Chapter 4
Charly
My head was banging. The club was jumping and packed last night.
Some of the other teams flowed in eventually and turned up with True Grit Racing, Dom’s street team.
And of course, anytime they came, the girls came too.
They were all over Dominic and were shameless about how they flirted and threw their snatch in his face.
If that wasn’t bad enough, then you had the bottle girls doing the same thing.
I mean, he wasn’t the only one they were draped all over, but still.
I hated it because they knew that Dom wasn’t going to do anything but fuck ’em and forget ’em.
He used women and discarded them like dirty toilet paper.
I wasn’t sure why he behaved the way that he did, but he was callous and reckless when it came to women. I’d seen sisters and best friends fighting over him because he’d screwed both of them and didn’t give a shit about either one.
There had been a few women who had threatened to have their boyfriends and husbands jump on him because he played with their hearts. Silly rabbits. How you gon’ say that you gon’ have your boyfriend or husband jump your sidepiece and think that’s cool?
I’d even had to beat a ho’s ass because she pulled out a switchblade on Dom and threatened him with it. She wasn’t ready for me because I came up right beside her, punched her, and sliced her face open with a box cutter.
Hell, I’d even seen a mother and her daughter fighting over Dom in the club, and he didn’t fuck with either of them. Yet, that didn’t stop them from trying to claim him.
He looked like a pretty boy, who happened to be a thug.
He had the perfect mixture of thuggish and gorgeousness to him.
With his dark skin and round, full lips that covered a diamond grill, it clearly said black man, and his thick curly hair, bushy, dark eyebrows, and tilted, hooded russet-brown eyes gave him an exotic appeal.
It would be easy for someone to mistake him for being mixed with Asian, but he wasn’t.
His mother was Cuban, and his father was Black.
He kept a crisp shape-up, and his goatee stayed perfectly groomed. Tattoos covered smooth, sepia skin, and the women loved it when he played basketball shirtless so they could see his ripped abs, the tats on his chest and back, and the full sleeves on both arms.
Last night, another fight broke out between one of the bottle girls and one of the groupies who had been at the race. They both acted like he was their man, and he wasn’t being bothered with either of them. He was hollering at some other broad.
A couple of girls jumped over the bar and tried to grab bottles to break on the bottle girl. But that was when Rachel and I got involved. Although we didn’t fight them, we did keep them from grabbing anything until the club owner, Frost King, came through.
He shut everything down. Dom was drunk as hell when he walked up out of there and said that he wouldn’t fuck with them for the life of him. That was one thing that women didn’t know. He never respected women fighting over a man, not even him.
One thing that I could say about him, he was always up-front about who he was and his expectations, or lack thereof.
My head pounded again as I rolled over. A loud thud sounded off, and it made me realize that was what woke me up from the beginning.
I rubbed my eyes and yawned. I heard something shatter, and I threw the covers off me. Jumping out of bed, I rushed into the living room to find Ramon throwing figurines and candles off the floating shelves and hitting the walls with them.
“Ramon!” I shrieked.
He spun around mid-throw and looked at me almost as if he didn’t recognize me. His mouth hung agape, and his eyes were glazed over. He was drunk. It was seldom that things went over well between us when he had been drinking.
“You’re fucking him, aren’t you?” he asked with slurred speech.
“Who?”
“My brother! You’re fucking him!” he accused, staggering toward me as the candle fell from his hand.
“You’re crazy, and you’re drunk. You know that I’m not fucking Dom. He doesn’t even like me like that.”
His eyes cleared briefly as he tilted his head as though he recognized my slip-up.
I hadn’t said that I didn’t like Dom like that, but that he didn’t like me like that.
It was a snafu that I knew would create problems between us.
But I had always loved Dominic. It was no secret to anyone.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t loved me back, at least not that way, so there could never have been a chance with us.
He made that clear the day that I let my guard down and shared my feelings with him.
“You don’t know, do you?” Ramon asked.
“Know what, Ramon?”
“He loves you.”
“I know that. He’s like a brother to me.”
