Page 148 of Collateral Love
“Don’t do that shit again,” she whispered.
“I’ll try not to catch another wrongful conviction,” he replied dryly.
Zayden approached last.
He stood in front of Jared, hands in his pockets, chin lifted.
“Welcome home,” he said.
Jared looked him over.
“You got old, Nigga,” he said.
“So did you,” Zay shot back.
They smiled at the same time.
Then they hugged that quick, hard, back-slapping embrace men do when the feelings are too big. It wasn’t long, but it was real.
“Thank you,” Jared murmured low enough that only Zay and maybe me could hear. “For taking care of my sisters. We ran in different crews back then. You ain’t have to protect mine and that means so much to me.”
Zay’s jaw flexed. “Always.”
Xavier hung back by the car, eyes scanning the perimeter, but his shoulders were looser than I’d seen them in weeks.
Jared clocked him, too.
“X,” he called. “You still ugly.”
Laughter rippled through us.
For a moment, we were just family again.
Not kingpins and lawyers and survivors and collateral.
Just Davis and King blood, breathing the same free air.
We took Jared back to our estate to shower and change, then we took him to food.
“Where you wanna go?” I asked as we loaded into the trucks.
He didn’t hesitate. “That spot on 83rd. The wings with the honey lemon pepper wet.”
I grinned. “I knew you was gon’ say that.”
The little hole-in-the-wall spot hadn’t changed much. Same faded menu on the wall. Same bell over the door. Same old dude behind the counter who’d been ignoring health codes since the mid-90s.
We took over two tables in the back, our presence filling the space in a way that made the two teenagers in the corner put their phones down.
Jared stared at the menu as if it were art.
“They got combos now?” he asked.
“They been had combos,” Camilla said. “You just been locked.”
He flinched.
I saw it, that little jerk in his shoulders. The way certain words landed differently on men who’d had their world shrink to concrete and steel.
