Chapter 9 #2
She pulled away and snuck through the crowd, choosing to go out of a side door instead of chancing running into Demi.
She dug through her handbag for the ticket to her car and then stepped out into the night.
“You keep it safe?” she joked with the same valet attendant who had greeted her hours ago.
“Safest in the lot, but you’ll have to see Mr. Sky about the keys. He took them, ma’am,” the man said.
“Wait, who? Who is Mr. Sky and why does he have my car keys?” she asked.
“Demitrius Sky. The owner of Dynasty Music Group, ma’am. He instructed me to leave the key with him and he would get them to you,” the man said.
Charlie saw red. “This nigga...” She pulled out her phone and dialed his number only to be sent to voicemail. Even her house key was on that keyring. She couldn’t even get inside her house until he returned it. Before she could even open her text messages, his name popped onto her screen.
DEMI
Room 7070
CHARLIE
Bring me my key, Demi. I’m not coming to your room.
Charlie saw bubbles and then nothing. He wasn’t responding and she was pretty sure he wasn’t delivering her key either.
She was breathing fire as she stormed back inside, bypassing the showcase ballroom, and heading toward the main part of the hotel.
As she took the elevator to the 7th floor, she wondered if she should have made him come to her.
The bathroom. His hands around her neck.
It all flashed through her mind, putting a pit in her stomach that was so vast it felt like it might suck her inside out.
His gravitational pull was too strong. He was like a black hole and Charlie needed to keep her universe intact.
When she got to the room the door was propped open by the security bar and she pushed inside.
Demi sat on the couch, leaned over, legs planted on the ground, hands rubbing together like he was putting a play together in his head.
Maybe he was. Maybe he was plotting on how to get her to drop her attitude.
It wasn’t happening. He had gotten ghost on her so fuck it, she was going to catch the hint and disappear too.
She wasn’t into chasing. Not after everything she had been through.
If she had to beg a nigga for his time, she didn’t want it.
“Where are my keys, Demi?” she asked, holding open the door.
“You ain’t getting the keys to that raggedy-ass car until I say so, so close the door,” he said.
“You drive me, Demitrius,” she said, lifting her hands up in mid-air like she wanted to choke him while gritting her teeth.
He chuckled. “Demitrius?”
“Nigga, I know your name. I Googled your whole life after we fucked,” she said, rolling her eyes.
Demi wondered how much she had uncovered.
Did she know the true reason why he had gone M.I.A?
He knew she didn’t. His family wasn’t online.
Not on his social media, not mentioned in any interview.
He moved that way for good reason — in case his past ever came looking for him.
He felt like shit because he was relieved in this moment, relieved that his songbird didn’t know what he was leaving out.
“You know? After you laid in my bed, after you were between my legs, in my shower, eating my fucking food. You might have forgot since you clearly ain’t thought about me since.”
“I swear you be talking hella shit, Bird,” Demi said, blowing a breath of frustration out his mouth and leaning back on the couch, kicking one Lebron sneaker out as he rubbed the top of his head. “You don’t know shit about shit.”
“And I don’t want to know. I don’t even want to be here. Give. Me. My. Keys.” Her tone was lethal. Charlie wasn’t playing and he had already shown her that he was full of games.
“I want you to be here. I ain’t supposed to want you, Bird, but I want you,” he said. He sounded tortured and the pain she heard in him brought her resentment down a notch.
“If this was a week ago, I would have asked you why you haven’t called, but after three weeks of staring at my phone wondering what the fuck happened that turned me into a notch on yet another nigga’s belt, I don’t even care.
I can’t care about what you want. It’s about what I want, and I want consistency.
You’re not consistent. Fuck you,” she said.
“Com’ere,” he said.
She stood with her arms folded across her chest. She was stubborn and she wanted to glue her feet to the carpet, super glue them so she wouldn’t follow his commands. When he held up her keys as bait, Charlie crossed the room.
“Shit gon’ sound crazy, Bird, but I need you to put your hands on me,” he said.
Charlie’s heart ached. He was asking for her to torture him.
He had just yoked her up in the bathroom for the very same thing and here he was asking for her to bring him pain.
She knew it was all mental. The OCD was extreme and was a mental chain he had created in his mind.
