14. KO
The whole apartment felt weird as hell this morning.
Lyrius and I were both trying hard as fuck to move around each other and ignore the fact that, less than twelve hours ago, I’d abandoned my damn common sense and had all ten inches of my dick buried deep in her damn guts.
Now, every time we walked into the same room, she barely even looked directly at me.
She still made me coffee this morning, though, and slid a plate of pancakes in front of me at breakfast. And honestly, all of this shit was fucking with my head.
Last night should’ve never happened. My dick shouldn’t even work for her ass anymore, but it did.
The second I kissed her, all the hate I had for her got blurry as hell.
“Daddy, can Ali come too?” Dakoda’s voice cut through my thoughts before I could go any further.
I looked up to find little man bouncing all over the apartment while Lyrius tried to button the matching polo shirt I’d bought him for the aquarium social his school was putting on before the first day of kindergarten.
“Absolutely not!” Lyrius responded before I did. “You can stand still, though,” she said, laughing as she tried to catch him. “Why are you moving so much?”
“’Cause I’m excited!”
“You gon’ wrinkle your clothes before we even leave.”
“Daddy said me and him match.” Dakoda pointed at me immediately.
“We do match,” I confirmed from the couch, smoothing down my own shirt. I didn’t usually do matching outfits, but when I saw the little display at the store the other day, I couldn’t help myself. Lyrius had even found a blue dress to match us. We looked like the perfect little family.
“Okay, we ready?” Lyrius asked, grabbing her purse.
“Ready!” Dakoda snatched his little dinosaur backpack off the couch as I opened the apartment door and froze, surprised to see Cherry standing there mid-knock, wearing some expensive-looking-ass cream pantsuit. What the hell is my publicist doing here?
“Cherry?” I frowned. “What are you doing?”
“My top client disappears for a week . . .” Her eyes moved past me immediately to Dakoda and Lyrius. They lingered on Lyrius for a moment and then slowly bounced up to me. “Figured I should make a personal appearance.”
“How’d you get this address?”
“You’ve been spending money over here.”
“Excuse me?” My jaw tightened.
“Rent, the electric bill, internet, groceries.” She shrugged. “When somebody suddenly starts moving money around, I notice.”
I stared at her. Yeah, Cherry had access to my accounts, but paying attention to where I was spending money and popping up at my son’s address felt like a boundary crossed, and I knew she knew that.
Shit, I had been moving money all over the place lately.
I’d been paying out insurance deductibles and repairs at the training facility.
Most of my transactions looked hurricane related, which meant in order to track me down, she had to be looking.
“We were actually heading out—” Lyrius looked between both of us carefully.
“This’ll only take a few minutes,” I cut in, then stepped aside to let Cherry come in. “Come on in, Cherry. What’s up?” I shut the door behind her.
“So . . .” She walked into the apartment and started looking around like she was surveying the damn place. Then she looked back at me. “You gonna introduce me or what?”
“Cherry, this is Dakoda, my son.” Dakoda grinned immediately. “And this is Lyrius, his mom.”
“Your . . . s-son?” She damn near choked on her words. “Well.” She laughed once. Her eyebrows lifted slightly before she looked back at me. “I definitely missed a chapter somewhere. When did you get a son?”
“About five years ago.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I just found out about him. Hence why I disappeared.”
Cherry’s eyes bounced between Dakoda and me for a second. “No.” She pointed between us. “No, no, no. You’re not about to say that like it’s normal.”
Dakoda frowned and looked between us, his little eyebrows wrinkling together. “What’s normal?”
Before Cherry could answer, I looked at Lyrius and nodded toward Dakoda.
“Take little man outside and get those pictures. I’ma holla at Cherry real quick and be right out.
” Lyrius’s eyes flicked to mine. For half a second, she looked like she wanted to stay, like she wanted to hear the conversation, then she nodded and took Dakoda out in the hallway.
The second the apartment door closed behind them, Cherry turned to me.
“A whole child, KO? A whole child?”
“Surprised me too.”
“What the hell are you doing, KO?”
“Being a father.”
“You disappeared for an entire week.”
“I know.”
“You skipped press.”
“I told you to reschedule them.”
“What? You just packed up and moved to Shoreline. What about the home you just purchased?”
“It’s temporary.” I shrugged. “I’m spending bonding time with my son.”
Cherry stared at me like she was waiting for me to argue back harder, but I didn’t.
Five years ago, missing a week of training would’ve felt impossible. Five years ago, boxing was the first thing I thought about when I woke up and the last thing I thought about before I went to sleep. But I didn’t have a son waiting for me back then either.
