Chapter 17
Lauren’s hands shook as she packed an overnight bag. “DJ! Make sure you pack up your game and the charger!”
“Why do we have to go to Granny’s, Ma?” her son asked, popping his head into her bedroom.
“It’s just for a few days, baby. Keep her some company. Hurry,” Lauren said.
It took her thirty minutes to pack. She hated that she was so hardheaded.
Demi had told her to park in the garage repeatedly, but she never listened.
She parked in the driveway and she felt exposed as she ushered her son to the car.
Whatever was going on, she knew it was serious if Demi had asked her to leave their home.
She ushered DJ to the car. Her nerves were tattered.
“Put your seatbelt on, baby,” she said. She was halfway down the driveway when she remembered she had forgotten her cell phone inside. “I’ll be right back.”
She hopped out and went back into the house, locating her phone quickly before running back out. Her worst fears were realized when she saw the man in a black hoodie and full ski mask pulling DJ from the back seat.
“Mamaaa!” DJ’s cries broke through the air as he fought, kicking, and screaming as he was dragged toward an awaiting vehicle.
“No!” Lauren shouted. She sprinted across the yard, fighting, and clawing for the man to release her son. “Let go of my fucking son!” She was pulling at DJ’s feet as the man flung him like a rag doll.
“Ma! Help me! Mama!”
Lauren wasn’t a fighter but the one thing that would always bring the lioness out of a woman was a threat to her cub.
She swung on the man repeatedly, her hand connecting to the back of his head and the side of his face.
She was screaming at the top of her lungs, praying one of her neighbors intervened.
“He’s trying to take my son! Help! Somebody help me!”
The man backhanded her so hard Lauren’s vision went white, but she didn’t let go of her son.
When her neighbor across the street came out, the man released DJ.
She saw the spark from the gun and heard the blast in her ear, but she didn’t feel anything.
Shock absorbed all her pain as she scrambled for her child.
“Ma! Ma! Help me!”
“Pleaseeeeee nooooo!”
DJ was stuffed into the back seat of the tinted car as Lauren used all her might to pull at the man.
She reached inside the car and the man wrestled with her, flinging her, but she didn’t stop.
.. couldn’t stop. If they got away with her baby, she knew she would never see him again.
Her neighbor came outside with a shotgun, running across the street and firing into the air.
Lauren grabbed her son’s shirt, ripping the collar as she snatched him from the car and throwing her body over DJ, shielding him, bleeding all over him.
She felt another gunshot to her back and then choked as blood came from her mouth.
The last thing she heard was the screeching of the tires as they burned rubber against the pavement and the sound of DJ screaming for her before her eyes closed.
Charlie sat in the condo alone. Her heart hadn’t beaten right since she had gotten his phone call.
She had tried to call him repeatedly for hours, but the phone just rang.
Charlie had never been so unsettled. It was 2 o’clock in the morning.
She couldn’t sleep. She wouldn’t sleep until she heard from him because something just felt wrong. Off.
Please be okay, Demi, baby, please just come home, she thought.
She was desperate. If he would just call her so she could hear his voice.
The silence was maddening. The silence made her make stories up in her head.
The ringing of her doorbell made her scramble to her feet.
She pulled it open, hope filling her, only for her entire body to deflate when she saw Stassi standing before her.
“What are you doing here?” Charlie asked. “It’s late and Demi isn’t home and...”
“Something’s happening, Charlie. I have to tell you something about Demi,” Stassi said.
Charlie frowned but stepped to the side, letting her sister in.
“He’s not even here. Don’t come over here with this bullshit about...”
“Demi’s married, Charlie. His wife and son were attacked tonight. There is some kind of street war going on right now. He told Day to have me come get you. You can’t stay here,” Stassi said. “It’s not safe.”
The words hit Charlie so hard she stumbled backward. “He’s what?” she asked. “He’s not married. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Her eyes filled with tears as Stassi nodded, her eyes matching Charlie’s sorrow.
“He is, boo,” Stassi said. “His wife’s name is Lauren.”
All of Charlie’s air left her lungs as her fingers bawled on the fabric of her shirt, gripping her stomach to stop the grief from ripping through her.
“How do you know... what you mean.... how do you know this? Bitches talk all the time. I would know if he was married,” Charlie said, reasoning with herself, running every single day since she’d met him back in her mind.
“My new job is with his wife. Her name’s Lauren Sky I saw Demi come into her office a few days ago,” Stassi admitted. Hiroshima. The bomb that went off inside her body was worse than Hiroshima. It leveled everything.
“You knew he was married and you...” Charlie shook her head in disbelief as she stared at Stassi like she was a stranger.
“I’m sorry, Charlie, I didn’t know how to tell you!” Stassi defended.
“And you work with her! You smile in my face and you’re out here kiki’ing with his wife?!” Charlie shouted. “You’re my sister!”
“I wanted to tell you!” Stassi screamed.
“Where is he?” Charlie shouted.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to...”
“Where the fuck is he, Stassi?!” Charlie shouted. Stassi struggled. Charlie saw her, weighing her options in her mind until finally fessing up.
“They’re at the hospital. Beaumont in Troy,” Stassi said in a low tone. Charlie grabbed her purse. This was a mistake. It had to be. No way was Demi married. No way. It wasn’t possible. Not after the things he did to her...the things he said.
“Take me,” Charlie said as she pushed out of the condo.
The entire ride, Charlie felt like she would throw up. The feelings they shared were real. There was no way to manufacture energy like that. Or was there? Was Demi so skilled a liar that the deceit felt like truth? He was out here masquerading ill intent for love and she felt like a fool.