She didn’t know why, but they existed. It had taken his all to let her in that first night; now, here he was again, unlocking his mental, fighting himself to connect with her.
“You humiliated me,” she whispered, a tear sliding down her cheek.
“Nobody knows we slept together unless you out here telling people,” he said, frowning because he wanted his business to be his business and if she was spreading it, he had an issue with that.
The audacity of this nigga to think he owned the stories of her vagina.
If Charlie wanted to tell it, she would tell it.
She hadn’t, but if she wanted to, she would.
“I know! I’m judging myself! I wasn’t worth a call?” she asked.
He leaned forward and held his hand up to her exposed thigh.
He thought twice before touching her skin, but he did it anyway.
Then, his other hand gripped her waist and he pulled her down onto him.
Her thighs spread over him and he lifted a bit, pressing his dick into her as one hand went to her ass, the other gripped her chin.
“I wanted to call. You’re fucking trouble. Goddamn, you’re trouble, Bird,” he said. “I’m touching fire and I don’t even give a fuck that it burns. What you call that? Huh? Cuz I call it crazy,” he said.
“You hurt my feelings,” she said. “I can’t do this with somebody that can pick me up and put me down without notice. That one night made me want it all. I wanted more and you just seemed to go on with your life like it didn’t even happen.”
Demi’s chest was ripped open. He could feel it. It was a hurt he hadn’t felt before. It was a gutting of his entire being. She wanted his heart in her hands and she wouldn’t stop until she had it.
“A nigga life been on pause since that night,” he said. “Shit that made sense before don’t make sense no more, Bird. I wanted to call. Me staying away was for you, cuz if I did what I wanted to do, I would ruin you.”
Charlie put her hands on the sides of his face, and he pulled in air through clenched teeth. It was like she had poured alcohol over an open wound.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you in the bathroom earlier.” The remorse in his tone was heavy and she nodded.
“I know,” she whispered. “You can’t make me fall in love with you and then punish me for it,” she said. “Staying away from me so I can’t touch you is punishment. It’s not fair.”
The air was so damn thick. It pushed on his chest as he palmed her face too. Forehead to forehead, he breathed heavy. CPR. He needed to be resuscitated. Demi was overstimulated and he just needed it to stop.
Let her go, nigga, he thought.
Don’t let me go. Was the thought that countered his, running through her mind simultaneously. An unheard argument, a struggle for power. Neither knew who would win.
His hands didn’t move. Her mind was stronger.
Say, man, what the fuck?
This was sorcery. She was ordering his steps.
Kiss me, Demi, Charlie thought.
His lips touched hers. He damn near growled as Charlie pushed her tongue into his mouth.
“I love you, Demi,” she whispered, pulling back.
Fuck. Demi was mindfucked. Charlie was talking that talk.
.. that talk that made niggas run for the hills, and he felt like a bitch because if he had panties, she would be finessing him out of them with only words.
It was the need in her voice that made his dick ache.
He believed her when she said she missed him.
He knew that feeling. Even after one night.
This bitch crazy, man, he thought. He could see them six months from now.
She would be busting windows out of his car and putting sugar in his tank.
That had to be her vibe. She was saying I love you too soon, letting her pussy do the talking.
He wanted to warn her but damn it if he didn’t feel the shit too.
“You ain’t known me long enough to love me, Bird. You don’t know what you asking for,” he replied.
“I don’t care. I feel what I feel, and it was more than sex.
Maybe it’s stupid. Maybe I’m childish, but is it impossible?
To find one person out of the seven billion people on the planet that just makes you feel shit in your stomach?
A little sick. A little afraid. A little giddy.
I been in love with you. Since the club.
So, if you’re not going to be around. If you can’t stick around, or if you’re going to disappear or if this is too much too fast, then let me know.
This ain’t normal. You’re not normal but I like the kind of crazy I am when I’m with you,” she admitted.
“It’s insane, right? To say that to somebody you barely know? ”
Demi knew it was a slippery slope they were sliding down.
His feet weren’t rooted in the ground. Neither was hers.
It was the type of impulsivity that would leave someone wounded.
He had a family at home but with Charlie’s hands on his face, with her breath in his lungs, with these thighs wrapping his waist and his dick hardening by the second, he pushed them to the back of his mind.