Saje St. Pierre
My husband, Reason St. Pierre, was that nigga.
Six-foot four of pure temptation. Fine as fuck, with flawless maple-brown skin that would make any woman willingly drink anything that came from his body.
His suckable lips were one of my favorite parts of him, and I admit, he was a professional at using them on my mouth and the lips between my thighs.
I loved looking into his intense dark eyes while he reached places between my legs that only he could find.
Reason’s muscular physique would make any bitch drop her panties if he told her to. He was very well-endowed, owned the biggest, most well-known Black television network in the country, and his money was so long, it would take lifetimes to spend it all.
Yet, somehow, all of this still wasn’t enough for me.
In our years together, all this man had ever asked from me was to carry his seed, but he didn’t know I cringed every time he mentioned getting me pregnant.
I made him feel like I was all in, like I’d been thinking about us having a baby, too, but that shit was far from the truth.
I didn’t want to be a part of anything that would fuck my body up, have my hormones all out of whack, or hinder me from moving on from soaps to big films. Those big wigs didn’t want no big, pregnant bitch on their screen.
Every time Reason and I had sex, he released inside me and talked about how he hoped a lucky little swimmer would make it to my womb. I smiled and played right along, but deep down, I knew that could never happen. Putting up with this facade was becoming harder and harder.
I wanted more for myself, and a baby didn’t fit in those plans.
Things were already great between Reason and me.
I wish he would leave well enough alone.
Telling him the truth would have been the easiest thing to do, but then I would risk losing my man.
Especially since this was something he truly wanted and felt was missing from his life.
I refused to lose Reason over something that we could easily forget about. I just needed him to get on board.
When I asked my husband what if I couldn’t get pregnant, the disappointment I saw in his eyes almost made me go straight home and throw my birth control pills away.
My man had no clue the reason I hadn’t gotten pregnant after all this time was that I was sneaking pills to prevent that from ever happening.
He almost came close to knocking all the common sense out of my ass, but a bitch had to think fast and break free from the power he had over my heart.
Two weeks had gone by since we had the baby talk.
I thought the way I acted the first time we discussed it would have deterred him from talking about it again.
I thought the stellar performance I put on with the fake tears would have done the trick, but it hadn’t.
’Cause years later, here we were again, and this time, he was more determined than ever.
For days I had been fretting and trying to come up with another plan or excuse to make his persistent ass cut the baby antics. I didn’t need any extra stress, given that I was currently at the highest peak of my career. I couldn’t let shit fuck that up.
Every night he wanted to stay up talking about baby names, saying how beautiful I would look pregnant, how much he couldn’t wait to kiss my growing belly, and feel our baby kick.
That would have sounded good to the next bitch, but it sounded like pure torture to me.
Fuck no, I didn’t want any of it. Not now or ever.
When I first met Reason in that restaurant many years ago, a future with us getting married, living in a rich world, in a fancy mansion, no kids, just him and me is what flashed in my mind before I ever found out his name.
I remember walking into the establishment and spotting him before he saw me.
He stood out among the many others who were enjoying their meals.
Which is why I secretly sprayed myself down with the sweetest perfume I had in my purse and made sure to put an extra umph in my step when I walked past his table.
I was out celebrating my graduation from acting school and getting a lead role in a soap opera. No one could tell me anything, and meeting a man like Reason, who possessed power with his presence alone, was the perfect way to end my celebration.
My plan worked almost instantly because we’d been together since then. And it was even better that being a few years older than him didn’t stop a thing.
It also didn’t matter that I had a man waiting for me at home.
After meeting Reason, I still had Charles around during the times Reason was busy.
But Charles turned out to be a small fish in my pond, so he got dumped when John signed over his business to Reason.
Just like that, Reason became the man who niggas would do anything just to breathe the same air he breathed.
It wasn’t hard to stop dealing with Charles and the other few randoms I had hanging around.
I went from having a little black book of men I could call to fulfill my different needs to meeting a man who was the total package.
Reason was all of them in one. All our free time was spent together, and he had quickly become my protector, my best friend, and my man.
He filled a void I had from not having my parents in my life the way I wanted them to be.
My father, Roland Atkins, was a yes-man to my mother, doing everything she said.
And my mother, Delilah Atkins, was a straight up, rich, uppity bitch.
