Chapter 11
I sat on the edge of the bed until my wife fell asleep, then I got up and took my shower. Standing under that water, my mind wouldn’t stop spinning.
I kept thinking about how much heaviness this woman had been carrying by herself this whole time, how she’d been walking around with all that weight tucked inside her while I was over here thinking she just had an attitude problem or trust issues.
She’d had a more fucked up life than I had imagined and I hated that I couldn’t fix the shit.
As a teen, she’d witnessed a whole murder scene, and I knew that shit had to have been traumatic.
Then she had a secret pregnancy at seventeen, while her aunt had a blackmail scheme against her own niece running for years.
The fucked up part was that the blackmail was actually a lie that bitch cooked up just so the bitch could steal her baby.
I wanted to drive out to Temple right now and put a bullet in that bitch head myself, but I already knew that wasn’t what Tatti wanted from me. That bitch had blackmailed my wife over some bullshit she knew good and well Tatti didn’t do, all for her selfish ass gain.
Then my mind drifted to Mallory.
I’d made her piss on that second test after Tatti had gone home, and it came back positive same as the first one.
As much as Tatti wanted that girl dead, and I understood why after everything.
But if I’m being real, Mallory hadn’t actually done nothing worthy of dying.
Nothing but run her fly ass mouth. She had a mouth on her, always had, but I couldn’t in good conscience kill a woman who might be carrying my seed just because she talked reckless.
I wasn’t that heartless. I think the same beef I had for that Savion nigga, that was the same smoke that Tatti had for Mallory.
Naturally, we wanted to fuck up each other’s ex’s.
I knew there was a real possibility that the baby just might belong to somebody else. Mallory had never exclusively been my bitch. But I also had to take accountability for my own part in this and accept there was also a possibility that it could be mine.
Mallory swore up and down she hadn’t been with another man in all the years we’d been messing around, and if I was being real with myself, her ass was always available whenever I called, day or night, no questions asked.
That kind of consistency didn’t just happen when a bitch was actively fuckin off with other niggas.
But I still had to expect this shit to go either way.
Tomorrow after breakfast, I was gonna have to sit my pops down and get his take on this whole situation.
I didn’t know what the fuck to do with or about Mallory.
Right now it was too much for one nigga to process on top of everything else that had already happened today.
After I made her take that second test and made it clear she couldn’t be popping up on my property no more, I sent her on her way.
But this wasn’t gonna be easy to break to Tatti if I ended up deciding I needed to be part of that baby’s life, whether the timing was fucked up or not.
I climbed back in bed with her once I got out that shower and pulled her into me from behind. She backed her body up into mine without even fully waking, and I kissed the back of her neck before I let myself drift off to sleep too.
—
The next morning I woke up to her already under the covers, working her mouth on me like she had something to prove. I didn’t know what had gotten into her, but I damn sure wasn’t mad about it either. She was swallowing my shit, and she had my damn body stiff as hell.
My alarm was going off in the middle of it, but the shit felt too good to stop for no damn alarm clock. I already knew we were about to be late for breakfast at my parents’ house, and I couldn’t bring myself to care about that either.
After she had me about to cum in her mouth within minutes, I made her ass get up so that I could return the favor.
She laid on her back, and looked up at me as I hovered over her before I lowered myself.
Her ass was so muthafuckin fine, I still couldn’t believe that I had lucked up like that.
I spread her thighs, got down and started planting kisses up them.
As soon as my mouth got to her pussy, she was already visibly wet.
I appreciated the fact that I could turn my wife on before even touching her. I dove in head first.
She held my head, and rotated her hips. Her loud moans made me go harder. I was eating her ass like it was gone be my last meal, and as good as she was tasting, I wouldn’t mind that at all.
From there, I got on top of her and gave her long, deep, slow strokes while she wrapped her legs around me.
She placed her hand on my lower back, clawing and pulling me in deeper.
I didn’t even last a good five minutes like that.
Her ass didn’t either. She had my head so fucked up, I didn’t even bother pulling out.
