Page 106 of The Coldest: Stay Dangerous Part 2

My butt starts vibrating, waking me up from my second attempt at sleeping. Rico forgot to mention that he took some type of prescription-strength painkiller, and became very loopy after his shower.

I wouldn’t have minded, if his version of loopy was erotic.

No.

Rico found the movie channels on the hotel television, and spent hours talking through each movie. One of them was my favorite as a kid. He talked right through it. When he finally had to leave to be home when Mars woke up, I locked myself in my bedroom and buried myself under the covers.

Now, digging my phone off my butt, I see I’ve only been asleep for…

Forty-five minutes.

I don’t recognize the number facetiming me, but that doesn’t mean anything. Everyone’s always getting new numbers, especially Grimey. So without thinking, I answer the call and hold the phone to my face.

But it’s no one from my label. And I scoff at the gray eyes holding so much hate even on the grainy feed.

“Yeah, wake yo ass up. We need to talk,” he rasps.

“If you’re gonna yell at me or be disrespectful, I’m hanging up right now.”

Set brings a fat ass blunt to his mouth, before he thinks better of it and sets it down offscreen. Instead, he leans forward, frown pulling his face more and more by the second.

“I’m not finna yell, nor am I gon’ be disrespectful, as long as you're honest with me.”

“Can you handle the truth?” I counter. Sitting up all the way, I place my phone in my lap and wipe the sleep out of my eyes. “Any time you hear something you don’t like, you go off the deep end. I’ll be honest, if you can handle it.”

“Man, kill all that. Just be straight up with me. Rico’s your abortion baby daddy huh? The nigga that fucked you over so bad in high school that you swore off anything too deep?”

I pick up my phone and hold it so my face is in the camera. This is it. This is what loving Rico this time means.

Claiming him.

“Yeah,” I sigh.

I can tell Set didn’t think I’d admit it, because the anger drops from his face, just for a second. Then it’s back tenfold.

“Wow,” he chuckles angrily. “You fucked with my day one nigga and then homie hopped to me like it was nothing.”

“It was nothing–”

“That nigga wanna kill me, Wynter!” Set yells over me. “Bro, did you fuckin’ hear that nigga yesterday?! Not only does he blame me for Fredo, but that nigga got so much animosity over us fucking around. Niggas kill behind that shit, and you know that! You know that… and you still fucked with me anyway. And the sickest part is, you told me about this nigga, Wyn. You told me about your first boyfriend, how he was a gangmember, and cheated, and burned you, got you pregnant. You told me all that shit. And when I asked who. What you tell me?”

I wince at the hurt building from his tirade.

“You told me the nigga was dead,” he continues. When I don’t answer right away, he wipes his face from his durag to his chin hair.

“Who else knew?”

I blink. “Uh–”

“Who else knew about this shit? Shad? Fredo?”

“It doesn’t matter who else knew, and he was dead to me, Set. I wasn’t trying–”

“Bullshit, Wyn. I sat up, all night, going over every fuckin’ detail when we was fucking. Every time that nigga was finna come back or was in the city, you tweaked out. Every single time. You absolutely was using me for getback, bro. If we was still fucking when Fredo died, he woulda killed me. My day one…”

Set drops his head between his shoulders and sighs. I run my hand through my dry curls, and look around the room like that will give me answers.

“I’m sorry, Set.”