Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 82949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
My Air Jordans tapped against the wooden step as I counted how many times the clock ticked on the old grandfather my mother got as a Christmas gift. My family had never needed money. I was sure the Dixon family shat hundred-dollar bills.
The footsteps stopped, and I raised my eyes up to where my father stood. He loosened his tie from around his neck, taking a long sip of his whiskey while keeping his eyes on mine.
“It’s time.”
“Time for what?” I asked, glaring up at him. I’d had about enough of his constant bullshit, and if I knew him, which I did, I knew he was sick of me too. Truth was, I had seen stepfathers treat their children better than mine did me.
His finger circled the rim of the glass. “You get in?”
“Yeah,” I answered, annoyed at how it felt when he showed an inkling of an interest in my life. I didn’t want his attention. I didn’t want to feel good when I got it either.
“Well, that’s too bad.” He placed the tumbler on the side table, right near the family portrait of this fake ass family. “Because there are many things in your future, Sparrow, and basketball isn’t one of them.”
I shot up from the stairs, clenched teeth and fire hot in my veins. This was it. He had taken everything from me collectively over the years. Then he would rub it right into my face that he had it. But this? Basketball? Nah, I drew the fucking line. “I don’t want to be you.”
He chuckled, but it wasn’t the one I was used to hearing from him. This was the kind that I knew would haunt me for years to come. “By the end of this, you’re going to think I’m weak, Sparrow.” He took another step up. “You’re going to wish you could rewind back to this point, where your only problem was that your fucked-up dad never made it to watch your tryouts.” Another step. “Or how every night, you wonder why your mother stays with me if I bring a different woman into the same house I raised my child in, built with her.” He took the final step, standing tall right beside me. I felt the way his eyes drifted over my skin as he looked down on me from my step. “But more importantly, you’re going to wish that you could go back to this point, because this, right here, is the last time you will have any taste of mundane innocence left inside of you.”
Darkness cloaked my vision as something was shoved over my head. My throat tensed as if someone was choking me. “What the fuck!” Arms were around my back and my throat. “Dad!” I screamed so loud I was sure I tore my vocal cords. “Dad!” A heavy thud hit the back of my head, and everything went black.
“What time am I coming?” my mother asks through the phone, and I tap the counter with the edge of my pen to distract myself from doing what I always do when I’m on the phone with her.
Ask one hundred questions.
“We have to be gone by ten. So, any time before then.”
She pauses before I hear her whisper something to someone beside her. “Mahlia wants to talk to you.”
“Mother—”
“Hello, Sparrow.” Her voice slides through my phone like a song you hate playing on the radio. “How is our little prodigy coming along?”
I clench my fist over my thigh. “Fine. Look, I need you here for babysitting duties, and it’s not because I want you to.”
She brushes me off, and I can almost see the way her long, raven black hair moves with the wind, her dark eyes rolling to the back of her head. She yaps off in Portuguese before coming back to English. “Sparrow, you wound me. I thought you knew me better than that? I don’t look after any of them. Which reminds me…why have you pocketed one for yourself?”
“This isn’t that.” My temperature rises. Images of my hands around her throat as I watch the life drain from her eyes fill my mind, calming my erratic pulse.
“Of course, it is…” she teases. “It’s always that. That is something I’ve known since I’ve known you.”
I bite back my initial response. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yes, lover, and also!”
I squeeze the phone in my hand, my eyes flying to the doorway when I see Malyk now freshly showered and out of his…clothes.
“Don’t forget to warm up my spot.”
I hang up my phone, throwing it onto the desk. I grind my teeth as Malyk slowly lowers down onto the fireplace mantle.
I push back against my chair, my finger tapping against my thigh. “I don’t know if getting Mahlia involved is a good thing.”
Malyk is silent for a moment. “I don’t know. I think she’s fine.”