Love In the Red Zone (Connecticut Kings Book 1) Read Free

call.
    “Hurry up. Ky!” I called out again.

    “I’m right here, Ky,” I whispered hard into the dark of the night.
    I used a small flashlight I came across at Family Dollar , next door to my job a few days ago to provide light while I studied at night. I couldn’t see him across the room in the shadows. His sniffling over there grew worse.
    “But, Mom, I can’t sleep.”
    “You can. It’s not like you’re by yourself!”
    I didn’t want to yell. He was only six and had not been used to this type of living condition. I may not have had my shit together, but I managed to stay above water.
    …until now.
    I’d been desperately waiting for a door to open—hell, a window. I broke down a few months ago and applied for Section 8 Housing, hoping it would come through before not being able to pay the rent caught up to me. Ryshon would have his boy drop off money to me at least every month to cover the rent and a few extra dollars to help with other expenses while I’d been in school. It stopped, and while he may have been honest about things drying up financially in his street game, what he wasn’t willing to admit was that the widest open baby’s mothers’ legs got fed first and the most.
    Shontel had still been committed to him. Tanya, baby’s mother number three, was still hoping to be his number one lady. I wasn’t interested at all. I’d been hurt by Ryshon too many times, and quite frankly, I’d outgrown him like baby’s momma number one, LaKisa. She was older than me, and had her own house and car in Bloomfield. She was with Ryshon in high school. And while he had a penchant for running the streets, she eventually submitted to the natural progression of life and got a good job that afforded her independence from the madness.
    I sighed, as my eyes roved around the dark room, questioning how I ended up here. Hearing Kyree’s grunting cry broke me out of it. I snapped my book closed and tossed it to the side.
    “Come here, Kyree.”
    In seconds, he leaped off the couch across from me and took big lunges until he made it to my sofa. I immediately cradled him in my arms, shushing as I rocked him.
    To fight back my own tears, I reminded myself of the current sparseness of the place. I’d packed up the apartment weeks ago, knowing I had little time left before something happened. Either we’d get the Section 8 or get put out.  I hoped I could dodge yet another bullet and get out first. Life had never cut this close for me.

    “Your sorry ass still coming around, huhn?” he breathed out shallowly from his chest.
    I smirked, stretched my legs on the chair next to the hospital bed as I chuckled. He’d awakened. It relieved me he still had his mind. His appearance? Well, I knew to be grateful for the former. He’d been stretching this out for twenty years, according to him. But ol’ Shank was still here.
    “Yeah. Well, I wouldn’t be running down here if yo’ attention-seeking ass would take care of yourself,” I muttered, only partially looking at him.
    He lay so tiny and fragile in the mechanical bed. Tubes and wires running all across, in and out of him, he was unrecognizable since the last I saw him. And even then, he was a distorted version of his normal self. It was as though he’d aged twenty-five years in the past two.
    Things grew quiet, and that gave me the opportunity to silently send up a prayer of gratitude to the Man upstairs. In my regular prayers, I’d included Shank. He’d meant so much coming up. I couldn’t speak out loud how much his sickness had weighed on me all this time. I loved him like I had very few. He’d invested so much in me from back when I was Trenton Bailey, a number amongst many in the Camden city school district and sports leagues. He made sure I was an identifiable source of power on the field when I was in Pop Warner ball. He saw things in me no one had ever spoken. Put his money where his mouth was when I couldn’t afford to pay for my talent. He only