Chapter 8 #3
Cannon chuckled. Her confidence was probably one of his favorite things about her. If he was being honest, he had racked up several favorites about her in the last few days.
For a minute, he didn’t eat. He just watched as Nahla took a sip of wine. She closed her eyes briefly, and her shoulders relaxed a little. He was glad to see that she was comfortable enough around him to unwind in his presence.
He admired her a little longer before picking up his fork again. Instead of eating, though, he glanced at Nahla again.
“Can I ask you somethin’?”
With curious eyes planted on Cannon, Nahla took a longer sip of wine.
“You can ask,” she said softly.
He didn’t right away, though. He was contemplating his delivery. He wanted to know more about her, but he was afraid that the question that had been on his mind all day would cause her to shut down before they could even have a real conversation.
“Just ask, Cannon. What is it?”
Fuck it, he thought.
“I can’t help but observe the things around me,” he started.
“I can’t help but pay attention. I peeped your body language and your responses when you were on the phone with your brother and sister.
I couldn’t miss you and your pops’s dynamic.
It seems like your family treats you . . . kinda like an afterthought.”
She raised her brows, her lips parted slightly, and he could have sworn her eyes got a little misty when he said that last part. She looked surprised and hurt by his words.
Shit. He wasn’t trying to upset her, but it looked like his words had done just that.
“I’m sorry, La. I ain’t mean to—”
She cut him off. “What was the question?”
“Huh?”
Nahla licked her lips quickly. “I didn’t hear a question. What did you want to know?”
Her tone wasn’t aggressive or defensive, but it also wasn’t as confident as it usually was. If he were honest, she sounded very similar to the way she had been speaking to her father all day. He decided to just go for it. She would either answer or she wouldn’t.
“The question is, why? You were tense from the moment we picked up your father until the moment we dropped him off. You didn’t want him to know who I was because you didn’t want to ruin his day. Why does it seem like you’re concerned with your family, but they’re not concerned with you?”
She answered quickly. “Because they aren’t.” She inhaled deeply then released it. “My relationship with my family is . . . complicated.”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere tonight, La. Explain it to me.”
She gazed at him with questions of her own swirling in her eyes.
“Why?” she finally asked.
He shook his head. “Honestly? I wanna know you better.”
“So you can do your job better?”
“So I can make you happy.”
His quick reply stunned them both into a brief silence.
He could lie and say he didn’t mean it, but he knew better.
It had been years since a woman had him as caught up as this woman did.
He hadn’t thought about much apart from her since he saw her picture, and his thoughts weren’t just job-related.
She seemed to be at a loss for words, so he continued.
“I didn’t like the way your father was talking to you today, and I didn’t like how your siblings had you reacting on that phone call. All that shit pissed me off, and my feelings about it made something real clear to me.”
“What’s that?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Keeping you happy is just as much of a priority for me as keeping you safe. You got a light about you, Nahla. It seems like your family wants to dim it, and I’m not with that. So I wanna understand, and I wanna fix it.”
There was another long pause, and a tear slipped from her eye.
Then, Nahla said, “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Explain your family shit to me.”
She sighed. “Oh, right. Uh, . . . my parents were pillars in the community. My mother worked in the education field until the day she died, and so did my father, until he got sick. They were both on several boards in the community. My father is a deacon in our church. They’re just very well known in Jasona.
“Image was everything to them, and I think they just had a plan for their children’s lives. A plan that I ruined.”
More tears fell from her eyes, and she wiped them away.
Cannon had already surprised himself by being honest with her about how he’d been feeling.
The fact that he now had an almost uncontrollable urge to wrap her in his arms was just as crazy.
He wasn’t one to show affection to anyone, but he had a burning desire to comfort Nahla in this moment.
“I’m the middle child, and I was always too .
. . much for my parents’ taste. I was too curious, too bold, and too unwilling to fake the funk.
They wanted perfect kids who answered questions like, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ with answers like ‘A doctor, or a teacher, or a principal. That just wasn’t me.
I wanted to have conversations, ask questions that no one had thought of yet, and tell stories.
I wanted excitement. I wanted to dive into the gray areas of life and color them. ” Nahla sighed again.
