Chapter Fourteen #2
I half expect to see a clean but empty room like below.
Instead, the apartment of my dreams is what I walk into.
The colors of rose gold and black are carried to this space in a lush picture of my greatest dream of a space set only for me.
The kitchen is compact but loaded with everything I could possibly need as a single girl.
Turning from the island, I look at the cozy couch set before a TV doubling as a gaming section.
Tucked into the corner is the drafting table I always wanted to test out my design ideas — only I don’t remember telling Easy about it.
“Wow, this is nice.” I breathe, taking in the bed set up high on the dais. Three sizes too big. A full Alaskan king or maybe custom.
“Easy outdid herself.” I say, taking in the sheer attention to detail she took in making this space to speak to me.
“It wasn’t Easy,” he says simply, making something leaden sit in the middle of my chest.
“What?” I ask, but he just shakes his head.
“The paint is still fresh, so make sure you don’t do too much right away. It should be dry by the time you get back here tonight, though.”
That’s when all comes to me. Snake found out yesterday morning the same time I did, then instead of making me stay with him, he called in every favor he was owed so this place would be ready for me. Still, I can’t help thinking he wants is a clean break.
A sense of sorrow wedges just beneath my heart, and I don’t know what to do with the feelings bombarding me.
“It’s nice.” I say, watching Padre’s closed expression.
I know his loyalty belongs to the MC and to Snake, who was his mentor.
“Well, you are free now if you want to be. You never have to go back that way. Now you have everything you need to start a new life. Hell, you’re a whole-ass entrepreneur,” he laughs, and I can’t help but join him. The fact is, Saban’s Art Emporium can be whatever I want it to be.
“Ayyye.” Rising my hand so he can dap it, we clasp our hands together.
Taking in the sheer beauty of the room, I don’t miss the faint scent of drying paint. He had to have called folks last night to get started.
“Hadrián — ahem, Snake did all this?” Asking for more confirmation, I look to Padre for more confirmation not allowing myself to believe the man who hunted me, held me captive then punished me before all did all this in the short time after he got word from Angel.
A weight as heavy as all the troubles in the world rests in my heart. I don’t want to believe it, but I know it’s true.
“It’s the least he could do, yeah?” His somber gaze and simple words drive the point home harder than anything I could say.
He makes it so hard to hate him — to believe the things about him I know I saw with my own eyes.
Nothing in this new reality contradicts what those young women told me.
Being away from him gives me the room and space to grapple with how fucking weak I was for him each and every time he touched me like I didn’t know who he is.
Being his captive is not the excuse it was even yesterday.
This also allows me to do what I can to stop anymore people from being hurt.
Today I’m free. I get to make my own choices. I have no more excuses to accept Hadrián ‘Snake’ Cabrera into my body or life anymore, no matter how pretty he makes my new home.
Pressing my lips into a firm line, my mind made up not to allow these little things to sway me from the monster who I’ve been shown he truly is, I resolve to take what’s my due for his egregious treatment of me, I clear my throat.
“Okay, let’s get everything in order so I can start as soon as possible. ”
Padre nods his acquiescence, pausing longer than necessary before sputtering, “Snake talk to you?”
Giving him a slow shake of my head, I walk to the door.
“Nope. He was gone before I woke.” I throw over my shoulder heading out the door to my new place.
My place. I almost stop on that thought alone.
It’s happening. My dream is happening. With the help of my friend, all my dreams are being realized.
Now all I have to do is execute, and everything I could ever imagine will come to fruition.
***
“I heard you were good, but damn, darling. This is magnificent, baby girl.” Bahir Carrington’s long lashes drop, taking all of me in with one long, sexy sweep of his lashes.
“Boy, hush,” I can’t help the little giggle that escapes as I take in his dark mahogany skin that seems to shimmer with an almost a blue iridescence he chose to depict one of his ancestors who was prominent in a local uprising in these parts along with the Loves years ago with they bought the Shelbys to thier knees.
He wanted traditional indigo ink laced with silver.
I would’ve never thought of it. But who says one can’t learn something new, even from one of your clients.
The indigo highlighted against the jet brown skin rippling on his back muscles is some of my best work.
Captivated, I watch in appreciation the way his back muscles ripple as he turns this way and that, looking at the art we collaborated on over the last two weeks since I opened my shop.
Working on his back had let me know I’ve been way too sheltered.
Getting my shop has opened my eyes to all the possibilities of the hard-charging country boys out here I’ve been missing out on being locked down in the el Diablo compound.
Still, when I’m alone at night and even I touch myself, the only one face looms in my mind — the visage of the meanest motherfucker in the county.
I don’t know what my problem is, but it has a big-ass Snake constricting around it.
“Aye,” his gaze snags mine in the mirror, an incandescent smolder. “What you doing later?”
“Resting my hands from all the work I’ve put in on all those muslces you got from bootlegging.”
He throws his head back in the sexiest chuckle known to man, making the tendons in this neck stand out. I swear I can’t help the little laugh bursting from me as I join him in flirtation.
“You’re something else, you know that?” he smiles with genuine appreciation as he pulls out three stacks, dropping them on my station.
