Page 26 of Steel

“Really. You might know my little brother. He goes to your school. He’s a couple months younger than you. You have a bunch of cousins at your school too. They don’t know about you yet, but I’m gonna tell them. I want them to get to know you, the whole family.Iwant to get to know you, Nayelli. I don’t ever want to be apart from you again.”

She slowly stepped forward, finally giving me her hands. “You promise?”

“I put that on my life. Nothing and nobody is ever going to keep me from you again.”

My eyes drifted to Neha, who was standing there wiping away her tears. I meant that shit. She’d kept me away for damn ten years, but she had another thing coming if she thought that was going to continue. This shit ended right fucking now.

I watchedfrom the kitchen as Kerrion and Nayelli sat outside talking. He forbade me to come anywhere near them. Forbade me . . . at my own house! He was already livid, and I didn’t want to make things worse, but I needed to talk to him. I needed to explain.

I thought back to the day I left school. It was two weeks after the house party incident. I’d been avoiding Kerrion, and it was getting harder and harder to not feel triggered when I saw him.

I’d called my mama crying and struggling to breathe through a panic attack.

“Baby, you have to calm down,” she said softly.

“Mommy, I . . . I need . . . I can’t . . .”

“Take some deep breaths, Neha. In and out.”

She mimicked the breathing technique for me. My lips trembled as I tried to calm myself down. It took at least sevenminutes to get myself under control. Once I was calm, I told her everything that happened.

“Oh, Neha.” She sighed heavily. “What do you wanna do, baby?”

“I wanna come home. I wanna transfer schools. Mommy, every time I see him now, all I see is Timothy. I’m scared.”

“It’s okay to be scared. I really think you should talk to him and explain things.”

I shook my head as though she could see me.

“Mommy, no. I just wanna get out of here. I keep having nightmares. All I can see is the blood . . . There was so much blood. Then there’s the stares and whispers from people. I just wanna come home.”

She sighed. “Okay, baby. Evan and I will drive up this weekend to move you out.”

That was perfect because I knew Kerrion would be going home this weekend for his mother’s birthday.

“Thank you.”

“I love you, Neha.”

“I love you too.”

We’d disconnected the call, and I’d gotten up to start packing. I’d been at it for a good twenty minutes when there was a knock on my dorm room door. I froze for a moment before going over to see who it was. Looking through the peephole, I found Kerrion on the other side. I could tell that he was soaking wet from being out in the thunderstorm plaguing the campus right now.

“Neha, I know you’re there,” he said softly. “Baby, please talk to me.”

I stood there, my hands and forehead pressed against the door. Tears brimmed my eyes, yet again.

“Neha, baby, I’m sorry. Whatever I did, I can fix it. Just open the door and talk to me.”

“Go away, Kerrion,” I said, my voice cracking.

“No. You’ve been avoiding me for weeks. We need to talk about this.”

“Go away!” I yelled.

“Neha, I love you. You want me to just walk away from that?”

“Yes!”