Page 183 of The Coldest: Stay Dangerous Part 2

“Yeah, me too. Dirty pussy bitch fucked my whole shit up with Snow.”

“She knows it was her?”

“Man, now she does. I told her in Belize, and her dumb ass gon’ tell me she fucked Pooh. Had me shooting at my damn daddy ‘cause she petty.”

We both chuckle. “Yeah, Wyn is petty as fuck.”

Silence settles in heavily, as different things I feel like I need and want to say start shuffling in my mind. It would be a lie to say I just hate this nigga. The shit I feel for Set is way more complicated than labeling it as hate, or even jealousy and envy.

Fred is loud in my head, beckoning me to lay it all on the table, but of course my tongue twists at the thought of being that vulnerable with this nigga. How would he even understand? If I started at the beginning. A nigga like Set can never understand a nigga like me. It’s why there’s a rift in the first place.

You figured it out for Snow. You can figure it out for Set.

My stomach twists, and instead of obliging Fred, I blurt, “How can I tell you some real shit and you don’t even let niggas call you by ya real name?”

He sits up, meeting my gaze as I lay back down on the ground. My neck is on fire, which helps push me further. I’m not gon’ be the only muthafucka in here confronting shit.

“B the only one who call me that.”

“‘Cause she the only one who wasn’t around. By the time she showed up, you wasn’t drinking no more, only smoking weed, and out the game.”

“And I was fuckin’ with Wyn,” he adds. To my credit, I hold his glare, even as my chest squeezes.

“On my mama, Rico… I ain’t know shit about you and Wyn. She even told me about her ex, but she told me he was dead.”

Petty ass Snow. “Would you have shaded off if I did?”

He doesn’t reply right away, his stormy eyes averting to the ground. I wait for the lie to come, even though it’s only us. Set prides himself on his loyalty, and even though the silence is damning, I don’t expect him to admit what I know.

“I’on know,” he finally replies, his voice so low I barely miss it. “The shit with Tiny… I felt like I needed someone, and Wyn was the logical choice. I mean, I ain’t ever had issues getting bitches, but Wyn always been different. The way shit was, I can’t say for real I would have shaded off, and you don’t know how much that bothers me foreal.”

“You always been obsessed with being this upstanding ass nigga,” I sigh, pulling my arms beneath my head. My back prolly gon’ be fucked up in the morning, but I’m not too worried about it right now. “Always on some ‘What would Boog do?’ type shit like he ain’t back door his brother. Get off ya high horse.” I tamper down my smug grin. I’ma have to get the tapes to the cameras in this room later to relive this.

“One of us gotta have morals, Luney.”

“And it couldn’t have been me!” My voice rises, breaking when I haul myself up to sit upright. “Pooh put Boog on. That nigga was feeding the whole Birch at one point, and they ain’t have to do shit but sit on they ass and get high. And yet and still, when it came down to it, that didn’t mean shit. In fact, Pooh being my dad has almost gotten me killed more than once, even when I wasn’t fucking with that nigga. I’ve had to rob, fight, kill, claw my way into some shit that should have been my birthright, while you…”

I shake my head when words escape me. Nutty gon’ see this shit on the playback, and I know I’ma hear about this bullshit later.

“You my brother for life, Set. We been locked in since birth. Since before then. A-and, maybe it’s me who be putting us against each other. I’on know… it prolly is, shit. You just always had what I want… stop fuckin’ looking at me like that!”

Set blinks, and his eyes go back into their sockets, while his dimples puncture his cheeks more and more.

“Niggas been jelly ‘cause I’m that nigga?” he grins, full on cackling as he dodges my punch.

“Nah, nah,” he chuckles, wiping his eyes. “I can’t believe this all goes back to when I socked you twenty years ago. You can’t be serious?! Niggas literally been in the dirt with me but because I put you on… you really are Luney as fuck!”

“Stop fuckin’ calling me that! I know you only doing that shit to be petty,” I grumble, rubbing my chest.

“Well, bitch ass nigga, when you start acting like a Luney ass nigga, saying yo only brother is dead, I act accordingly.”

I wave him off, but when he clears his throat, I can tell he’s getting serious.

“Get yo head out of yo ass for a second, and think about all the shit an eleven year old had to do to not only have the authority to put niggas older than him on, have his own crew, and dole out punishment for the head bitch in charge. I ain’t get all that shit ‘cause I was Baby Boog, or because Tiny had a bleeding heart. I had to earn my keep, every single day for years. Long after Nut and Tryouts… and behind closed doors, Tiny had no problem reminding me her generosity was directly correlated to whatever I did. I had no one, bro. Not a single person. I was thrown away, and she knew that and used that to build her up. So yeah, I was that nigga, but at what cost? Whole childhood just… gone.

“Don’t envy me, bro. Don’t think I got anything you wanted.” Set clears his throat again, crossing his legs. “Even if it was just for a little while longer, even though Yani was all fucked up, shit, even though y’all had to come back, you and Fred got out the Birch and got to be kids. Had a place to stay that wasn’t conditional on how many niggas you put down. You got to be on bullshit, then come home to real family. Have real puppy love… you and Wynter Snow.” He chuckles, shaking his head, humor lacing his voice instead of sadness. “I was too busy running shit to notice one of my bros pulled the baddest in the city.”

“I really… I really ain’t know what I was doing, so I didn’t broadcast it, foreal. Nut didn’t know–”