“You’re sleeping with her again, aren’t you?” I stayed quiet. That was an enough answer. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “You are.”
“Whether or not I am ain’t got shit to do with business, Cherry.”
“Ain’t got shit to do with business?” she repeated. “KO, every other week, you in my damn bed, but now, suddenly, I’m supposed to pretend your personal life ain’t my—”
“Me fucking you never gave you access to my personal life.” Cherry’s mouth snapped shut. “So don’t come up in my son’s house, acting like you get a say so in it.”
“You’re serious right now?” Cherry laughed sharply.
“Dead serious.” Cherry stared at me, and I stared right back at her ass.
“We crossed the line a few times. Cool. But let’s not start rewriting history.
You knew what this was.” For a second, neither one of us said anything.
I wasn’t her nigga and never made her think otherwise.
If I was being honest, Cherry was just something easy, and fucking her didn’t require me to trust anybody.
If she thought that gave her the special privilege to dictate shit in my life, she was tripping.
“Wow.”
“Wow, what?”
“This ain’t about your son.” She threw air quotes around the word son. “This about her.” My jaw flexed. “You want to downplay whatever the hell we had? Fine, but let’s not pretend this is about your son.”
“Whatever, Cherry. I’m not doing this.”
“She knows about me? She knows you fucking your publicist?”
I turned toward the door. Honestly, I was already over this conversation. Dakoda had somewhere to be, and I wasn’t about to be late for his first school event because Cherry popped up unannounced.
“Cherry,” I called her name. “If you not gon’ talk business, this conversation is done.” Whatever she and I had done behind closed doors didn’t change who she was in this equation. My damn publicist. Nothing more. Cherry stared at me for a minute before blowing out a deep breath.
“Fine.” She straightened her blazer. “You want business?”
“That’s why you’re here, ain’t it?”
“You’re headlining a championship fight in five weeks, and you’re over here playing house.”
“My son starts kindergarten on Monday.”
“And?”
“And that matters more to me right now.”
“This girl and this kid cannot suddenly become more important than your entire career.” She stared at me for a second like she genuinely couldn’t process what she was hearing.
“That kid is my damn son, Cherry.”
“Do you even know if that’s your damn son, KO? Did you get a DNA test?”
The apartment got quiet after that because I wasn’t about to dignify that with an answer.
“You know what? Fine. Cool. Be Daddy of the Year.” She shook her head. “But when sponsors pull out, and the media starts asking questions, don’t blame me.”
“Jaylen will send you the updated training and press schedule tomorrow,” I said, and her face twisted immediately.
“You giving Jaylen control over scheduling now?”
“For the next few weeks? Yeah.”
“All this over a woman and child you ain’t even know existed.” Cherry shook her head slowly, like I’d completely lost my damn mind.
“You done?”
“I’m just saying,” she muttered. “I don’t understand why you are here, KO. You can be a father without moving in with them. This is a disaster waiting to happen.”
I didn’t pay her any attention, just grabbed the keys off the counter. “We got somewhere to be.”
“KO—”
“Let’s go.” I walked toward the door and pulled it open.
Cherry stared at me for a second before letting out a frustrated breath as I waited for her to bring her ass on.
After a few seconds, she finally stepped through the doorway, and I followed behind her and locked the apartment door.
The second I turned around, my eyes found Lyrius.
She was crouched beside Dakoda, pretending to fix the straps on his dinosaur backpack, but the second she realized I was looking at her, she stood up too fast and smoothed her hands down the front of her dress.
“I’ll see you Monday, KO.” My attention shifted back to Cherry, who had already fixed her expression and put that polished publicist smile back on like she hadn’t just shown her ass.
“Yeah, Monday,” I replied as Cherry slid her sunglasses back on and headed toward the stairwell, switching past Lyrius with a smirk. The second she disappeared around the corner, Dakoda looked up at me.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“Is that your girlfriend?”
I almost choked. “Nah, little man,” I replied. “She works for me.”
“She mean.”
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it. “She ain’t mean. She just talk too much.”
Dakoda nodded like that explanation made perfect sense.
“Now, let’s get you to this kindergarten social before we’re late.
” I rested my hand against his back and guided him toward the elevator.
My eyes drifted to Lyrius, who was too quiet beside us.
The look on her face told me she was deep in thought.
I wanted to say something to her, but I didn’t know what to say around Dakoda.
For the first time since moving into that apartment, I realized being Dakoda’s father wasn’t the complicated part.
Figuring out what the hell I was supposed to do about Lyrius was.