20. Malik
S even days. A whole week of walking around feeling like somebody had reached into my chest and ripped my heart clean out.
I was fucked up, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, all of it.
This heartbreak shit was something else entirely.
Had me understanding why niggas wrote sad songs and did stupid shit over women.
I missed everything about Sametra. Her smart mouth.
The way she’d steal my hoodies and have them smelling like that sweet perfume she wore.
How she’d hum some old-school Anita Baker while she cooked, moving her hips like she didn’t know I was watching.
Even the way she’d cut her eyes at me when I told her to take it easy.
I missed that fire that made her dangerous and mine at the same time.
But what really had me losing sleep was knowing my seed was growing inside her, and I wasn’t there to make sure both of them were straight.
Every morning, I woke up reaching for empty space, reality slapping me in the face like a cold brick.
This was supposed to be the best time of our lives: finding out we made a baby together, planning our future.
Instead, we were apart, both of us too stubborn and hurt to swallow our pride.
I’d been trying to stay productive, locked up in my office, working on business plans for my own practice.
If these hospital motherfuckers wanted to play games over me loving my woman, then I’d build something they couldn’t touch.
Something that was mine. Being suspended gave me time I’d never had before to strategize, to map out what Pressure Points could become.
But focus was hard to come by when every quiet moment reminded me that she wasn’t here.
The TV was just background noise, filling the silence that felt too heavy without her voice cutting through it. I was deep in financial projections when some news anchor’s voice cut through my concentration like a knife.
“This is Lauren Adams of WZVV News reporting live from St. Ambrose Baptist Church, which is currently on fire. The blaze started approximately two hours ago and…”
I wasn’t listening until I heard a name that made every muscle in my body tense up.
“…Lieutenant Sametra Andrews, of the St. Ambrose Fire Department Station House three, led the team that successfully evacuated the daycare center next door before the flames could spread.”
Time stopped. My pen hit the floor. My chest got tight like somebody was squeezing my lungs. I looked up at that screen and saw my whole world standing there in full gear, covered in soot, talking to some reporter like she hadn’t just scared ten years off my life.
There was my woman, my pregnant woman, grinning like she’d just had the time of her life instead of risking both their lives for some adrenaline rush. That smile that usually had me ready to give her anything she wanted was now making me want to lose my entire fucking mind.
What the hell was she thinking? Had pregnancy made her forget she had more than just herself to worry about now? She was carrying my baby, our baby, and she was out here running into burning buildings like she was still some single woman with nobody to come home to.
The rage that hit me was something primal. This wasn’t just anger; this was terror dressed up as fury, love twisted into panic. This woman was going to put me in an early grave, and she didn’t even seem to care.
“What the fuck?” I shot up so fast my chair went flying backward, remote clutched in my fist as I cranked the volume up.
“Lieutenant Andrews, can you tell us about the rescue operation?” the reporter asked, shoving a microphone in her face like she was interviewing some kind of superhero instead of a reckless woman who should’ve been home with her feet up.
“We got everyone out safe, that’s what matters,” Sametra said, and even through the exhaustion and dirt, she was glowing. Beautiful. And completely out of her goddamn mind. “The daycare had fifteen kids inside when we arrived. My team did an incredible job getting them all to safety.”
Fifteen kids. She’d put my baby at risk for fifteen kids she didn’t even know. And while I understood that selfless hero shit was exactly what made me fall for her in the first place, right now I wanted to shake her until she remembered she wasn’t only responsible for herself anymore.
The camera showed the church, flames still eating through broken windows, smoke rising like something out of hell. And my woman had just been inside that shit. Pregnant. With my child.
I was already moving before the news story ended, grabbing keys and heading for the door, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. This separation was bullshit. I couldn’t sit back and watch her make decisions that could take her away from me forever.
Driving to the station, my mind was racing with everything I needed to say, everything I needed her to understand.
She probably thought this was about control, about me not trusting her judgment.
But she had it twisted. This was about a love that ran so deep it terrified me.