Despite my dad being a weak man, I still loved him dearly.
Overall, I was a daddy’s girl. He gave me everything I wanted when my mom wasn’t in our business.
Both were wealthy physicians who had made it and did something with their lives, as my grandparents put it.
My mother’s dreams were for me to follow in their footsteps and work in the medical field too.
But I had other plans. I wanted to be in the spotlight.
I wanted fame. The idea of walking around someone’s dreadful ass hospital all day was not how I wanted to live the rest of my life.
My plan didn’t sit well with my mother, and when I decided to go to acting school, my mom was the first person to judge and turn her nose up at me.
She said if I wasn’t attending a prestigious college like they had, then I better have started looking at loans because they weren’t funding my dream of going to acting school.
“Are you crazy, Saje Noma Atkins?” she blurted the day I stood toe to toe with her in their fancy, high-ceiling living room, telling her my plans for my future. “Acting school? There’s nothing impressive about that type of place, especially not for no child of mine. That’s the devil’s work.”
The entire time my mother chastised me, my father stood next to her quietly and cowardly.
A few times, I rolled my eyes at him because I expected him to speak up for once in his life.
He knew about my plan to become a well-known actress someday, and he had rooted for me all along, well, until he was in front of his wife.
That night after my mom went to sleep, my father entered my bedroom and caught me in a crying fit. He sat at the foot of my bed and motioned for me to sit next to him.
“Don’t worry, Saje. You’re our only child, and Mom just wants what she thinks is best for you.” He sighed. “Daddy’s going to pay for your acting school.” He paused and turned toward my open room door. “Just keep it between us, all right?”
I nodded so fast that I gave myself a headache. “Thank you. Thank you, Daddy,” I whispered.
He kissed my cheek, patted my back a few times, and carefully walked out of my room.
After he left, I quietly squealed from excitement and went back to lie down.
I spent the rest of my night daydreaming about being in front of the camera, all eyes on me, going to award shows, and living the life of the rich and the famous.
Lucky for my father, my mother never found out he was the one who paid my acting school tuition as well as my rent when she kicked me out of their mansion.
’Til this day, our relationship was tarnished, and I still had no respect for her.
When I became a soap actress, and my checks got fatter, I went to see my mom, proud to show her that her one and only child had become successful.
Instead, I was met with hateful eyes and her calling the police for them to escort me off the property.
After that situation, I still tried to reach out to her again.
The last time I went to my childhood home was after Reason proposed to me.
He accompanied me to tell my mother. When she was done staring at Reason from the tip of his Italian leather alligator shoes to his one-hundred-dollar haircut, she slammed the door in our faces.
I repeatedly attempted to kick a dent in the iron double door, using my expensive stilettos, until Reason carried me away kicking, screaming, and bawling.
That was the last time I allowed my mother to humiliate me and make me feel like shit.
I was getting paid for my talent, I had an amazing husband, and life couldn’t have been any better.
But because I didn’t follow the path she wanted me to, none of my accomplishments mattered in her eyes.
It broke me for a while. All I wanted was to have my mommy in my life.
For her to be proud of me and to feel good enough to be her daughter.
I wanted love from my mother, but she had none to give me.
As for my father, he met Reason when we became official, and he had nothing but respect for my man.
Reason asked him for my hand in marriage, and my father had given him all the blessings.
In his words, he was happy his daughter had found a partner like Reason.
He was a proud father, but I wished he finally had the courage to express himself to my mother too.
My father wasn’t perfect, but as I got older, I learned that his way of doing things was different.
He had watched his father, my grandfather, be the same way with my grandmother.
This was all he knew. Wanting better for him was irrelevant when he wasn’t willing to put in the work to have a free and better life for himself.
I couldn’t lie and say he was a horrible father, because he was anything but that.
He always found a way to love and support me, but I always wished he would pour the same effort into himself.
I hoped one day he would put his foot down and finally be the man of the house in the mansion he paid for. Until then, I let my parents continue to be who they were. There was nothing I could do to change them, and they damn sure couldn’t change me.
Reason loved me just as much as my father did, maybe even more, and that was all that mattered at this point. That man would do anything and everything for me without me having to lift a finger.
There was only that one issue that stood in our way—him wanting a fucking baby.