“So, that’s what I did. I wrote an op-ed when I was seventeen about police brutality.
My English teacher loved it and submitted it to The Citizen’s Eye for publishing.
They loved it, too, and that was how I started interning for the paper.
My parents hated that essay, though. They didn’t speak to me for two weeks after that. ”
“What the fuck was their problem with it?” Cannon asked, feeling himself get heated.
“They said that the paper offended several of their friends in the police department. They said they never imagined a daughter of theirs could be so thoughtless.”
Cannon shook his head in disbelief. “That’s fucked up.”
She shrugged. “That was my life. I became a disappointment while my older brother went on to follow in their footsteps. He’s well on his way to becoming a principal, and my younger sister has been teaching for the last four years. They’ve made my father really proud.
“I hated disappointing my parents, but I always hated disappointing myself more. As hard as they tried to, I never allowed my parents—or anyone else—to trick me out of my dreams.”
Cannon chuckled. “I love that about you,” he said.
For the first time in a while, Nahla smiled. “I love that about me too.”
“You’re amazing at what you do, Nahla. I knew who you were even before I took the job, because I’ve been keeping up with your stories. You see through the bullshit. You press on where others look away. That’s a gift worth using.”
“I appreciate that,” she said before downing the rest of the wine in her glass. As soon as the bottom of the glass touched the countertop, she poured herself more.
She took a few sips before glancing at Cannon again.
“Can we talk about something else? Something happier?”
Cannon thought for a minute. “I’on know if this makes you happy or not, but I’ma need you to hook me up like this at least ten more times while we’re out here. This food is good as hell,” Cannon said, standing with his plate.
He headed over to the microwave and placed his food inside, since it had cooled while they had been talking.
“I can make that happen.”
Cannon was facing the microwave, so he was caught off guard when he realized Nahla was right behind him. He turned around, and she grinned.
“Can we go back to the stuff you were saying about making me happy?”
Cannon glanced behind her at the island. Her wine glass was empty once again, which meant that she chugged it before deciding to invade his personal space. He wasn’t complaining, though.
He chuckled. “What you wanna know, Nahla?”
She took a step forward. “Actually, it’s La. I wanna know if you meant it.”
The microwave beeped, but Cannon couldn’t bring himself to give a damn about that food. Not when Nahla Avery was so freely giving him exclusive access to her coconut scent and pretty eyes.
Nah. He was going to stand right there for as long as she was in his face.
“I did,” he said, eventually.
“But, why?”
“I’on know if I can answer that, for real. All I know fasho is that your smile has been makin’ my day, and I feel like I’d do just about anything to keep it on your face.”
She took another step toward him.
“I feel like that too. You’ve only smiled at me a handful of times since we’ve known each other, and I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what I did to elicit that response so that I can do it again,” she said.
His insides stirred at her words.
“Don’t say shit like that, Nahla.”
“Why?” Nahla tucked her lip between her teeth.
“And let go of your lip.”
She grinned. “Why?” She closed the small space between them and placed her hands on Cannon’s chest. His dick was starting to ache at that point.
“Aye. Back up.”
Nahla shook her head then lifted herself on her toes. “Can you kiss me?” she said in a low tone.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
His ringing phone being on the island gave him the perfect excuse to slip out of her grasp. Nahla was really trying him, and that was not what he needed to be on right now. He was still doing a job, and he was sure that the wine Nahla had consumed was doing the talking.
He grabbed his phone and answered it, not even bothering to look to see who was calling.
“Yo?”
“Did you show her the video? Is she okay?”
It was Capri.
Cannon sat on his barstool as his eyes found Nahla. She was taking his plate out of the microwave.
“Yeah. She took it better than I expected.”
“Are you sure? Let me talk to her.”
“Nah. You can talk to her tomorrow. It’s been a long day, Cap. You gotta give people a chance to rest,” Cannon said as he watched Nahla sashay toward him with his plate in her hands. She set the plate in front of him then laced her arms around his neck.
Cannon took a deep breath. Resisting Nahla was about to be a task, because she didn’t seem to be letting up.
He listened as Capri groaned. “I guess you’re right. I’ll call her in the morning.”