“Are you gonna help me or what?” I ask, offering a wry grudging smile.
He rolls his eyes and steps around me to lead the way up the next flight of stairs.
“Ten minutes,” he says sternly. “We look for ten minutes and then you’re leaving with or without him.”
So he thinks. If I haven’t found Hakeem in ten minutes, we’ll renegotiate.
But we do. On the next floor in a room with a few guys, and thankfully, no phones out taking pictures or recording it. And yes, with cocaine everywhere.
“Please let me handle this,” I ask Jared in the hall outside the room. “You helped me, and I appreciate it, but this is my guy. You’ll be right here if I need you.”
For a second he looks like he’ll protest, but he finally nods and leans against the wall.
“If you’re not out in five minutes . . .”
He leaves a trail of unspoken consequences in the wake of that sentence. I nod my agreement and head in, closing the door behind me.
“What the hell are you doing, Hakeem?” I ask with no preamble.
He glances up, his eyes droopy and dazed from the drugs.
“Huh?” He blinks a few times like I’m a hallucination. “Banner?”
“Yes, Banner.” I stand over him, pointing to the drugs and bottles of liquor on the table. “You already had two suspensions for weed. What do you think they’ll do to you for this shit?”
“Nobody would tell—”
“Somebody did,” I cut in, slit-eyed and furious. “And they called me.”
“It’s a private party.” Dismay and panic clear some of his haze.
“Nothing is private. I told you that day one. Maybe once your little coke party pops up on Instagram you’ll believe me.”
He glances around the room, probably seeing the faces around him with new eyes. Some he knows and some he doesn’t. I pray he’s realizing how foolhardy it is to do drugs at all, much less with guys he doesn’t know and can’t be sure he can trust.
I step closer and bend to speak so low only he will hear me.
“Think of Adeago,” I whisper his sister’s name to him. “She wants to go to Northwestern, right? She doesn’t have a scholarship. She’s depending on you, Hakeem. So are Kambili and Ekeema.”
I pull back and touch his shoulder. “So is your mother. You know this.”
He glances from the table littered with coke and weed and destruction then back to me and nods solemnly. He’s a good kid, barely a man, who went from having nothing one day to having riches and resources beyond his wildest imagination the next. It’s a lot. It’s a trap if you don’t have the right people surrounding you. I don’t recognize half the men here. They’re not the right people. Not ballers, but hangers on. Opportunists. Some of them predators. By now, I’ve had enough predators assume I was prey that I know how to spot them.
“Let’s get out of here.” I reach for his arm, but someone reaches for mine.
“You do lap dances?” The huge man attached to the arm asks me, staring at my ass.
I was out, for once, having dinner with Quinn when Tanya texted me, so I’m dressed well. Black harem pants that snap tight at the ankles and a silk blouse longer in the front and cut higher in the back, exposing my lower back and butt.
“Hands off. I’m not a stripper,” I say for the third time tonight.
I mean, really? Do strippers dress this well?
“I like this fat ass,” he says, smacking the derriere in question.
Oh, hell no.
“I said hands off, hijo de puta,” I snap, slipping into the language that always seems to best convey my strongest emotions.
“Uh, I don’t know what you called me,” he says, amusement lighting his drug-hazed eyes. “But my dick got hard.”
“You want that dick shoved down your throat,” Jared says from the open door with a calm I recognize as false. “Touch her ass again.”
His eyes are burning the spot where the man holds my arm. I jerk free and touch Hakeem’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”
Hakeem stands and stumbles. I catch his arm, but his weight buckles my knees and we both almost fall. Jared rushes over and slips under Hakeem’s arm, supporting him.
“Sorry,” Hakeem slurs. “That Grey Goose got me like . . .”
“And that Molly got you, too,” the ass slapper says. “You gon’ feel that, bruh.”
“You took Molly, too, Hakeem?” I ask.
“I guess.” Hakeem slumps into me, all seven feet of him, and I grunt under his weight.
“I got him,” Jared says, irritation barbing his voice. “Man, try to walk.”
Hakeem is practically dead weight, but we get him to the hall. I start dragging him toward the stairs we came up, but Jared stops short.
“There’s a back staircase,” he says. “Let’s take him that way.”
“Good idea.” I shift Hakeem on my shoulder and follow Jared’s lead.
