Page 32 of Cannon
But worse than that was the truth settling into my bones…
It wasn’t enough.
Not even close.
I wanted the real thing. Wanted those hands, that mouth, that dick that I knew would ruin me for anybody else. Wantedhim to fuck the anxiety right out of me until I couldn’t remember my own problems.
This was bad. This was dangerous.
And I was already addicted.
I rolled over, pulling the covers up to my chin like they could protect me from my own desires. But sleep wouldn’t come easy. Not with his face burned into my eyelids. Not with my body already craving another hit.
As I was about to drift off to sleep, my phone rang.
I looked at the time and it was 7:30 AM. I needed rest, but if someone was calling me this early, it was probably important.
When I reached over, I was annoyed to see that it was my mother. Why in the hell was she calling me so early? I just wanted to rest in the bliss of fantasizing about the forbidden fruit that was Cannon.
“Good morning,” I greeted when I answered the phone.
“Queenie!” She yelled into the phone.
“Yes, mother. What is wrong?”
“You need to come over now. It’s important.”
It wasn’t. Whatever she needed at seven in the damn morning was not important. It never was. She was so over the top.
“Ma, it has to wait.”
“No! It can’t wait. I need you to come now! This is important. He’s coming for us. He’s coming for you!”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. He’s back from the dead…” she whispered.
I lifted off the bed and swiped my hand down my face. I knew exactly who she was talking about. But it was impossible for him to be back from the dead because I shot him in the head.
Chapter 12
Queen
An hour later I pulled up to my mother’s house in Long Island and just… sat there.
The two-story with its white shutters and manicured lawn looked picture-perfect, but it froze me in place. I didn’t want to go inside.
To the neighbors, she was an eccentric, well-dressed widow with a taste for fresh flowers and a talent for entertaining. But I knew better. I’d grown up inside the chaos of her lies. She’d been a scammer long before Instagram made it fashionable, running credit card numbers from our kitchen table, bouncing checks like it was an Olympic sport, charming lonely men into paying her bills in exchange for “companionship.”
The worst part? She used me.
She once raised money at churches for my “cancer.” She’s run scams claiming I had rare diseases, disappearing the second she got the money. I’ll never forget the day she shaved my head and eyebrows, dusted my skin with makeup to make me look pale and sickly, and bought a wheelchair to seal the performance. I was the centerpiece of her grift, and I hated every second of it. But I was a kid. She was my mother. What choice did I have?
And one of those scams, a petty one, ended with me killing a man. I was only eleven. She tells me I was protecting her, but I know the truth. She tricked me. And no matter how many years pass, the memory still cuts.
The way his eyes looked in those last seconds.
The way the silence felt afterward.
