hell, lying against Sawyer’s couch. It creaked under his weight, protesting the new burden. He snapped his head to the side when he heard barking and growling from Sawyer’s mutt.

“Who the fuck got a fuckin’ dog?” he griped with a scowl. Kadeem sat up with a stern grimace across his face, looking back and forth between me and Sawyer. “Who the fuck is she, Twin?”

“This is Sawyer. We are at her place right now, and that’s her dog.”

“H-hi. Can I get you anything?” Sawyer asked, more out of courtesy than any real ability to offer comfort for his wounds.

“Water and a fuckin’ Tylenol would be good,” he replied, collapsing back onto the couch. “Ah, shit. My head is thumpin’ like an HBCU marching band right now.”

“But you alive and you safe. That’s all that matters. We back together now, Twin.”

“I’ll go put my dog up and get you what you need. I’ll be right back,” Sawyer commented softly.

I watched as she swiftly moved to the kitchen, the sound of running tap water not quite enough to drown out the silence that had settled between us.

She returned, and I reached out to take the glass and pill bottle from her.

Our fingers brushed, and a jolt of something painful and sweet shot up my arm.

She pulled away too quickly, and of course, I noticed.

“Thanks,” I acknowledged her before handing the glass and two pills to Kadeem.

He sat up and took a long gulp before swallowing down the pills. When he spoke again, his eyes didn’t meet hers. “You trust her?”

“She’s cool.”

He scoffed. “For now.”

“Chill, nigga. If I said she’s fine, then she’s fine. You don’t need to worry about her. I got her.”

“All I’m sayin’ is, what’s stoppin’ her from callin’ the law the second she gets a chance?”

“If she were gon’ do that, she would’ve been done that shit.”

“He’s right,” Sawyer interjected.

“She helped save your life. Mine too, if I’m bein’ honest.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean no disrespect, shawty,” Kadeem said, finally acknowledging her with a head nod. “I appreciate you letting me and my brother crash here. Just until we sort some things out.”

“It’s okay. You’re welcome. I’ll give you two some privacy,” she replied.

I forced myself to meet her gaze. There was a sadness there that tugged at something deep within her, but I didn’t have time to focus on that.

Kadeem and I traded silent glances while she made her way down the hall.

Once the door to her bedroom closed, I was ready to talk about our next move. But first, I had questions.

“Where the fuck were you hiding out, and how’d you end up in the back of a police car?” I blurted out, firing the questions off my tongue.

Kadeem slowly sat up and looked at me. “After we split up, I walked until I found a gas station. I hid out around the back in a fuckin’ dumpster until the shit closed.

When the mothafucka came out to take out the trash, I robbed his ass for the clothes.

I ain’t know there was a phone in his back pocket at the time.

Nigga must’ve reported his shit stolen, and they traced the phone with that Find My iPhone shit.

It led them right to me a few miles down the road.

I tried to run, but the law caught up with me.

Of course, I ain’t have no I.D. on me, so he was ready to take me in when the rain started up again, and next thing I knew, it started to flood, and we were spinning around on the road like Disney on Ice, and then everything went black,” he explained.

“Damn.”

“And what about you, Twin? This where you been all this time?”

I dipped my chin. “Yeah. I came through the woods and found these apartments on the other side. I broke in through her patio. She wasn’t home in the beginning and then caught me on her couch.”

“You call anybody since you've been here?”

I swung my head. “Nah. The power just came back on earlier, and that’s when I saw our mugshots on the news and knew I had to find you. You?”

“I spoke to King,” he confirmed.

My brows heightened. King was our cousin from Atlanta who’d moved to Tampa around three years ago.

He’d kept in touch by writing to us every few months, keeping us informed about what was going on and putting money on our books.

He was the reason our commissary had made it to commas.

Our Nanny was dead, and so was our mother.

Wasn’t nobody alive to pray for us.The bigger we got in the game, there seemed to be more niggas praying on our downfall.

My brother and I both knew we needed to get to international waters as soon as possible, and King was our best option.

He was the only one we’d ever been able to truly rely on when shit got sticky.

“How the fuck you get to call King?”

“I used the phone when I found it on the nigga I robbed. It was between King and my baby mama, Japri. Those are the only two numbers I’ve memorized since we were in our twenties,” Kadeem responded with a shrug.

“That nigga still got that money we let him hold?” I queried.

“If he knows what’s good for him, he does. Family or not.”

He was right about that. A quarter of a million dollars wasn’t a small piece of change.

It had been our local emergency fund after our first time getting caught up in the game and going to jail.

After that, we got smarter about our retirement plan and started storing money in offshore accounts.

Once we got to Havana, we’d cash in on our stashes and start our new lives anywhere in the world.

“Well then, we gotta get to Tampa.”

Kadeem’s brows creased. “Nigga, how the fuck we gettin’ to Tampa?”

“The same way we came out and got you. In her car.”

He grumbled with a shrug. “Guess you better go talk to yo’ girl then.”

“Talk to me about what?” Sawyer questioned, reentering the living room.

I twisted my neck in her direction. “Gas up the whip, shawty. We goin’ on a road trip.”