It’s difficult getting his bulk down the steps, and I almost lose my footing several times. Hakeem alternates between drunken snickers and tearful apologies. He can’t decide what kind of drunk he wants to be, but he’s getting on my damn nerves. He steps on Jared’s foot more than once, and based on the muttered curses coming from the other side, Hakeem has gotten on Jared’s nerves, too.
“I think he broke my toe,” Jared complains when we get outside.
It’s been a long night, and we narrowly averted disaster. Only time will tell if some damning photo surfaces to wreck Hakeem’s career. For now, though, we saved the day, and I’m so relieved that when I see Jared’s almost sullen face, my lips twitch in the closest thing to a smile I can manage under the circumstances.
I step away and leave Hakeem leaning on Jared while I search for my car. I was in such a hurry to get here, I don’t even remember where I parked. I turn to tell Jared I found it and catch him staring at my ass.
“Are you looking at my butt?” I ask, waffling between flattered and offended.
“Of course,” Jared replies as if I’m crazy for asking. “I actually wish you’d stop talking because I was literally committing your ass in those pants to memory, and you’re breaking my concentration.”
I try my best to scold him with a look, which is hard to do when my lips are twitching.
“What?” He shrugs as best he can with Hakeem leaning on him. “I mean it’s right there. What do you expect? At least I’m honest.”
“The guy who slapped my ass was honest, too,” I remind him. “So maybe there’s a balance you could find between honest and lecher.”
“If I find it, you’ll be the first to know.”
I shake my head, still fighting twitching lips. I’m not doing this. I refuse to enjoy him.
“If you can just help me get him to the car,” I say over my shoulder. “We’ll be on our way.”
“What car?”
I stop and turn, looking at him like he’s crazy now.
“My car.”
“And you’re taking him where?” Jared demands. “Do you know where he’s staying?”
“No.” Hakeem doesn’t live in LA. He’s here strictly to party, I guess. I have no idea where he’s staying, and he’s in no condition to tell me. “I’ll take him to my house.”
“The hell you will.” Jared jerks his brows together. “Isn’t Zo out of town?”
“Yeah.”
“You are not taking Hakeem back to your place, not like this. He’s drunk, high, and twice your size. No way.”
Hakeem makes mild sounds of protest, but looks like he could float away any minute.
“Well, what do you suggest?” I ask, irritated with his logic and frustrated by my lack of forethought.
“Oh, now that I broke my back and a toe dragging around a three-hundred-pound seven-footer, you’re open to suggestions?” Jared shifts Hakeem into a more comfortable position. “Fucking figures.”
The twitch of my lips is just the beginning. He looks so put out, like a little boy not getting his way, that a laugh escapes me before I can catch it. And once it’s out, it won’t stop.
“Your toe,” I gasp, pointing to the foot Hakeem kept smashing as we descended the stairs. “I’m so sorry.”
“Apologies usually seem more sincere if you’re not laughing when you deliver them,” he says dryly. “You must have missed that in How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
“Oh, shut it.” After I get my borderline hysterical laughter under control, he’s staring at me, a small smile teasing his lips.
“What?” I ask, smiling back involuntarily.
“Your laugh,” he says. “I want to make you laugh like that every day.”
The comment blindsides me. We were working so well together, it was easy to forget how dangerous being around him is.
I don’t respond but walk the few steps to my car, unlock it. “We need to get him out of here.”
“So that’s how you’re going to play this? You’ll just keep ignoring it?”
I don’t answer, but that’s what I do. Ignore him.
“What should we do about Hakeem?” I ask, risking a glance at him over my shoulder.
Jared stares at me for long seconds before sighing and nodding toward my car. “I’ll follow you and sleep on your couch. I’m parked over there.”
“There’s no need for you to stay,” I rush to assure him. “To sleep on my couch, I mean.”
“Banner, it’s late,” he says wearily. “I’ve been up since four this morning. He’s not coming back to my place. He’s not staying at yours if you’re there alone. This is as much of a compromise as you’re getting.”
I reluctantly nod and help him load Hakeem, who has gone quiet—asleep but breathing evenly—into the car. He’s buckled into the backseat while we ride to my house. The whole way, I recite all the reasons it’s a bad idea to have Jared in my house with Zo not there. I pep talk myself into believing that everything will be okay. That I will emerge from this night unscathed and still faithful.