“He’s not married,” Charlie whispered. Stassi’s silence told her that he was. She was being polite, not wanting to pour salt in her wounds.
She called his phone, repeatedly. Each time he didn’t answer, another tear fell.
The 40-minute drive drove her crazy. Charlie didn’t even wait for Stassi to park before hopping out the car and rushing inside.
She heard him before she saw him. His voice.
His angst boomed through the entire first floor.
“What the fuck you want to know?! My fucking wife in surgery and my kid almost got snatched but you pussy-ass cops in my face asking questions that ain’t gon’ matter cuz these niggas is dead anyway!”
There it was. The words from the horse’s mouth. His wife. His son. He had said it. Stassi had not lied.
She stood in the doorway to the waiting room, frozen. It felt like he had cut her open, sternum to pelvic bone and all her insides were falling out. This was a hospital. This was the emergency room. Why wasn’t anyone helping her? Why couldn’t anyone see her bleeding out?
“Yo, Demi,” Day said, nodding toward Charlie.
Demi followed Day’s eyes and when he saw her, Charlie’s lip quivered.
She put both hands over her mouth and nose, shaking her head as she closed her eyes.
He stared at her, eyes red, chest heaving, a look of distress and defeat wearing him.
He saw it. He was the only person in the room who saw her insides were on the floor, in a bloody pile at her feet.
Her guts, her liver, her spine… yeah, definitely, her spine because she had lost her nerve, her kidneys, her heart.
All outside of her body. That’s how bad it hurt, and Demi could see it because he was the one holding the knife.
A fool. Charlie had played the fool. Again.
Another man had made a fool of her. She had never been so disappointed in herself.
His eyes said what his lips couldn’t. She looked around the room.
A grieving woman sat among a room full of soldiers, Demi’s soldiers.
People she had never met. His family. Parts of his life that he had not shared because he couldn’t because he shared a life with a woman and a child.
Charlie was screaming on the inside. Dying.
Pleading. A riot of conflict lived in her, but she refused to give him anything else.
She had given him her heart. She had done it effortlessly without asking him for anything in return.
She hadn’t questioned anything. Damn it, why hadn’t she questioned anything?
How stupid could she be? She wouldn’t give him anything else. Especially not her dignity.
She turned and prayed to God that her shaky legs would carry her out of the hospital.
“Bird!” he said, calling her in a low but desperate tone as she walked frantically down the hallway.
When he caught her elbow and turned her toward him, Charlie couldn’t talk herself out of laying hands on him. She slapped Demi so hard he tasted blood as the inside of his lip hit his teeth.
“How dare you,” she said. The calm of her tone caused his eyes to widen in confusion and alarm.
It would have been better for him if she were loud, if she were making a scene.
If she was fussing and fighting. Charlie was certain.
Certain that this was not for her, that he was not for her.
She shook her head. If only she could stop her eyes from watering.
“All that love you gave me belongs to somebody else. You’re married. ”
“Bird, baby, now ain’t the time...”
“Are you married, Demi?” she asked, but it was rhetorical because she knew the answer. She had seen the evidence for herself.
He rubbed the back of his neck and then ran both hands over his head, blowing out a breath so deep it felt like it would blow her away.
“I can’t even think right now. Go home. I’ma come home to you, baby.
I’ll explain, but right now...” he paused and bawled his fists, bringing them to his forehead and blowing out another limited breath.
He couldn’t breathe. Her man. Her love. He couldn’t breathe.
She could see the invisible ants crawling on his skin.
The hospital was overwhelming him. The germs. The doctors.
The smell. Then, there was his wife and son.
“I need you, Bird. Niggas tried to snatch my son.”
Charlie didn’t know what to say. He was hurting over a son she hadn’t even known existed.
“Demi, the doctor has an update.”
Charlie looked at the woman who had come out of the waiting room and then scoffed, giving Demi her misty eyes one final time. “I’m drowning, Demi.”
“Me too, Bird,” he replied.
She sobbed, once, one sob slipped out before she could chase it down. “How could you?”
“I can’t gather a thought right now, Bird. You got to give me a minute here. I’m seeing fucking red, Bird. I can’t think. Take my mind, baby. I’m losing it.”
He didn’t even care that his mother-in-law was behind him watching. He trapped Charlie against the wall, pressing his forehead to hers. She didn’t know how the roles had reversed but his touch now burned her. It hurt so damn bad. Toxic. All of this fucking love was bad for her health.
“Oh, Demi,” she whispered, touching his face as tears escaped her.
One by one they slid down her face. “I gave you me. Why would you do this to us, babe? How could you do this to me? You fucked up so bad.” She covered her mouth, stopping herself from falling apart.
She shook her head, drawing in deep breaths.
She was hyperventilating she was so damn angry.
She was trying her hardest to make up an excuse that made him loving her make sense, but it didn’t.
None of it mattered if he belonged to another.
Giving men the chance to explain after they fucked up was stupid.
Women know what it is when they discover the betrayal.
Allowing the explanation is merely a chance to allow yourself to find an excuse to believe the lies.
Charlie knew better. She had learned that lesson before —the hard way— and she wouldn’t willingly play the fool again. “We’re done.”
“Nah,” Demi said shaking his head.
“I’m done,” she repeated, shrugging before clearing her tears. She said it stronger the second time, with more certainty, and with no hesitation. It scared the fuck out of Demi.
She turned to find Stassi at the end of the hall, looking on in angst, and as she walked by her sister, she said, “I’m done with your ass too.”