The King

SIXTY-TWO

It was seven twenty-three in the morning when Sola stepped out on her terrace and saw the ocean properly.

“Almost worth the drive,” she murmured to herself.

With the sun rising, the vast blue expanse of water melded with the color of the early sky, only the peach clouds of dawn marking the horizon in between the heavens and the earth.

Settling into a lawn chair, she groaned as every joint she had, and some she didn’t know about, let out a holler. Man, she was stiff. Then again, a full twenty-four hours behind the wheel of a car would do that to a girl. And it wasn’t just her bones that were aching. Her right calf was spasming¸ as if it were considering a full-on charley horse—in spite of the fact that she’d used cruise control a good eighty percent of the time.

Wow, the air was soft and nice down here, even in December.

And the humidity was awesome. Her skin was positively drinking up the moist air—her hair as well, her ponytail already corkscrewing at the end.

“I go sleep now,” her grandmother announced.

Sola looked back through the screen door. “Me, too. I’ll be in soon.”

“No smoking,” came the scold.

“I gave that up two years ago.”

“And you’re not doing it again.”

On that note, her grandmother nodded and walked out of the shallow living area.

Sola refocused on the ocean. Her Miami place was on the fifth floor of an older building, the condo just an unassuming, fifteen-hundred-square-foot space that she’d bought a couple of years ago for all cash and then decorated out of Rooms To Go on the cheap. The complex had a pool and tennis courts, though—and it was mostly dead, what with the holidays approaching and the snowbirds yet to fly down for the rest of the winter.

Arching her back, she tried to give her spine a little relief. No such luck. She was probably going to need a chiropractor after that drive.

Good thing she was never going to have to worry about doing it again.

Shit, that was depressing.

Putting a hand into her back pocket, she took out her iPhone. No calls. No texts.

She hadn’t thought leaving Assail would hurt this much. And yet, she couldn’t say she regretted it.

What was he doing right now, she wondered. Probably settling in after a night of wheeling and dealing in the dark underbelly of the Caldwell economy.

Would he go back to that woman? The one she’d watched him fuck?

Closing her eyes, she breathed in deep a couple of times—and the fact that she could smell the brine in the air helped. She was not up there anymore, she reminded herself. She was not with him anymore—not that they’d really been together.

So what he did and who it was with? Not her issue.

Anymore.

This was going to be okay, she told herself as she put her phone back and stared at the ocean. She had done the right thing …

And yet, even still, snapshots of Assail dogged her mind, barging in and taking over the beautiful view in front of her.

Bending down, she felt around her thigh and then pressed her fingers into the bandage. As pain shot up into her torso and raced her heart, she told herself to remember how she’d ended up here. Why she’d relocated.

Exactly how her prayers had been answered.

Yeah, the drive had given her something other than a sore body and a tired brain: all those highway miles had done wonders for her perspective on everything.

Up north, she’d told herself that her escape had been at her own direction.

But now, as that sun rose in front of her, the rays streaking out over the water, the dolphins frolicking in the morning waves … she realized, no. That had been a cop-out.

Because admitting to herself that she believed in God was too scary, too crazy.

Away from everything she had left behind up north, in a neutral territory where she was starting over, she was able to be honest with herself. That prayer she had offered up, that last one, had in fact been answered … and in coming down here, she was honoring her end of the bargain.

At great sacrifice, as it turned out … because she knew it was going to be a long, long time before she was able to stop checking her phone.

Getting up from the lawn chair, she went back inside, and as she paused to shut the door, she looked at the sliding glass … and remembered that first floor of Assail’s house. And as she picked up the suitcase she’d left just inside the door … all she could think of was that she’d packed the clothes in it when she’d still been with him.

Same as when she brushed her teeth: The last time she’d used her toothbrush had been in his upstairs bathroom.

And as she got into the white sheets, she recalled lying next to him after he’d come to her in the shower and taken her with such incredible power.

Closing her eyes, she listened to the unfamiliar sounds around her—someone talking loudly in the parking lot out back, the person upstairs running their shower, a dog barking on the other side of the wall.

Assail’s place had been so quiet.

“Shit,” she said aloud.

How long was it going to take before she stopped measuring everything by what she had left behind?

It was just like it had been when her mother had died. For months afterward, the metronome of life had been driven by nuances of her mom: last movie seen together, the things they’d bought at the store just that afternoon, the final birthday present given and received, that Christmas—which, of course, no one had known would be the end of the tradition.

All of that relentless remembering had gone on for a good year, until each one of the anniversaries, internal and external, had been exhausted. Getting through them had been like punching through a wall each time, but she had done it, right? She had put one foot in front of the other until life had resumed a kind of normalcy—

Ah crap. She really shouldn’t be comparing this walk away from a drug dealer to the mourning of the woman who’d given birth to her and raised her for how long before her grandmother had taken over?

But there you had it.

Before Sola finally fell asleep, she ended up reaching out to the bedside table, opening the drawer, and putting her father’s Bible under her pillow.

It was important to keep a tie to something, anything.

Otherwise? She was terrified she was going to repack that goddamn Ford she’d rented and head right back. And that stupidity simply was not an option.

After everything that had gone down lately, she really didn’t want to know what happened to people who broke an agreement with the big guy.

And no, she wasn’t talking about Santa Claus.