Chapter 1
Chapter One
Patience was her superpower.
It ran straight through her bloodline, passed down from her mother and the generations of women who came before her. Waiting had always come naturally to Zena, especially when it came to her man. Holding it down was second nature.
While most girls at twenty were finishing their sophomore year of college, Zena spent her time waiting for her boyfriend to be released from prison.
Her fingers drummed the steering wheel as she stared through the windshield at the silver gates of Greenville Correctional.
Sometimes she wondered whether those gates were meant to keep him in or keep her out.
If it were up to her, she would have rammed straight through the metal months ago.
But patience was the thing she knew best.
She knew what she’d signed up for. The endless collect calls.
Money on his commissary. The six-hour drive from Richmond to Greenville Correctional Center, only to speak to him for a mere sixty minutes with thick Plexiglass wedged between them.
The clock always ticked three times as fast in the visiting room, and before she could even catch her breath, a guard would interrupt their time, forcing him back to his cell.
Her heart broke every time she had to leave him behind those walls, reduced to a number.
Every visit, she told herself it was almost over.
April 5th was finally the day she could stop counting.
She heard the buzz of the door before she saw him. As it slammed shut, she was already out of the car, shielding her eyes against the blaring afternoon sun. After a few agonizing seconds, his raspy voice cut through the air.
“Bae!”
Her heart skipped as she sprinted toward the love of her life, colliding with him at full speed. His strong arms wrapped around her, lifting and spinning her until her hair whipped across her face. She laughed.
Once his feet hit the pavement, she kissed him all over his face, her hands tracing his skin like she was making sure he was actually real.
“Damn, shawty.” His mouth found her ear, his hand dropping to cup her behind. “I missed this.”
She stepped back to take him in. His tawny skin had gone pale from too many months without the sun, but his arms were thicker, and his locs had dropped past his ears to brush his shoulders.
His jaw was hidden under a thick beard he hadn’t had before.
Even in a dingy white tee and gray sweats, he still held her whole heart.
They made a beeline for her car, and the moment she turned the key in the ignition, she peeled out of the parking lot.
Before hitting the highway, she pulled into a local fast-food drive-thru to grab him a burger combo.
He had insisted he needed some “real food,” claiming he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d tasted a good burger.
“When you get this?” Tate asked, his eyes scanning the Honda's interior.
“Maintenance on the BMW got too high.” She kept her eyes locked on the road ahead. “I had to trade it in.”
“I’m sorry about that, ma.”
She nodded once, staring ahead. She didn’t tell him how long she’d held on before she had to let the luxury car go, or what it had cost her to make that decision entirely alone.
There was a lot she hadn't told him. She didn’t want to add her weight to his while he was doing time, and now that he was sitting right next to her, she wasn’t sure where to put it all.
“Promise me,” she said, her voice dropping. “You aren’t going back.”
“I promise.”
“I mean it, Tate. I can’t do it anymore.”
“I know. I know.”
An uncomfortable silence settled heavily between them in the car.
Zena glanced over and noticed his jaw had gone still.
He stared down at the half-eaten burger in his hands as if he’d suddenly lost the ability to swallow, then wrapped it back up and shoved it into the paper bag.
The loud crinkle of the paper felt enormous in the quiet car.
He leaned his head against the passenger window.
She waited for him to say something more, something that would make the promise feel more than hollow words, but he stayed silent.
“You talked to your dad?” He asked, trying to break the ice.
“No.” She let out a dry breath through her nose. “Not since that day…”
He nodded slowly, then reached over and extended his hand. "Let me hear what you’ve been working on."
She handed him her cracked Samsung phone and guided him to the audio file.
Zena’s raspy, melodic voice filled the car. The engineer had mixed the track sloppily, distracted by trying to get her number instead of doing his job, but her vocals carried it anyway. Her talent always did.
Tate listened in silence. When the track faded out, he handed the phone back.
“You fire, ma.’ The beat is trash, but you rode that shit.”
He wasn’t wrong. She smiled, proud that even as her world fell apart, she had still shown up for herself and her music.
Back in Richmond, she pulled into the Marriott parking lot and led him to the room she’d rented for the week. It wasn’t extravagant, but it was private.
Tate stepped across the threshold and stopped, a wide smile breaking across his face. Neatly arranged on the bed was a mountain of matching Nike outfits and five boxes of fresh sneakers, underwear, and socks. Resting atop the clothes was a box containing the latest iPhone.
Tate pulled Zena into his chest, kissing her forehead before pressing his lips to hers. She kissed him back with all the pent-up passion of the last two years, her tongue tangling with his. After a few seconds, her hands slid down the waistband of his gray sweatpants.
Gently, Tate pulled back, ending the kiss. “Did anyone try to get at you while I was gone?”
