Sweet Fall

As I clutched my mamma’s meds in the white paper bag, I glanced across at Lexi. Her green eyes widened with horror as she took in the shitty, stunning sights of my childhood home.

A crack of thunder boomed above us, sounding like a bomb hitting the ground. Lexi jumped, her breath hitching, and, white-knuckled, she gripped onto the steering wheel with all the strength she had.

All I felt was a huge sense of shame at what she was seeing: rusting and shoddy doublewides lined up side by side, beat-up trucks in their masses, and old tireless muscle cars from the sixties up on concrete blocks. And just to finish off this dystopian paradise, used needles, syringes, and empty beer cans were strewn on the graveled ground, some floating in the muddy streams now flowing through the park. This place was a f**kin’ shithole, and I cursed myself for letting Lexi anywhere near this godforsaken dump.

Clearing my throat, I said, “Take a right up here. It’s the old cream trailer at the end, number twenty-three.”

Lexi’s eyes darted to mine in nerves, and I went back to scouring the site for any of signs of the crew. I wanted to get Lexi in and out of this place before Axel or Gio reared their ugly heads and saw she was here. It would only cause trouble. I was sure Axel had told Gio by now of the little Goth student who’d witnessed the campus deal, the rat that had been hauled in for questioning by the dean. Axel never kept vital information from Gio for long.

The usually busy east sector was a desert town—well, the outside was a desert. Several sets of curtains at the broken-down trailers’ windows were twitching with people nervously checking outside—the usual M.O. for the aftermath of a King’s drive-by. My heart was slamming in my chest as we approached my childhood home, but like everywhere else, it was silent and still.

“Stop here,” I instructed Lexi, and she pulled up alongside the trailer. Axel’s car was gone from out front. Grazie a Dio!

As the engine cut and the wipers stopped, the heavens opened and the rain began pelting down against the metal of the car. Flashbacks of my youth slammed into my mind. As a kid, I used to love being inside a car when it came to a storm. Someone had told me when I was six that the safest place to be in a storm was a car. Apparently, the tires act as an insulator from lighting, so even if you were struck, you’d be safe.

Whenever I felt scared as a kid—from the Heighters’ deals gone wrong, from the drunks littering the park and shouting angry slurs at the top of their lungs, or a drive-by—I would climb into the seats of my daddy’s old engineless Chevy out back and curl up, listening to the rain bouncing off its roof, shutting my eyes, trying to block out the pain.

It was weird being back here at the beginning of another storm, and with Lexington Hart beside me, of all people… My little emo pixie.

Wait… my emo pixie?

“Are we gonna go in or you planning to sit out here all night?” Lexi suddenly asked, pulling me back from my memories, from my shock at the possession I felt for her. Her voice was a little shaky as she tried to joke, only serving to fuel my protective instincts.

“Yeah,” I replied and faced Lexi as she sat in the driver’s seat, her face almost pressed against the glass of the door, her sleeves pulled down over her palms as she chewed nervously on the nail of her thumb.

“Take off, Pix. I’ll find my own way back,” I told her.

Lexi snapped her head to me and frowned. “No, I’ll wait for you. There’s a helluva storm happening right above our heads in case you haven’t noticed.”

Sighing at her sarcasm, I opened the car door and got out, leaning down to say, “Get out of the car, Pix. You’ll be safer inside. Out here…” I trailed off, flicking my chin in the direction of the park, leaving her to make her own assumptions about what I was trying to say.

Turning to the front door of the trailer, I heard her hurried feet behind me and smirked at how quickly she’d moved. She may’ve been sarcastic and dry just a minute ago, but all that front was gone the minute she was left alone.

As I reached for the doorknob, the door burst open. Levi stood before me, darting his wide eyes around the empty trailer park, rushing me inside with a wave.

That immediately got my hackles up. The kid was shit scared.

“Lev,” I said tightly as I pushed past him through the door. When I looked at his face, I stilled.

“Are you f**kin’ kidding me?” I bit out, my voice sounding as fiery as hell itself. Sitting on the left side of his cheek was a fresh tattooed stidda, the small black Sicilian star of the Westside Heighters. All Heighters were Sicilian in heritage. The stidda was a nod of respect to the Stiddari. A branch of the Sicilian Mafia.