Page 14 of Trig

“Baby, wake up,” I say, rubbing her face. “Baby! Look at me.” She flutters her eyes open. “Just lay still for a second. You look gray. Don’t move. Just take some slow breaths in and out.”

I sit next to her, holding her hand and gently touching her face.

“Did Mya just say a man was at her school?” she whispers.

I shake my head as if to say not right now.

“Help me up, please,” she requests.

I sit her up for a few seconds before I lift her and place her back in the chair, watching her carefully. The color is already returning to her face.

“Is Mommy okay?”

“Um yeah, baby. Sometimes pregnant women get dizzy.”

“I’m okay, sweetie,” Nine replies.

“Drink this,” I say, as I slide her orange juice. “We should have a doctor look at you.”

“I don’t need a doctor. I need Jesus at this point.”

“Mya. Why don’t you go to your room and pull out your coloring books, and I’ll be in there in a little bit,” I say.

Mya takes off running to her room. Nine rests her elbows on the table and lets her face fall into the palms of her hands.

“You okay?”

“Am I okay? No. I am not okay. You’re doing contracts again and some drug lord watchman is showing up to my kid’s school making contact. My nerves are fucked.” She downs the orange juice, pauses, and then stares hard into my eyes. “I wanna know exactly what happened in Vegas.”

I shake my head as a few flashbacks run through my mind.

“You won’t be able to handle the details. I can’t even handle them.”

She laughs. “After all the shit you’ve done, you can’t handle the details? You’ve killed people. Lots of people, and you can’t grow a pair of balls and tell me about a girl? Bullshit.”

“I told you enough already.”

She stands up and leans into me.

“It’s not enough. I won’t stand here and act like a naive chick who has no clue what her other half is doing. Tell me about the job. Tell me more about the woman.”

“What else do you want to know? Jesus, Nine.”

“You don’t get to storm off angry like you did last night for shit I might have done but didn’t and expect me not to have a reaction for shit you actually did. I know it was against your will but that doesn’t mean I don’t get to feel what I feel. When you fucked her, did you enjoy it? Did you come?”

My mouth tightens up and all I can do is stare at her. She becomes irate listening to her own words. Her mind is spinning out of control.

“This isn’t the right time to talk about this,” I say as I glance down at her stomach.

“God damnit, Trig. I spent all night thinking about what you said. I have questions that I need answered to process what happened.”

I shake my head.

“I need this. I need to know.”

I stand up, pissed off.

“Why? What benefit will come from me telling you?”

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