Zena’s hands dropped, her fingers fidgeting. “Just a few guys at my job and at the studio.”
“So, you mine?”
Zena stepped back into his space, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist and nuzzling her nose against his. “Always. Since the first day we met.”
May 2013
“Girl, you sure you want to go to school allll the way in Atlanta?” Zena’s cousin, Kayla, asked as they navigated the crowded brick pathways of the Virginia State University campus.
Zena rolled her eyes. “Spelman isn’t even that far. It’s about an eight-hour drive. I had to beg on my hands and knees just to be allowed to go there. I got accepted into UCLA, and my dad almost had a heart attack.” She chuckled.
The only thing her father had agreed on regarding her education was that it had to be an HBCU.
“I’m just saying, girl. This campus is beautiful and look at the niggas.” Kayla fanned herself dramatically. “I cannot fucking wait for August!”
Zena just smiled. Her father had insisted she accompany Kayla on the VSU tour, secretly hoping the vibrant campus would convince Zena to stay closer to home.
If anything, the tour only deepened her desire to leave.
She had been under a microscope for most of her life.
When her mother was alive, she was always at church or required to have strict after school schedules of clubs and extracurriculars.
The moment the Spelman acceptance letter arrived, Zena knew it was her only chance to finally spread her wings.
The tour guide pointed toward a cluster of brick residential halls, but Zena had already tuned him out. Her eyes were glued to her screen as she lagged behind at the very back of the group.
“This shit is boring as hell, ain’t it?”
The voice came from behind her. She pulled her eyes up from her phone, turning to find a cute stranger looking down at her.
He was dressed casually in a crisp black T-shirt, designer jeans, and Jordan 1s, with a backpack slung loosely over one shoulder.
He was a few inches taller than her, and his shoulder-length locs swung slightly around his face.
If there was one thing Kayla was right about, it was the eye candy.
Zena looked him up and down, checking his vibe. “Do you even go here?”
He didn’t really look like a standard freshman. He carried himself with a swag that practically screamed dope boy.
“Nah, I just live here,” he responded, his tone dripping with playful sarcasm. His locs partially veiled his peanut-butter-complexioned face, and Zena wondered how he could even see through them.
She offered a small smirk and turned to keep walking; by now, the tour group had pulled a significant distance ahead.
“Aye. Hold up.” He reached out, his hand gently catching her wrist to pull her back.
“What?” She asked, crossing her arms but staying put.
“What’s your name?”
“Zena. Why?”
“You coming here next semester?”
“What’s with all the questions?” Zena countered, raising an eyebrow. “Are you campus security or something?”
He let out a dry laugh, looking amused. “I see you got jokes. Do I look like a damn security guard to you?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” He pressed.
Zena shook her head. “No.”
He raised an eyebrow, examining her face. “Why not? Let me guess... you're the bougie type. One of them, Howard or Hampton chicks.”
“I’m actually going to Spelman.”
He waved his hand, dismissing it with a smirk. “Same difference.”
Before Zena could fire back a witty response, Kayla stepped squarely between them, breaking the tension. “Girl, where did you go? And... who is this?”
He grinned, flashing a smile. “Tate. And you are?”
“Kayla. So, do you actually go here, Tate?”
Tate burst into a genuine laugh while Kayla watched him with open suspicion. “Y’all are treating me like I’m the feds. Of course, I go here. Why else would I be walking around campus wearing a backpack?”
Kayla and Zena exchanged a look and shrugged.
“Anyway,” Tate said, shifting his attention entirely back to Zena. He stepped closer, his smile widening to reveal a gold bottom grill. “You gonna give me your number?”
“Say what now?” Zena asked, caught off guard by his bluntness.
Tate took another step into her personal space. “Why you playing games?”
“Who said I’m playing? I’m not even going to school in this state, so why do you need my number?”
Kayla snickered loudly behind her.
“So, I can talk to you. That’s why. I don't give a damn about a little distance.”
“I don’t know about that...” Zena glanced over her shoulder. “We need to catch up with our group.”
“Then just take mine,” Tate said smoothly, holding out his hand for her phone. “Call me sometime.”
Zena hesitated for a second before handing her phone over. He quickly tapped his digits into the keypad, saving the contact under Tate, accompanied by a red heart emoji.
She didn’t call him. It wasn’t until she accidentally ran into him a couple of weeks later at Southpark Mall that he managed to break down her walls.
They spent the entire afternoon together, shopping, eating, and talking for hours.
She quickly learned that beneath the tough exterior and street swag, Tate was incredibly smart and genuinely sweet.
He was entering his junior year on a full academic ride as a math major.
From that one rainy afternoon at the mall, they began building a bond neither of them believed could ever be broken.