Page 9 of Collateral Love
By the time I walked out into the night, the campus had gone soft. Lights warm in dorm windows. Laughter floating up from somewhere, it didn’t matter. A world built to feel temporary, like consequences were something you aged into.
I crossed the parking lot and got into my car.
Now that midterms were over, I could go home and check on my little sister, Channy. The drive back toward North End took fifty-eight minutes if you didn’t speed and forty-five if you knew where the county lines blurred. I took the long way. Always did. Gave my mind time to settle. Gave me space to decide which version of myself I was about to be when I arrived.
The radio stayed off. Silence was cleaner.
Streetlights flickered past, one by one, like a pulse. Somewhere between mile markers and memory, Zayden King slipped into a place in my head I didn’t usually let people occupy.
He wasn’t reckless. He wasn’t loud. He wasn’t sloppy. He was disciplined in a way that told me he’d already buried something, or someone, and learned from it. Men like that didn’t bluff. Theydidn’t posture. They moved when it mattered and stayed still when it didn’t.
Which meant if he agreed to my plan, he’d execute it.
That made him useful.
It also made him dangerous.
Crestwood announced itself before you ever saw it. The road dipped. The air changed. You could feel the city before it showed its face, like it was breathing just under the surface, waiting. Up the road, 15 more minutes, was our five-bedroom suburban house in North End.
I pulled into my parents' driveway just after eleven.
The house was quiet, lights off except for the lamp in the living room. That meant Chanel was home. My chest tightened automatically. I hadn’t even seen her yet, and already I was smiling brightly.
Inside, the familiar smells wrapped around me—cleaning solution, old wood, something fried earlier that hadn’t aired out yet. I was home, and that truth was both comforting, complicated, and heavy.
Chanel was curled up on the couch with her knees tucked to her chest, textbook open but untouched. She looked up when she heard my keys.
“Hey,” she said, soft like she was afraid of disturbing something.
“Hey Baby Bear,” I replied, dropping my bag by the door.
She smiled at me the way little sisters did when they still believed you were capable of fixing everything. It was a look that came with expectations. I carried those carefully.
“How’s college?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said.
She studied me for a second, eyes narrowing slightly. My Channy noticed more than people gave her credit for. She just didn’t always know what to do with what she saw.
“You eat?” she asked.
“I will,” I said. “Maybe later.”
She nodded, turning back to her book, but I could feel her attention linger as if she wanted to ask something else and didn’t know how.
I watched her for a moment. The curve of her shoulder. The way she folded in on herself when she read, like the world was too loud even when it wasn’t. She was four years younger than me. She still believed in clean lines. In right and wrong. In love as something that saved you instead of something that costs. She still saw the world in color when I saw things in black and white.
I swallowed.
“Chanel,” I said.
She looked up.
“I know I said you could visit me on my campus next weekend, but stay home,” I told her.
Her brows knit together. “Why?”
“Because I said so.”
