Page 20 of Stone’s Cage

This is just wrong. Stone's a stranger, putting everything on the line for me because I was rash and thought I knew the streets. I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. And now the Hooks are sucking him back into a world he hated.

"You can't."

Sighing, he tilts his head and rests it on the back of the sofa. "It’s done Lily."

"No."

"No?" He asks, raising his head just a little.

"I don't think I can bear it."

Chapter Ten

Stone

I don't think I can bear it.

Who talks like this? I turn to her. "Listen, we need to have a real heart-to-heart here. Okay. I don't know who you are. Lily Watson? Lily? Is that even your name?"

She seems to shrink from my intensity, but I need to know. Her, I'm-from-the-streets-avatar, doesn't add up in oh so many ways.

She swallows. "Yeah. My name really is Lily Watson. It's the one thing I haven’t lied about. That and my brother."

She rolls to her side and closes her eyes. I know she's tired, but I don’t move from my spot at the end of the sofa. It was a shit show at Jimmi's, she nearly got raped, and she was scared of me. At least for a while. This thought, that she was frightened of me at all, even for six blocks, makes my stomach tighten up. She should never be frightened of me. Ever.

"Other brothers or sisters?"

"No."

"Mother and father?"

"Yes. Both."

Opening one eye she struggles to sit up again, and I think she knows her battle for immediate sleep is lost. She looks away.

"They're both professors at Tufts."

"Tufts University?"

"Yeah," she says, "Neuroscience and Biochemistry. I transferred that January to be near my brother. I got a free ride at Tufts, but I wanted to be near Sam. I transferred the semester before he was killed. He was a senior, I was a freshman."

"Do your parents know you're not enrolled?"

Her face grows gray and I feel like I've pushed too hard. I've seen addicts pass out on their weaving road to oblivion. I've seen fighters pass out in the cage and in the ring. I saw a guy pass out from pain in a head on collision off the interstate, when I tried to get him out of the car and I had to pull metal, like shrapnel, from his leg.

I'm mad at myself because earlier I didn’t give her the information in manageable chunks and it did make her pass out. That’s my bad. I need to be more careful.

This is why I slow down while the Do your parents know? hangs in the air and she looks at me with anguish in her eyes. But she doesn’t look sickly, just defeated.

"No, they don't. They think I'm in school. I've been lying to them. They would absolutely freak out if they knew what I was doing." Folding her hands in her lap, she goes on. "But the police aren't doing anything. You know another black guy killed in New York doesn't mean anything to them. They don't care that our parents are professors. My parents tried pulling that card. They played white as much as they could play white while being black. It doesn't work. The cops don't care and this killing, this crossfire . . . even some of his friends told the police 'Well I don't know, maybe he did join a gang.' These are his friends in college. Black and white and Latino. All thinking that maybe he had joined a gang? Ridiculous. Of course, he didn't join a gang. But that little possibility caught fire and the police played with that idea for a long time."

She's gathered the blankets around her and talking helps her complexion. Her skin looks so beautiful. Stunning. Her dark hair is neatly braided. She's slender and muscular, her breasts are beautiful under that T-shirt and her cleavage is just warm, gorgeous, dark and smooth. She'd been hiding it all under that hoodie to play fourteen, and now she clearly looked like a woman. I suddenly want to touch her, but this is so not the right thing to do right now. Maybe not ever. Christ. I'm seven years older with nothing to offer her.

Pulling the sheet up tight around her, she announces, "You know, I'm just," she swallows. "I'm tired of lying."

"How old are you, really."

"I told you—I'm twenty.