The fact that losing her would break me was something I didn’t have words for.
I knew she was probably still riding that post-call high, feeling invincible and powerful like she always did after saving lives.
That’s when she was most herself, confident, unstoppable, reminded of her purpose.
But somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten that her purpose had expanded.
She wasn’t just Lieutenant Andrews anymore.
She was about to be somebody else’s mother.
And we still had one child to get to eighteen and college.
The GPS led me to a brick building with red garage doors; Station House three painted in bold letters. I’d never been here, but I’d heard enough stories to know this place was sacred to her.
I parked and walked through those open bay doors like I owned the place, the smell hitting me immediately. Smoke, diesel fuel, and some sharp chemical that made my sinuses burn. A few firefighters were cleaning equipment, still dirty from the call, moving efficiently.
“Excuse me,” I called out, my voice carrying across the garage with more authority than I’d planned. Every head turned my way, eyes scanning from my face to my clothes, trying to figure out if I belonged or if I was some random nigga who’d wandered in.
I spotted Halo across the bay, and her eyes went wide the second she recognized me. She immediately started fumbling with her phone like she was about to send a warning text.
“Oh shit, Malik?”
“Nah, don’t send her no warning,” I said, crossing the space between us in long strides. “Where’s my woman, Halo?”
She looked at me with pleading eyes, like she wanted me to dial it back, but I was way past that. I was on a mission, driven by fear and love and the desperate need to see her, touch her, make sure she was really okay.
“Where is she?”
“Locker room. We just got back maybe twenty minutes ago.” Halo pointed toward a hallway, her voice careful but amused. “Down that hall, last door on the right. But maybe you should…”
I was already moving before she could finish, my hands trembling with everything I was feeling, fear, anger, relief that she was here and safe and in one piece.
The hallway was quiet except for the sound of running water, and I could hear her moving around behind the door marked ‘Women’s Locker Room’.
I knocked my knuckles sharp against the metal.
“Just a minute!” That voice, her voice. I rested my forehead against the door. My emotions were running so damn high, it felt foreign. I’d never loved anyone but my mama like this. I closed my eyes, just grateful to hear her voice, to know she was whole and breathing and within reach.
“It’s me.”
The water cut off immediately. “Malik? What are you doing here?”
“Open the door, Sametra.”
A few seconds passed before the door cracked open, and there she was. Hair damn but slicked back, wearing nothing but a white towel wrapped around that body I’d been dreaming about for a week straight. Her eyes went wide when she saw my face, and I knew she could read everything.
“How did you...”
I pushed past her into the small locker room and locked the door behind me.
The space was tight with a metal locker, a wooden bench, and a double headed shower.
The steam was still hanging in the air from her shower.
Everything felt close, intimate, and charged with the tension that had been building between us for seven days.
“Sit down,” I said quietly.
“Malik, I can explain.”
“Sit. The fuck. Down.”
She perched on the edge of the bench, clutching that towel like it was going to shield her. Those defiant eyes already flashing with attitude. But underneath all that fire, I could see she knew. She knew she’d crossed a line.
I stood in front of her, hand massaging my beard. I was trying to find words that wouldn’t come out as me screaming at her like she was some reckless child who’d run into traffic.
“You’re pregnant,” I started. My voice shook despite my efforts to stay calm. “With my baby. And I just watched you on the evening news talking about evacuating fifteen kids from a burning fucking building. Tell me I didn’t see what I think I saw. Tell me you didn’t do that shit.”
“Malik...”
“Nah.” I held up my hand, needing her to hear every word. “You wanna know how I found out my pregnant wife was running into fires? Channel 7 News, Sametra. I had to watch some reporter tell me that the woman carrying my child was in danger. That you were back at work like our baby don’t matter.”
Her jaw set in that stubborn way that usually made me want to kiss her until she couldn’t breathe, but right now it was making me want to put my fist through the wall.
“Don’t you dare say that to me. I care. But I’m a firefighter, Malik. It’s what I do. And I never said I’d stop.”