I sat Blessyn on lap and kissed her neck. She was the finest woman I had ever laid eyes. It was something about her that made me not want to ever give another woman my all. Blessyn was going to be the woman in life even if we weren’t together. She had the type of hold on me and it was hard to explain to anyone.
“I love you. You know that, right?”
“I love you too.”
A tap on the window stopped me from pulling Blessyn’s shirt over her head.
“Let the window down it may be my mama with the baby.”
“She doesn’t know we in here. I paid good money for my tint to be this dark. Do you know how many tickets I don’t got ‘bout this shit.”
“Lucky.”
“Goddamnit, a nigga can’t even bust a nut in this bitch.”
I leaned up to start the truck and Blessyn let the back window down. The sound of a gun cocking and going off. Blessyn was slumped and her blood was splatter all over my backseat. The masked man raised his gun at me and squeezed the trigger twice.
“Long live Khi!”
“Fuck!” The sound of Lucky’s voice made my heart jump. If I was hearing correctly, he was fumbling for something. My hearing was muffled on one side, and it was the same side that I felt a burning sensation on. “Perc,” He coughed. “We been shot. Get to me nigga. Shittt! Get to Blessyn. She pregnant bruh. We…we at her mama house.”
I tried to move but the bullet in my body had me stiff. My lips were moving but nothing was coming out. Lucky was slumped over between the passenger and driver seat. I was trying to tell him I was okay, but my voice was gone. Every time he took a breath, he was gurgling. Perc was screaming through the phone, but Lucky had dropped the phone a long time ago. It seemed like we had been sitting in the truck bleeding for a while, but I knowonly a few seconds had gone by. I thought for sure my mama would’ve come running out the house by now.
I thought if I talked to myself, I would be able to find the strength that I needed to get the fuck out of the truck. Since Lucky wasn’t able to do anything, I had to do something to get us some help. It was an eerie feeling that consumed me. My mama house wasn’t hard to find but who would be riding around looking for Lucky or me this time of night? The longer I sat in the back seat of his truck, I felt like the person would come back and finish the job.
“Hey, is everyone okay? I have the police on the way.”
I turned my eyes slightly to the woman that stood to the truck. She was the neighbor that had just moved in across the street from my mama. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out.
“Don’t talk baby. Just hold on.”
I looked at Lucky’s body to see if he was still breathing. The gurgling noise had stopped a few minutes ago and I was worried that he had choked on his own blood. I hadn’t even gotten the window down all the way before the shot went off. Shattered glass sat in my lap and some had penetrated my hand. The woman didn’t leave our side but I was concerned about my mama. Why hadn’t she come outside to check on us? Did she know about this shit? What about my baby?
Lucky moved his leg giving me a glimpse of hope that he was still alive. I wanted to call out his name but the more I moved the tighter my throat got. Reaching my hand up to my neck, I realized I was shot in my neck. The thick red blood, the color of crimson covered my fingers. Everything was rushing to my head. My mama, my son, and Perc’s daughter. Not to mention Lucky’s body lying before me and I wasn’t sure if he was breathing or not.
“They’re a few minutes away. Hold on, baby,” I mouthed.
I closed my eyes and held back the tears that were trying to fall. Death seemed to follow me no matter what I tried to do. As good as I was to people, there was always someone or something coming for me. A few moments later my door was pulled open and a flashlight was in my face.
“Ma’am, I’m here to help you. Can you tell me what happened?” An EMT worker asked.
I raised my hand to point at my neck. For the third time, I tried to talk and nothing would come out. Now even a whisper. I sat and watched as another EMT opened the driver's side door to check Lucky’s pulse. He then reached over and checked his neck.
“Nothing,” he told his partner.
“Call the coroner so he can call time of death.”
I lost it. I started kicking and trying my best to get to Lucky. He wasn’t dead. There was no damn way he was dead. He promised me he would never leave me and Kani.
“Ma’am, calm down. You have a bullet lodged in your neck and if you move wrong, you’ll be paralyzed.”
My man was dead and I didn’t know where the fuck my mama or son was at the moment. It was like I was reliving the same shit over again when I lost Kj. This shit couldn’t be happening again. Everything I loved was taken away from me. If this is how my life was going to be, I didn’t want to live anymore. They wanted me to calm down but no one understood what the fuck I was going through at the moment. I couldn’t calm down. All Lucky wanted to do was get his family back. Not that I was going to fall that easy but I didn’t want to remember him like this. This wasn’t happening to me right now. They gave me one shot to my hip and I was out like a light.
For a brief moment, I thought I was dead. When my eyes opened, all I saw was a bright ass light. A part of me didn’t want to be alive. Not if Lucky didn’t make it. It was my fault that he was even trying to roll the damn windows down becauseI thought it was my mama bringing us the baby. Then I heard voices. None of them sounded familiar which put me on high alert. I raised my hand to get their attention. My pain was gone but I felt numb all in my neck area. There was a tube down my throat.
“Relax. Relax. Let me call the doctor so we can remove the tube from your throat and she can talk to you about your injuries,” the nurse told me.
An hour later I was able to breathe on my own. My throat was sore but I could whisper and that was more than I could last night.