The rate I was going, I was about to have two damn babies on the way.
That would for sure be some wild ass shit.
After we finished, we showered together.
“You think you made the right decision marrying me?” She asked while I soaped her body.
“I know I did. Nothing will ever be perfect, but I know there is no other bitch out there who’s shit I’d rather put up with. You was meant for me.”
She rolled her eyes and didn’t say nothing else. She hated me using the bitch word and I was really trying to remember to stop the shit.
Once we were out the shower, we helped each other get dressed for the day.
“What did you and my mom talk about last night?” I asked, pulling my shirt over my head, then watching Tatti smooth it out with her hand. “Y’all good now, I hope. And I can’t wait for you to meet Zaire today. That nigga laid back and cool as hell. Probably the most chill out of all three of us.”
“I can’t wait to meet him too,” she said.
“I’m really glad he’s home and that our plan worked.
” She paused, buttoning up her blouse. “As far as your mom, you know how she is. She talked a little shit, I talked mine back, and we good again for now. I think that’s just gonna be our lives from now on. ”
“Damn,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s just more stress on a nigga and y’all don’t give a damn about that.” I sat down on the edge of the bed to put my shoes on, but I wasn’t finished. “But listen. Last night, I really thought about leaving yo ass.”
She looked up at me. Her face was scrunched up, confused and disappointed.
“I don’t care what the fuck is happening around us,” I continued, keeping my voice even but serious.
“You don’t ever go against your husband for nothing or nobody, especially not in front of other people.
That shit you said last night about leaving me, in front of my brother and your family, that shit was foul and I ain’t gone tolerate it again.
If I’m ever wrong about something, you correct me in private.
Not in public. Cause when it comes to you and me, that’s how I’m gone move from here on out. I need you to move the same.”
Tatti looked at me and I could see something shift in her face, like she was disappointed in herself all over again.
“I was just lost in the moment,” she said quietly. “All I could think about in that room was not pissing my aunt off and giving her a reason to expose me. She’s been holding this murder over my head and I was just scared. I didn’t mean it like that, and I’m sorry I said it.”
“You good,” I told her, standing back up and grabbing my watch off the dresser. “Pick yo head up and keep it up. We still learning each other, but these conversations gotta be had between us. That’s just how this gone work if we tryna build something real.”
She nodded like she understood exactly what I was saying, and we gathered our things and headed out to my parents’ house.
Thirty minutes late for breakfast. But it was damn sure worth it after how my morning had just started.
—
We pulled up to my parents’ house and I got out first, walking around to open Tatti’s door for her before she could even reach for the handle herself.
We walked in together, her hand wrapped up in mine, and when we stepped through that front door and walked to the dining area, everybody was already seated at the table waiting on us.
I braced myself for my moms to come at me sideways about being late, ready to hear her mouth before I even got a chair pulled out.
But the second her eyes landed on Tatti’s face, something passed between the two of them.
It was quick, quiet, a look that said more than either one of them was willing to say out loud in front of everybody else.
My mother just smiled a fake ass smile and told us good morning like she hadn’t been sitting there fussing about tardiness her whole damn life.
Tatti told everybody good morning, and I turned to look at my brother sitting there fresh as hell like a man who’d just gotten his whole life back.
“Nigga, you clean up nice,” I said, and Zaire smirked at that. “Zaire, this my wife. Tattiana.”
He stood up out that chair. Tatti extended her hand to shake his, and he pulled her straight into a hug instead, wrapping his arms around her like she was already family and not somebody he was just meeting for the first time.
“So you really do exist,” he said, pulling back to look at her.
“I needed to see the face of the woman that made my brother change his life around quicker than a nigga could blink. You don’t even know it, sis, but this whole family appreciates you.
This nigga was heartless before you snatched his ass up. ”
Tatti laughed, that laugh she did when something actually caught her off guard in a good way. I really don’t think she understands how much I changed for her ass.
“I already know. He better act right so he can keep me too,” she said, and her ass had better been joking.