“No!” he roared. “He loves you the way that a man loves a woman.”
“No, he does not. He loves me the same way that he loves you, Ramon.”
He shook his head. “He loves you like my dad loves my mom. He’s in love with you. Always has been.”
My stomach tightened because what the hell was he talking about?
Another thing I noticed was that he’d said that Dom loved me the way that their father loved their mother, not the way that he loved me.
I had always suspected that Ramon didn’t really love me.
He treated me like a prize that he had won, something to be shown off and boasted about.
At least that was how he treated me in public.
In private, he ignored me, and if he didn’t ignore me, he ridiculed me.
Then there were other times, like these, when he was drunk and became mean and abusive.
I shook my head. “You’re mistaken. He doesn’t.
Dominic doesn’t know how to love a woman that way.
You’ve seen him. He’s got women all around him all the time.
He can’t settle down,” I declared as I bent and picked the figurines up from the floor.
The majority of them were broken, and I would have to clean them up with a broom and dustpan.
“Because he loves you. He knows no woman could take your place.”
I stood and stared at him. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. You’ve been drinking too much, Ramon.”
He rushed me without me being prepared. Usually, when he was drunk and put his hands on me, I was ready, and I would fight him off.
We had torn this house up on a few occasions over the last year, fighting.
It hadn’t always been this way. In the beginning, he had been compassionate, kind, and endearing.
After the first six months, that changed.
He became proud and boastful about me. I could tolerate that.
But three months before Dominic was released from jail, our arguments became volatile.
He yoked me up one day, and I swung on him.
He immediately released me and started crying and apologizing.
Ramon told me that it was the stress of the tax season and an audit he was working on that had him acting out of character.
Foolish me. I accepted his excuse, his hugs, and his material gifts.
One month later, another argument broke out because I mentioned the first incident.
He remarked, “Girl, I ain’t did shit to you yet.
Keep talking with that fly ass mouth.” I told him that he wasn’t my daddy, and he wouldn’t do shit.
He smacked me in the mouth, and I punched him in the jaw.
From there, we tussled, and I gave as good as I got.
But my strength as a woman could never be a match for a man’s.
I should have gotten out then because all we became was a series of arguments and pushing and shoving one another. He hadn’t hit me since that day, but I felt like it was only a matter of time.
Ramon grabbed me and lifted me over his shoulder. He started spanking my ass as he marched down the hall toward our bedroom.
“Put me down! Quit hitting me, Ramon!” I screamed.
He kept spanking me until he threw me on the bed. I bounced off and ran to the other side of the bed to pack my bags.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he demanded as I threw some things in my overnight bag.
“Away from your crazy ass. This behavior is why you shouldn’t be drinking!”
“Why? It helped me see what’s really going on around here. You’ve probably been fucking him since he got out of prison.”
Tears streamed down my face as I looked up at him. “Why are you so jealous of him, Ramon? You put your brother down every chance you get, and all he does is lift you up.”
He jumped across the bed, grabbed me by my neck, and slammed me against the wall.
“You think I’m jealous of him? He ain’t shit, Charly!
And he ain’t ever gonna be shit! When are you going to get that through your thick head?
Even he knows that. It’s why he doesn’t want to be with you!
” He yelled in my face as spit speckled my face.
“He’s a good friend and a good brother. Why can’t you see that you’re the one destroying your relationship with him?” I sobbed.
He backhanded me so hard that I saw stars. “You lying, cheating, two-faced whore!” I was so done. There was nothing he could say that would ever change my mind about us after this.
When he reached up to hit me again, I shoved at him enough to push away from the wall. I headbutted him until he staggered backward. I turned and grabbed the rest of my things, but before I could leave the room, Ramon grabbed me by my hair and dragged me across the floor.
I kicked and screamed as I tried to free his hands from my hair, but he wouldn’t let go. He dragged me to the front door. I managed to get to my feet just before he shoved me out the door. I ran back into the house to grab my keys, and he punched me so hard that I fell onto the floor.