Page 121 of The Enforcer

Home late. Wrapping merda up before Romeo gets out.

Tino texted him back.

Dance supposed to run over. Gonna be late too. I’ll eat in Bed-Stuy.

He hadn’t told Nova he quit dance. It was easier to have Nova believe his afternoons were still tied up since Mary had started double-booking him on weekdays.

He looked at the time again: 4:05.

Tino took a long, deep breath and ran a hand down his stomach, tucking in the black shirt he wore under his jacket. Then he felt for the rubbers in his pocket and the gun in the back of his jeans.

More and more he felt safer with a gun than without.

Nova packed too.

Ironic that it was a habit they’d picked up in Dyker Heights.

In Harlem they were perfectly fine defending themselves without the firepower.

Of course, Tino started hooking and using drugs in Dyker Heights too.

The suburbs made him ghetto trash.

He stared at his phone once more: 4:10.

He closed his eyes one more time and pushed aside all the bullshit. Brianna’s house wasn’t far, and he used years of conditioning to imagine sneaking over to see her instead of Rosie. It hadn’t worked since their fight, but he needed it a little more now and tried harder to forget the bad shit.

He walked to her door and knocked softly, feeling that familiar tug in his stomach. What if they got busted? But then she answered the door, and Tino told himself it was just the light that made her hair look darker. He ignored it and smiled at his Brianna, willing her to stay solid in a way she hadn’t since the fight.

“You’re late.” She frowned, looking disappointed.

“I know. I’m sorry, sweetheart. Iamlate,” he apologized, because he had wanted this for so long. “I’ve spent all week missing you.”

She smiled brightly, which made her dark eyes look more like the green they were supposed to be, because she obviously believed him.

It wasn’t until he was in the shower that he started to notice it was Rosie’s bathroom. It was her Italian tile and double showerhead beating hot water down on him. Something about the water always jerked him a little too close to reality before he was ready.

“Coffee.” She opened the shower and handed it to him, made with cream and sugar the way he liked. It was obviously a thing for her, the coffee after sex, and Tino certainly wasn’t complaining. Rosie was by far the easiest stop for the week. When he took it silently, she asked, “Did you mean it?”

He pulled the glass door shut, using the excuse of water on the floor to hide from her. “Mean what?” he asked and took a sip of coffee. It was dark roast, made by an Italian woman with excellent taste. “È buono.” He set it on the ledge and said, “Grazie.”

“You said you think about me,” she pressed, sounding shy to admit it out loud. “That I’m the only one you fantasize about. Is that true?”

He looked at the glass door, seeing the outline of a woman with dark hair, but he knew if he stared long enough through the shower spray, she’d be lithe instead of curvy, with those long legs that haunted his dreams. She tied her hair back while she waited for an answer, and it was done with the same unconscious flip of her wrist she used every afternoon for dance practice.

“Yeah,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie. Brianna was his last fantasy every night and first on his mind in the morning, and he was still high enough to pretend it was her. “Only you. Always.”

“I miss you all week.” She took a long, shuddering breath. “Maybe one day we could do more than this. You think?”

He heard it all the time.

And he always said the same thing as he thought about those beautiful long legs and warm green eyes. “Maybe one day.” He sounded as hopeful as her. “Anything can happen, sweetheart.”

It must’ve worked. She left him alone to shower and drink his coffee and enjoy his high from the drugs he took before he left. Lately, he’d been taking more because they made him feel like he wasn’t going to fucking die over Brianna.

It was a weakness.

It left him vulnerable, but it wasn’t the first cheat he’d been guilty of in the past week.