“Whoa, that’s too much.” I protest holding my hand up in protest.
She shakes his head real slow, tsking. “Know your worth, sweetheart.”
Shaking my head, I proceed to take care of his artwork, reminding him how to take of it. “No picking with it. If it gets inflamed or you feel a fever coming on, go straight to Dr. Everything. It should be fine if you don’t do nothing crazy.”
“Got it.” He says, shrugging on the plaid cambric shirt he wore into the shop, leaving it open so nothing rubs against his skin. “Well, if you ever want to get into something now that you’re in town, come on down to The Shack. Ms. Queen’ll take real good care of you now that they are back open.”
He’s kind enough not to add that I’m one of the reasons the town’s main watering holes is only now just getting back on its feet. It seems Snake and Angel made any kind of business with the Love family near impossible, including one of the town’s only juke joints, The Shack By The Track.
Once Ezekiel-Jane and I were back, the embargo lifted and business allowed to continue as normal.
Angel was even said to pay restitution for all the harm he caused the community since none of them were hiding us.
No one knew where we were except the women in the Love girl’s clubhouse and a two-year-old little boy who learned quite a few spicy phrases that day thanks to his second cousins, Kandie and Ozymandias.
“I will once I get a regular clientele.” Business is good, with some people even wanting to use the back entrance because they don’t want their fellow churchgoers to see them coming to me to alter God’s creation.
I remember back how I thought it was hilarious until it wasn’t. Folks were truly fearful of being judged for getting tattooed.
He heads toward the main entrance then pauses for a long moment then seems to say fuck it.
“I know you’re people are Haitian, there’s a nun at the Catholic church on the Shelby side, I met when I was setting up their IT.
She was excited to learn there was another girl in town. Thought you’d like to meet her.”
“I sure would.” There are no other Haitians in this area, I’d love to meet someone from my homeland. I give him a blinding smile giddy with the possibility.
“Alright sweetheart, you take care and it anybody gives you any problems, you just call Big B or one on my brother’s if I aint around. We don’t scare.” The steel that slips into his steady gaze lets me he means it and that includes the el Diablo.
“Thanks, B.” I can’t stop the blush so I tuck my head getting busy wiping down my station.
***
“Ohmygoodness” sitting up in my clutch my my racing heart. “Damn.” Wipping my locs out of my face I grab the bonnet that’s slip off to the side.
I freeze when my eye fall to the gleam of boots that shift in the in chair that’s sits in the far corner of the loft.
Scrambling back, I press my body against the headboard. The alarm should’ve gone off. I don’t say shit just grab the handle of the bowie knife that was in the sack of my things Snake.
“I doubt that you’d get one swipe off before I got it out your hand.” Comes the sneering words from former gaurdian.
“What?” shaking my head I rid of the confusion away. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?” I ask, watching as he rises like a storm from the darkness of the room, coming toward me in a slow, easy stride, like this is his place instead of mine.
“You know better than to ask that.” His face emerges, a harsh mask in the moonlight.
“Okay, then why are you here?” I ask, noting his cut is off and so are his boots. How did I sleep through all that? He always moved like a phantom, but I’d have thought I’d be a little more vigilant now that I was on my own.
“To watch over you. Did you think I would ever just allow you to leave me, ti dezòd?” he huffs out a disdainful laugh like I should know better.
“You’ve been here —”
“Every night.” He slides his gaze to the side then lasers his on me with unwavering honesty.
My heart is my throat as the realization.
“Three bands, huh?” A snide lift to lips and a hardening of his stare lets me know he saw and heard everything that happened between me and Bahir.
“Where were you? How —” I pull the covers tighter around my chest. My heart is slamming against my ribcage like it’s trying its best to escape.
“Now, sugah, what would be the fun in that? But keep entertaining man like you do is gonna cause a lot of motherfuckers turning up in Tombigbee with their folks unable to identify them.” His voice drops to that calm register of a psychopath, letting me know he means business.
“Wow.” Shaking my head at him in mock pity, I sigh.
“Poor, liddle Snake mad because his toy is not crying after he made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her anymore. Did el Presidente make you leave me alone?” I give him.
“Are you going to have to face The Reckoning for being a disobedient puppy?” Get.
Out” my teeth clench at the end, my fury at his abandonment rising like its own storm.
He crowding over me before I can take the next breath. I flinch.
He rakes me with a knowing look. “Scared? After you begged me so prettily?”
He grabs my locs, preventing me from shaking my head.
“Uh-uh, none of that, little menace. You talked your shit. Keeping talking it. G’head, tell me how you hate me.
How you hate what I do to you. All the other bullshit lies that make it easier for you knowing you want a monster with your entire soul.
” His mouth covers mine in a brutal, punishing kiss.
I try to twist away, but he holds fast, making me take his lips, his tongue.
The minute he spears inside, I’m lost. I open for him in helpless surrender, locking my arms around his neck drawing him close as I can get him without having to admit how much I missed him, how much I needed him, or how my heart blew to bits with incandescent joy when I saw it was him rising from the darkened alcove of my cozy living room.
I’m powerless against my addiction — a six-foot-eight Snake.