21. Fontaine Jackson
I can’t remember the last time shit had been this tense. We’d gone to war with crews when we were young and reckless trying to make a name for ourselves. Now we were older and niggas had more to lose. We had to move smarter.
It was the day after we flew back home and we were meeting at one of the safehouses—a nondescript single-family home tucked outside of the city with no discernible trace to any of us. It was furnished plainly with the bare necessities, but it wasn’t meant for long-term stays.
Cash walked into the living room, the last of us to arrive.
“He killed her,” he said as he sat on the couch next to Jelani.
Slim sucked in a sharp breath. “She told me she had this under control.”
“Again, I don’t know why you let her get into your head like that. If you had said something—” Jelani started.
“Y’all would’ve told me to dead it,” Slim said.
“Hell yeah, because we wouldn’t be in this predicament now.”
“It’s a moot point,” Cash said, before things got too heated. “What’s done is done. Slim fucked up, but at the end of the day you’re family and we not about to hand you over.”
Slim let out a heavy breath. “So I either pay with my life, or he just starts picking off whoever he feels like.”
I thought of Slim’s grandmother. Drea. Any of us in the room right now.
“We need to get him out the country,” Nairobi said.
Everyone looked at her.
“I’ll call Hana,” she continued. “The Order can get him a passport and a way out.”
“Leave the country?” Slim’s eyes widened. “That’s not a little drastic? How long we talking?”
“Yes, leave the country,” she said calmly. “Messiah’s the most powerful gunrunner on the East Coast. You don’t think he has people in every nook and cranny of the country? If he’s calling hits through the Agency, his reach is long. And you damn sure can’t stay in Atlanta.”
“But my grandmother?—”
“Will be taken care of. You know we’ll make sure she’s straight,” Jelani said. “I agree with Nai, leaving the country is your best bet. Think of it like an extended vacation.”
Slim let out a humorless laugh. “Fuck.”
“This is what happens when you have poor dick management, bruh,” I said. “How long you think it’ll take The Order to set it up?”
“A few days. A week tops,” Nairobi replied.
“And I’m supposed to just leave my life and go?” Slim asked. “Where? For how long?”
“You do not get to be a whiny bitch right now,” Cash said, his patience finally gone.
“How many times we gotta say it? This is your fault. You stay gone until we figure out what the fuck we doing about Messiah. He might still come after us even when you’re gone, especially if he suspects we helped you.
If you have a better solution, I’d love to hear it, Carmelo. ”
Slim scowled, hearing Cash use his government name.
“Can I at least say goodbye to my grandmother?” he asked quietly. “I can’t just disappear on her.”
Cash pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes but let us know when so we can have eyes on her place.”
“We should take a vacation,” I said.
Nairobi was perched on my kitchen counter, in a sports bra and sweatpants, peeling an orange. She cocked her head at me and popped a slice in her mouth.
“We’re in the middle of a potential war and you’re thinking about a vacation?”
“That’s exactly why I’m thinking about it,” I said as I stepped between her knees, easing them apart so I could stand there. My hands settled on her hips. “After this Messiah situation is handled, I need a change of scenery.”
I brushed my nose along her jaw and breathed her in. She smelled like citrus and that smoky tobacco body oil she loved. Soft and sharp at the same time. Just like her.
She hummed thoughtfully and set the orange down. Her hands found their way around my neck. “A vacation,” she repeated as though she were trying to determine how she felt about the word. “You don’t even seem like the type who takes a break.”
“I haven’t been anywhere for real since you were in—” I stopped myself.
She pressed against my chest. “Since I was where?”
I scratched at my jaw and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. “Morocco.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Bear…”
“You didn’t even know I was there,” I said quickly. “I just wanted to see you.”
Her brown eyes softened as she looked at me.
“You flew across the world just to… put eyes on me?”
“You’re the only person that’s ever made me go against my better judgement,” I said. “It’s like there’s this invisible string that’s always pulling me towards you. I just needed to make sure you were good. And I need to apologize for what I said in Miami.”
She held my gaze for a long second, searching for something.
“Every man in the Banks Crew is insane,” she laughed softly.
“We are. But I’m serious, Kitten. Somewhere with a beach. I wanna see you in a little ass bikini. You got any of them thong ones?”
She rolled her eyes.
“You sure you’re not suggesting this because you’re scared I’ll disappear again?”
There it was. That quiet ache that sat low in my chest whenever I let my mind wander too far.
“I trust you. But yeah. I’d be lying if I said that thought doesn’t occasionally cross my mind.”
She rubbed the back of my head. “I’m not running anymore, Fontaine.”
“I know. I believe you.”
Nairobi studied me for a moment, before kissing me. “Alright. We’ll take your vacation when this is all over.”
A smile tugged at my mouth. “Yeah?”
“Mhm.”
She kissed me again, deeper now, her hands sliding down my shoulders as mine traced the hem of her sweatpants. Her legs wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer.
“I wanna be on a yacht,” she murmured in between kisses. My dick strained against my pants at the image of her tanning on a boat somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean. Oiled up. Just for me.
“How you know I got yacht money?” I asked, slipping my hand past her waistband until my fingers found her.
