He smirks at me. “I don’t get you.”

That’s right. You don’t. You don’t get me. And you don’t get to get me just because you want to. You can’t have me.

“Leave me alone.” I reach for my headphones. I need better ones, the kind that really block out all the noise.

Robb huffs over to his bunk. I breathe in and out slowly until I can see straight again. Until my fingers uncurl from the edge of the desk and it becomes bearable again. The truth, that my best friend was shot for no reason, by a man who will never be prosecuted.

“This is wack,” Robb mutters, still fixated on his phone.

When you’ve lost someone, the way I lost Tariq, nothing makes sense anymore. “Mmmhmm,” I mumble. Robb doesn’t know from wack.

BRICK

Noodle was right. The block is lit. Quite literally. Floodlights and flashing lights, and Noodle in the middle of it talking about trying to move some product.

“Unwise,” I tell him. “Just let it shake out. Come on.”

I don’t like the look of things here. The crowd is on edge and it feels like things could all boil over. We gotta bounce. ’Fore it’s our faces on the news.

“Come on.” I grab his arm. Nothing’s moving tonight. And even if it was, Noodle’s not going to be the one to do it. We got kids for the nickel-and-dime shit.

We start pushing back, back, away from the center of this mess. We’re almost out when the scream comes.

“Shae!”

The deep cry pierces, like something being torn to shreds. A sound both full and empty at the same time. And close. “Shae?” Bill Tatum tears through the crowd, a wild man. “Shae! Shae!”

The murmurs begin. Oh, God. That’s the father. Her father.

Cops move toward the place where he will emerge.

The next five minutes play out in my mind in sped-up slo-mo fashion: He’ll run at them. Try to bring them down with his own hands. Then he’ll be laid out beside her and they will feel justified.

No time to think. I’m moving.

I use my size, my power to part the crowd. People jostle around me. No complaints. The urgency wins.

We meet at the edge of the caution tape barricade. My hands go up, blocking his path. “Tatum.”

He bursts forth into my arms. He’s tall and wiry, but I am a wall.

“Let me through! Shae!”

I am a wall. A shield. A punching bag.

“Shae!” he screams. “Answer me, baby!”

He pummels me. I’ve taken worse, but just barely.

“Back it down, bro,” Noodle shouts. He’s trying to get an arm in.

Tatum pushes hard, slips past me. A man possessed.

I catch him again, this time from behind. My arms X across his narrow chest, locking him to me.

Holy fuck.