Tamika placed two slices of pizza on her plate and lifted a third to her mouth. “Mmm, so good,” she mumbled around the food, sighing with satisfaction.
“You can’t go wrong with pepperoni and extra cheese,” Anton said, folding a slice and shoving a large portion into his mouth.
Still chewing, Tamika looked at him with an impish light in her dark eyes.
“Uh-oh,” Anton said.
She laughed. After what happened tonight, it was good to see she hadn’t completely disappeared behind a curtain of despair.
“I want to ask you something,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
Gearing up, she crossed her legs and resettled on the floor. “Tell me a deep dark secret about yourself. It’s got to be something juicy.”
“So you can blackmail me? No way.” Anton shook his head and continued eating.
“Oh, come on! We’re bonding, aren’t we? Two heartbroken souls, neither of whom want to face the reality of our empty apartments.”
If that’s why she thought he was there, she was dead wrong. He had no problem being alone in that apartment and welcomed the solitude without Melissa and her nitpicking around.
He was still there because he’d decided to sleep with Tamika. He should be ashamed of himself, but the urge to fuck her was eating him alive and paced inside him like a hungry lion, stalking its prey. Tamika was the prey. She just didn’t know it yet.
“Tell me a secret, Anton. I promise not to tell anyone.”
Resting his arm on the sofa, he studied her across the pizza box, contemplating what to share. “Okay, I’ll tell you a secret, but if you tell anyone, I’m kicking your ass.”
“I won’t,” she insisted, giggling.
She had the most girly laugh. One that tightened his stomach and made him want to grab her by the back of the neck and kiss her red-tinted lips.
“This happened when I was fourteen. Young and dumb.”
“Weren’t we all, at some point,” Tamika interjected.
“I stole my dad’s car and went for a joy ride.”
“Noooo.” Her mouth fell open.
Anton nodded but kept talking. “That’s not the worst of it. Of course my dumb ass ended up in an accident. I ran into the front of a store trying not to hit a dog that ran across the street. The place was closed at the time, but I went right through the front and into the display case. I ran to a house nearby, the owner let me use his phone, and I called my older brother at his girl’s house. Pat—Patrick—is three years older than me. He met me over there and took the blame for the accident, pretended he was the one who’d taken the car without permission and crashed. My dad was furious. Cops showed up. The scene was chaotic. Pat was grounded for a month and had to pay for the repairs.”
Tamika’s mouth was hanging open as he finished the tale. “Well, that was very nice of you to avoid hitting the dog, but taking your father’s car at fourteen—that’s bad, Anton.”
“I know. You don’t have to tell me. I look back on that day and wonder what the hell I was thinking about.”
“So why did your brother take the fall for you?” She bit into her slice of pizza.
“He said because I was his little brother, and…” His throat went tight. “He couldn’t save Ricky, but he wasn’t going to let shit happen to me. I was going to become a lawyer, and he didn’t want anything to jeopardize that.”
Tamika stopped chewing. “Wow,” she said quietly, around a mouthful of food.
“Yeah.” He’d never forgotten those words or how his brother had taken the fall for him. That day had cemented their bond forever.
“Where’s your brother now?”
“He lives in Florida. He’s married with two kids and drives trucks for a living.”
“Are you still close?”
