Chapter 2
Hotel Blue
It had been five months since I caught my trifling ass ex with my brother, and if I was being honest, that shit still sat on me in a way I didn’t even like to think about for too long.
I never said that out loud, and I damn sure wasn’t about to start now, but there was no point in lying to myself while I sat out on the balcony with a blunt in one hand and a glass of brown liquor in the other like any of it was really taking the edge off.
It helped me coast for a little while, sure, but once the high started thinning out, and the liquor stopped warming my chest, all that same shit came right back and pressed on me again.
Candy County didn’t feel like home no more, but then again, maybe it never did.
I had been living out of one of the nicest hotels in the city since I got back.
It was up high enough where the view looked expensive and removed from everything below, but that didn’t change the fact that I was still floating around with no real direction.
All I had was just money in my pocket, rage in my system, and too much time on my hands.
I stayed gone from my family unless I had no choice but to deal with them, and even then, I kept it short because I had no desire to hear another fake ass excuse about why they left me sitting in Trill-Land for a year like I was some lesson they needed to teach.
As far as I was concerned, they made their choice, and I made mine.
My choice was staying the fuck away from all of them. That included Bishop.
I still hadn’t fully decided whether I was done crossing paths with him forever or if I was just waiting for the right moment to cross paths again, just to lay hands on him. But either way, I hadn’t seen him since that day I caught him with Harlow, and I didn’t care to.
Every time his face crossed my mind, all I could see was him standing in his drawers, in the house I bought for me and her like he had every right in the world to be comfortable.
Every time that picture hit my head, it made something in me turn mean all over again.
So, I fought it, and that’s what I had been doing.
I went back to fighting underground, taking matches in back rooms and private setups where cash got handed off quickly, and the only thing that mattered was who walked out on top.
Most nights, that ended up being me with blood on the mat, blood on my knuckles, and men twice my size leaving with nothing but another reason to hate me.
I went back to that because it was one of the only places where my mind got quiet.
Once that bell hit, and it was just me and another man standing across from each other, everything else dropped off me for a minute.
Harlow disappeared. Bishop disappeared. My family disappeared.
The bullshit in my mind and heart disappeared.
Then, all I had to do was hurt whoever was in front of me and make sure he understood that I wasn’t the one to test.
The bruises healed quickly, and the money stayed coming.
After the fights, I usually ended up in some club or private lounge with music and women getting too close.
I let them dance and smile and say whatever they wanted because it passed the time and made the nights move a little faster, but none of that shit meant anything.
I never took one of them back to my room more than once, and I never stayed after I got what I came for.
Harlow had even been sending me texts that I never replied to.
She kept telling me she was sorry for everything that went down, saying it wasn’t like that, that she had just been lonely and didn’t know how to handle being by herself while I was locked up.
No matter how many different ways she tried to explain it, it still didn’t change what she did.
I had read every last text, but I never answered.
Every once in a while, I’d open the thread and let my eyes run over the same desperate shit she had been sending for weeks, watching her try to fix something that couldn’t be fixed.
I still never gave her a response because I knew if I did, even once, she’d think she still had access to something in me that I had already decided was dead.
The fucked up part was I still loved her.
I just hated her for what she did more than I loved the version of her I thought I had, and that made it easier to keep my mouth shut.
I leaned back deeper into the chair and brought the blunt to my mouth again while Key Glock played low through the speaker I had on the table beside me.
The city lights stretched out below in every direction, shining like Candy County wasn’t still filled with fake rich people, crooked deals, and families that would sell each other out as long as the money kept coming.
The night air was cool enough to feel good against my skin, and I tipped the glass back and let the liquor burn down slow before setting it back on the arm of the chair.
This was about as close to peace as I had gotten in months.
My phone started vibrating on the table. I glanced over at it without moving right away. It was an unknown number.
I was already halfway set on letting that shit ring out when my eyes caught the area code, and I straightened up a little in the chair.
It looked like a Trill-Land number. I stared at it for another second while the phone kept buzzing against the glass top.
I didn’t know too many people out there, nor did I give my number out like that.
The only one that mattered had been sitting in a cell beside mine months ago.
I grabbed the phone and answered it. “Yeah?”
There was a brief pause on the other end, then a voice came through. “Aye, Kelli?”
I frowned a little and lifted the blunt from my lips. “Who this?”
“It’s me.”
I sat up straighter at the sound of his voice. “Kay’Lo?”
“Yeah.”
A small smile pulled at the corner of my mouth before I even meant for it to. “Well, I’ll be damned. What’s up?”
I could hear something in his voice right away.
It wasn’t panic exactly, but it was close enough that I noticed it.
He sounded like a man holding too much at one time and trying not to let it spill over while he talked.
Then, he reminded me what I told him back in jail when we were both boxed in and dealing with our own different kind of hell.
I told him if he ever needed me, he could hit my line.
Apparently, he remembered that shit word for word because the next thing out his mouth made me sit up straight.
“Nigga, remember you told me if I ever need you to hit ya line. Well, nigga… I need you.”
I went quiet then and let him finish.
He didn’t say everything straight out, but I didn’t need him to. I listened and picked up what mattered. The trial was going bad. Then, he mentioned his wife, and the second he said she was eight months pregnant and in trouble, my fingers tightened around the glass so hard I almost heard it creak.
He didn’t tell me what kind of trouble, and I didn’t ask him to spell it out because he didn’t have to. I’d heard enough.
I heard a man on the edge trying to keep his head together for his woman and their baby.
It was somebody whose whole world was twisting in real time and who didn’t have the luxury of breaking down because too much depended on him staying focused.
I heard the same kind of pressure that had once sat on me when I thought everything I wanted might already be gone by the time I got out.
For a second, all I could do was stare out over the balcony while he talked and think about how the fuck I ended up here… in a luxury hotel in a city I was born in but didn’t care about, drinking alone, smoking alone, and carrying around a heartbreak I kept trying to disguise as anger.
Harlow crossed my mind first, then Bishop, then the whole damn Varrari name and everything that came with it.
Money, power, private jets, boardrooms, correctional facilities, security contracts, fake ass personalities, and all the pressure in the world to become a version of myself I never wanted to be.
There was nothing in Candy County pulling at me no more.
Not my family, the fights, or the women.
Not even the hurt, because that had started to feel less like something I needed to sit with and more like dead weight I was still dragging around just because I hadn’t found a reason to drop it.
Maybe this was that reason…
I leaned forward and rubbed my free hand over my mouth while Kay’Lo finished talking. Once he went quiet, I looked down at the blunt burning between my fingers and felt something shift in me. He needed me, and I knew exactly what that meant.
It meant Candy County was over for now…
It meant whatever little ghost I had been pretending to build a life around out here could stay right where the fuck it was.
I picked my glass up and finished the rest of the liquor in one gulp, then sat there for another second with my eyes on the skyline.
I exhaled slowly and finally spoke…
“I’m on the way.”