“Motherfuck,” he whispered fiercely. “That selfish bitch.”
“Barrick,” I chided when the girls looked over at us with wide eyes.
He quickly smoothed out his facial features and put on that smile
that always melted my panties. “Sorry, sweethearts. Grown-up talk over here.”
Soon, the other parents started showing up to take their daughters home, and I stood in the lobby with them so they didn’t intrude on what was going on in the classroom. When we’d passed by on our way to the lobby, I’d noticed Lyla had Josie’s leotard pulled down her back and was running her fingers over the little girl’s lower back.
Just as the last student was walking out the door with her mother, Gwen walked in. She looked unsteady on her feet, and I caught the smell of booze in the air. Her eyes went past me and straight to Barrick, and she stopped in her tracks.
Down the hall, the door to the classroom opened, and Lyla came charging out, telling me she must have been listening for Gwen’s arrival.
Seeing my friend coming, the other woman took a step back before smirking at her. “If it isn’t the little puppy who’s always chasing after my man. What’s wrong, Lyla? Mad again that Howler won’t touch you? Or is it that he knocked me up when he was supposed to be in love with you?”
One second Gwen was running her mouth, the next she was on the floor and Lyla was beating her face in. “You disgusting excuse for a human being,” she raged as blood flew from Gwen’s mouth. “How could you hurt something so precious? How could you touch that baby with anything but love?”
It happened so fast, I didn’t have time to react, but Barrick was plenty fast enough. He wrapped his arms around me and swung me up into his arms, carrying me away from the bloodbath Lyla was creating right there in the lobby.
“Wait!” I yelled as he carried me toward his Jeep. “Lyla might kill her. We need to stop her.”
“First rule of Lyla. You get in her way, you get bloody. I’m not that brave, baby.” He placed me in the front passenger seat then shut the door. Walking around to the driver’s side, he jumped in and started the vehicle. “We’re going to go pick up Braxton, and then we can come back and clean up the mess.”
“But what about Josie?” I whispered, worried for the little girl I’d come to care about. “What if she sees…that?”
“Howler won’t let that happen,” he assured me confidently.
“But…”
“Gwen has everything she’s getting right now coming to her,” Barrick said as he drove in the direction of the gym. “Don’t feel sorry for her.”
“I don’t,” I rushed to tell him. “I just don’t want Lyla to get in trouble.”
His laugh was hard. “Don’t bother. Lyla can handle anything. Including if Gwen wants to press charges. If she’s able to talk when Lyla gets finished with her skanky ass.”
“O-kay,” I muttered as he pulled up in front of the gym. A few seconds later, Braxton walked out, his gym bag slung over his shoulder. When he saw me in the front seat, his shoulders relaxed noticeably, until he got in the back and Barrick told him we had to go clean up the blood.
“The fuck you mean, blood?” he demanded, leaning forward.
“Lyla was beating Gwen’s ass when we left,” his cousin informed him as he drove back to the dance studio.
“Good. That bitch had it coming.”
When we walked back into the studio, there was no sign of Lyla, but there were two guys in suits picking Gwen up off the floor. She was bloody, already bruising, and I felt a keen sense of justice for Josie.
I stepped into her space, and she gulped when she saw me. “That pain you’re feeling, that fear coursing through your veins and making you tremble right now, I’m sure that is nothing to how Josie felt when you put those bruises on her.”
“I-I didn’t,” she sobbed out the denial.
“Then you let someone else do it, and that’s just as bad. You’re pathetic. I hope you never get the chance to see that sweet little girl again.”
“Get her out of here,” Barrick commanded of the two suits, who gave a curt nod and half dragged, half carried Gwen out of the studio.
The bathroom door off to the side of the lobby opened, and Lyla came out, drying her hands on a paper towel. Her dark hair was a tangled mess, and both hands had cuts and dark red bruises already forming on her knuckles.
“I’m going home with Howler,” she told me as she tossed the paper towel in the trash. “Could you go back to the dorm and pack me a few things? I don’t know how long I’ll be there, but I’m not leaving Jo-Jo right now.”
“Yes, of course,” I assured her. “Whatever you need.”