She moaned when I moved her panties aside. “Fontaine, you’ve been a multi-millionaire since you were thirty. Don’t be cheap.”
I chuckled against her mouth as I circled her clit with my thumb. “Talk to me,” I murmured. “You want that yacht… what else?”
Her head fell back just enough to give me access to her throat. “Stop acting like you don’t know.”
I kissed and nipped at her neck. “I wanna hear you say it.”
“Mm,” she moaned as I slipped two fingers inside her. “I want this—on the deck of that yacht.”
Her mouth found mine again as she tugged my basketball shorts down.
“Be—” I hissed when she wrapped her hand around me and started stroking. “—specific.”
I pulled my fingers from her and brought them to her mouth.
Nairobi parted her lips and took them. I felt the precum leak from my dick as she twirled her tongue around my fingers.
I caught her as she hopped down from the counter, turning her around, and pressed her right up against the edge.
“I’m waiting,” I said, pulling down her bottoms.
She pressed back against me as I dragged the head of my dick through her wetness. “Bear….”
I slapped her ass hard enough to make her gasp.
She looked over her shoulder through heavy lidded eyes.
“I want you to fuck me on a yacht.”
A low growl rumbled through me as I entered her in one stroke. Nairobi moaned as her hands braced on the counter. I held her hips firmly as her ass bounced on me, meeting every stroke, her pussy gripping me like she was trying to pull me deeper.
“I’ma fuck you in every room on that boat,” I gritted.
She whimpered as I slapped her ass again.
I meant it. Not even the yacht part—that shit was light work—but giving her whatever she asked her.
I’d figure out a way to get her the moon if that’s what she wanted.
Nairobi didn’t ask for much, ever, and it only made me want to spoil her stupid.
Money didn’t impress her because she had her own.
But all I’d wanted to do over these years is show her that I could be more than a warm body and good dick.
That I was just as good as a friend, partner, as I was her lover.
I pulled out again until just the tip teased her, that familiar tightness in my balls warning me I was close.
“Tell me where,” I demanded. “Tell me where you want me.”
“Inside,” she panted. “Please, baby.”
She didn’t beg often, but when she did, it hit different.
I pushed back in and started riding into her again, the sounds of us filling the kitchen. I reached around and found her clit and started rubbing it.
Her whole body shuddered. “I love you,” she choked out, the words seemingly slipping out past her guard.
“Shit,” I growled, burying myself deep as I came inside her.
I kissed her shoulder as I pulled out slowly. Nairobi turned to face me, tears shimmering in her eyes. Immediately my stomach dropped thinking I’d hurt her in some way.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She shook her head, sniffling. “I just feel so stupid that I ran from this. From you.”
I pulled her into me. “You’re not stupid,” I murmured, kissing the top of her head. “How could you accept love when all your parents gave you were scraps?”
She pulled back from me and wiped her face. “We look crazy,” she laughed between sniffles. “Your dick’s out, I’m a mess, and we’re having this tender heart to heart.”
I rolled my eyes at her attempt to change the conversation because it was getting a little too deep. “You ever think about going to therapy?” I asked as I pulled up my pants.
She scoffed. “Not you too.”
“What?”
She sighed and gathered her bottoms. I followed her as she made her way toward the bathroom. “Kenya asked me about going to family therapy with her the other day. It’s starting to feel like a conspiracy.”
“That’s good, right? A Black parent wanting to do therapy with their grown child is like a unicorn. She really trying to get back in your good graces.”
Nairobi paused in the doorway. “I’m realizing everything is more layered than I wanted to admit,” she said quietly.
“It was easier to hate them, but my fuck ass father did a number on both of us—well, all of us if you include Hana. And I guess this is my mother’s way of trying to fix what he broke. ”
“As she should,” I said. “You’re grown, but she’s your mother and if anyone should take the first step it’s her. But you don’t have to wake up tomorrow and be healed and ready to have the perfect relationship.”
She swallowed, throat bobbing. “If I start trying… then I can’t pretend that I don’t want it. And if it doesn’t work?—”
I held my hand out to her. “Listen to me,” I said. “You’re not signing your life away. You’re just giving yourself a chance to have something different.”
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Stay,” she said simply. “Even when I’m such a mess.”
I didn’t answer right away.
“Because I love you,” I said finally. “And because you’re not the only one who’s been shaped by horrible people.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded, like she was filing that away for later—something to revisit when we weren’t sticky with sex.
“Let’s clean up,” I said, brushing my knuckles down her cheek.
We showered together, something we’d done plenty of times, but this felt a little different. Like she was finally accepting the fact that I was hers and she was mine.
Afterward, she lay across my lap, my arm around her waist while she watched The Fifth Element for the millionth time. The question of her meeting my mother on the tip of my tongue when her phone vibrated.
Nairobi sat up and read the message that came through.
“Hana says Slim’s papers are ready. He has forty-eight hours to get his shit together,” she said.
“We need to tell Cash and Jelani.”
“We need to tell Slim,” she corrected. “He better go see his grandma tonight.”
I texted Cash and Jelani and hoped like hell this shit worked out. Because whether he wanted to accept it or not, his life now had a countdown.