AMAI #4
“Don’t you need to get back to Terrance and the kids?” Truth asked, though I could hear the smile underneath it.
“Fuck Terrance and them kids.” Honor said it with no hesitation, like she’d been holding it in her chest all day, waiting for permission to let it out. “I deserve a damn break.”
Truth burst out laughing, the kind that came from her stomach, and I found myself laughing too—not the polite kind I gave at business dinners, but something real. Surprised the shit out of me.
“There’s suits in the pool house,” I told her, once I got my breath back. “New. Different sizes. Y’all are welcome to change in there too—it’s basically a small apartment.”
Honor’s whole face changed. She screeched, actually screeched, loud enough that Saroya came jogging in from the kitchen to see what she was missing.
“Bathing suits?” Saroya said.
“Bathing suits,” Honor confirmed, already moving toward the French doors like the building was on fire and salvation was on the other side.
Saroya didn’t need a second invitation. She was gone behind her sister before I could say anything else, both of them disappearing toward the pool house in a blur of excitement I hadn’t seen from anyone in this house in longer than I wanted to think about.
“You getting in?” I asked Truth.
She shook her head, settling against the doorframe instead.
“Not tonight. I just want to sit on the deck and watch them.” Her eyes followed her sisters through the glass.
“I want to feel this. The house, the pool, all of it. They deserve nice things too, Amai. They’ve been carrying so much for so long, and nobody ever stops to give them something like this. ”
I understood it then, watching her watch them—this wasn’t about the water or the house or anything I owned. It was about her sisters getting to be soft for one night, getting to be loud and silly and unguarded in a way the world rarely let them be.
“You’re going to be an amazing mother,” I said, because it was true and because I wanted her to hear it before the night got away from us.
She looked at me like the words had landed somewhere deep, and when she kissed me, it wasn’t rushed. I took her hand and led her out onto the deck.
Raven had already claimed a corner of the yard with Priest, the two of them low-voiced and close together near the fence line. I made a note to leave that alone—whatever it was building into wasn’t mine to interrupt.
Honor and Saroya emerged from the pool house minutes later in suits that still had the tags half-torn, screaming and cannonballing into the water like grown women who had never been given permission to be children again.
I grabbed the tablet off the side table and pulled up the house system—music first, something with bass but not too heavy, then the pool lights, shifting from white to a deep blue that made the water look like something out of a dream.
I dimmed the deck lights last, leaving just enough glow to see by.
Honor came up gasping, hair slicked back. She looked around at the mood I’d built with a few taps. “This is sexy as fuck, Amai!”
I laughed, and it came out easy. “Just trying to set the scene.”
“Set it good, then,” she yelled back, already swimming toward Saroya.
Truth settled into the reclining chair, and I lowered myself behind her, letting her fit between my legs the way she always did, her back against my chest, my arms wrapping loose around her middle.
The music moved through the deck low and steady.
Her sisters’ laughter carried across the water, unguarded, easy.
I let myself feel grateful for it—for Honor’s bluntness, for Saroya’s laugh, for whatever quiet thing was happening between Raven and Priest in the dark corner of the yard.
They’d given Truth something tonight that I couldn’t have given her alone: a few hours where the fear from Mimosa Ct didn’t have room to breathe.
Because it was still there. Somewhere in the back of my mind, behind the music and the lights and the sound of Truth breathing steadily against me, I kept turning the package over—the finger, the ear, the words scrawled across that paper like a promise.
I hadn’t stopped thinking about it since it arrived.
I wouldn’t stop until whoever sent it was dead.
But not tonight.
Tonight, I pushed it down, deliberate, the same way I pushed down everything that threatened to take up space I didn’t want it to have.
Tonight was for watching Truth’s sisters splash each other under blue light, for feeling her weight settle into me like she trusted the ground to hold, for being a man capable of building something soft in the middle of a war I hadn’t finished fighting.
I tightened my arms around her, just slightly, and she made a small contented sound and let her head fall back against my shoulder.
Beyond the gate, out past the hedges and the cameras and the men I had posted at every entrance, the threat was still waiting. It would still be waiting tomorrow.
Tonight, I held her and let tomorrow worry about itself.