Page 97 of Be Mine Forever

“Jo, you okay?” Peter’s concerned eyes roamed Jo’s face, looking from her to the screen.

“Oh my God! I know…” Jo swallowed the lump snowballing in her throat. “I knew that guy.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Cam fixed his eyes on the casket at the front of the church. He slipped into the hard wooden pew at the very back of the room, one of the few seats left. Mourners wallpapered the inside of the small church, lined up like weeping bowling pins. Some toppling with their grief, some standing upright.

It was a closed casket since most of Deuce’s head had essentially been blown off and was beyond the cosmetic skills of the undertaker. The iron fist Deuce had ruled his crew with had come back to deliver a knockout punch. Down for the count. In Deuce’s ghetto kingdom, you lived by the sword. You died by the sword. And eventually everybody dies. Cam kept replaying that last conversation in the alley. Was there more he could have said to convince Deuce to leave the game? No, Deuce’s voice hadn’t even changed yet when he’d first started slinging. He’d been a walking dead man for years. Death had finally caught up to him, and Cam knew it hadn’t taken him by surprise.

Deuce’s mother sat in the front row, dressed in dirty money finery accessorized by stoic grief, the kind of pain that bludgeoned you later once the food was in Tupperware and all the condolences had gone home. Rollo, the brother Deuce had killed a man for violating, sat beside her.

Correction. Cam had killed that man.

Deuce’s brother still carried that ageless innocence his condition afforded him. Every once in a while, his brow would crinkle, even though his smile never slipped, like he wondered what everybody was crying about. Cam longed for that blissful oblivion.

Why did it feel like a heat-seeking missile had blasted through his heart? He’d only seen Deuce a few times in his life, but they had shared the dark sacredness of a murder concealed. They’d colluded to put down a rabid beast. It hadn’t been Deuce’s first kill, and certainly not his last. But for Cam, it had been his one shot at freedom from Mac’s filthy tyranny. Somehow in that alley as they’d watched Mac die, they’d formed a bond that didn’t need blood or proximity to be real. Death had snapped that bond. Cam wondered if Mac was lying in wait for Deuce on the other side, ready to even the score. Hell, he might be waiting for Cam. Or he might not be waiting at all. Maybe he was taking his revenge every night in Cam’s dreams.

Mourners started filing out of the church, front pews first. Cam sat back and teased paint from under his fingernails. He was the only one on his row, and he might just sit awhile. Might just linger. He hadn’t been in church much in his life, but it seemed like bad things wouldn’t happen here, and he needed just a little time with no bad things.

“Cameron?”

The pain-husky voice came from right in front and above him. Cam glanced up, rattled to meet Deuce’s eyes in his mother’s face. Her skin was darker than Deuce’s, but she had those same golden eyes. How did she even remember him? He’d had less contact with her even than with Deuce.

“Ms. Williams.” Cam cleared his throat, hoping to dislodge the right words. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” She took her time running her sorrow-drenched eyes over his face, seemingly unbothered that the whole line of mourners had stopped behind her. “You grew up to be so handsome.”

“Um, thank you, ma’am.” Cam caught the eyes of the curious people behind her, looking back to her face quickly.

“Deuce talked about you all the time.”

Cam couldn’t look away, hypnotized by the sincere pleasure penetrating her grief.

“About…about me?”

“Yes. He said you were one of the few Barfield success stories.” Her small smile brushed against the black lace of the veil half covering her face. “He saw that movie with your paintings and everything.”

“Yeah, he mentioned that when I saw him last.”

“You saw him before he…” Ms. Williams dropped her eyes to the floor for a moment before looking back up. “You saw him?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You know he bought me one of your paintings.”

Cam couldn’t even form words. Syllables and sounds floated around in his head before synapses linked them into coherence.

“Which one did he give you?”

Ms. Williams took a few steps forward and leaned down to whisper in his ear, like it was a secret.

“Quicksand.”

Cam had paintedQuicksandyears ago and sold it to some vendor for an arts festival in Rivermont. He’d depicted the Barfield streets as quicksand pulling pedestrians under. Maybe itwasa secret she had just shared, that Deuce had wanted to get out but hadn’t ever found the strength. Or hadn’t ever had a hand to rescue him from the sucking sand, even though he’d given Cam a hand.

Ms. Williams pulled back, smile gone, tears standing in her eyes.

“You take care, Cameron.”

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