Ducane #2
“I haven’t looked at this once since I found you on that plane,” I said, putting it in her hand. “First time I didn’t need to. Because I had the real thing.” I closed her fingers around it. “I never lost you, Skye. Not for one day.”
She cried in my arms.
And just like that, I was twenty-two again.
I’d left the November dinner in pieces, fuming at my father, who was never fucking satisfied. I understood exactly what Upland was the second he laid it out. Not a promotion. A longer chain. Four hours of distance between me and the only thing I’d ever picked for myself.
Her heels clicked behind me. I couldn’t get us out of Sasha Roe quick enough.
Skye caught up to me on the sidewalk, breathless, trying to read my face while I told her that I’d handed my father back the car, the apartment, the whole gilded leash.
Fuck all that shit.
I should’ve been scared. I wasn’t. I’d never been more sure of anything.
“Marry me.”
Skye laughed in my face, searching for something in her clutch. “You’re high.”
“I’m serious. Right now. Today.”
“Ducane, we don’t have rings. We don’t have witnesses.
We don’t have sense.” She stepped back, and there it was.
The fear. Not of marrying me, of him. She’d heard enough about my father to know what he was capable of, and now she’d seen it for herself.
That pissed me off more than anything he said at that table.
“You don’t mean this. I’m not gonna be the reason you spite your daddy. He already can’t stand me.”
“I’m not afraid of him.” I stepped right back into her space. “The only thing I’m scared of is not having you. There’s a courthouse three blocks from here, and forty minutes before it closes. Marry me.”
She stopped laughing. She searched my face for the joke, the catch, any sign I wasn’t dead serious.
She didn’t find one. Then she grabbed my hand and took off down the sidewalk in her heels, fussing the whole way about how this was the dumbest thing we’d ever done, but her face said she’d never wanted anything more in her life.
She stopped at the gas station on the corner.
“We need rings.”
Ring pops. Cherry for her, green apple for me. The cashier rang us up and wished us luck.
The clerk at the courthouse told us we needed two witnesses. We didn’t have a soul in that city who could know. Not Airalynn. Not Carter. Not Fee. Nobody, not until we were ready, and we were years from ready.
“You sure about this?” Skye paced the courthouse steps, the candy ring in her fist. “You do understand how crazy this is, right?”
I held mine up. She rolled her eyes. “Stop stalling.”
“Sugar Cane, I’m serious. This is serious. Are we serious?”
“Spot, the only people confused about this are them muthafuckas back at that restaurant. I’m not confused about a damn thing.”
She looked at me, chewing on her lip. “Okay. Give me ten minutes. I’ll get us some witnesses.”
She rushed off, and I let her go, because Skye could charm the devil off his own pitchfork.
I had no worries. Ten minutes later, she came back with an old couple on her arms. The woman was already crying and smiling.
The man told us he’d married his wife just like this fifty-one years back. No money, no people, just nerve.
I had that shit in droves right now.
We stood in front of a tired judge with candy on our fingers. I held both her hands.
“I don’t have anything yet,” I told her.
“Nothing that’s really mine, but I’m going to build the life you deserve brick by brick.
All of it’s yours before it even exists.
Hear me. I’m not letting anybody take you from me.
Not my father, not his money, not the whole world if it lines up against us.
I told you I’ll watch it all burn first.”
She was crying and fighting it, giggling through it while she squeezed my hands.
“I’m holding you to that.” Her voice was barely there. “Every word, Ducane.”
And then she married me. Skye Valentina Campbell married me in a stolen minute. It was the realest thing I’d ever done.
We didn’t tell a soul. Couldn’t. So we hid it like contraband. The license in a folder tucked under my mattress. A whole marriage that belonged to nobody but us. We’d step into the open when it was safe. That was the plan.
We spent the month after loving each other like the end didn’t exist.
That’s the part that gets me, even now, with a real ring finally on her finger.
I’d stood on those steps and called my father out by name as the thing that might come for us.
I swore I’d burn the world before I let him win.
And I believed it. More than that, I believed we’d burn it together. Back-to-back, however it came.
I had shit wrong. Not him. I always knew he’d come. I just never thought I’d be the one to bitch up. I never thought that when it came down to it, I’d let her walk and tell myself I was respecting her wishes. I didn’t lose Skye to my father. I lost her to my own fears.
I held her tighter on that deck, her face in my neck, and made myself a promise with a lot less noise than the first one.
Whatever she was holding back, whatever was coming when we got home, I’d handle it. We’d handle it. I was not the same Ducane who let her go once. This Ducane would be in the ground before he did it twice.
The club was exactly what Infinity Island at night should be. Dark, smoked out, and lively. The music could be heard from the street, and the line wrapped around the corner. I knew Skye would eventually want to come out, so I reserved a booth at the club for the time we were on the island.
We got to the table a little after eleven. The booth was in the back corner with a clear line to the floor. I needed to be able to see all the exits.
“Get us some drinks, bae. I’m going to dance.”
Skye didn’t even sit first. She handed me her clutch, looked at the floor, and went running.
I ordered a drink, lit the cigar Myheir had sent me off with, and settled in.
She still had the dress on, showing off her thick thighs and toned calves. Skye was a masterpiece, a reminder of the patience beauty sometimes requires. She had touched up her hair back at the villa and switched into heels that would end up in my hands later.
U My Everything came through the speakers, and the energy shifted. Skye grinned with her whole face and started moving, singing along with her eyes half closed and her hands up. I took a long pull off the cigar and watched every man in a fifteen-foot radius recalibrate.
She was having the time of her life.
Nobody was getting close enough to touch it. Not on my watch.
She threw her hands into a heart shape, twerking and singing every word, lost in it. I smiled at her until a man came too close, trying his luck.
“Keep it moving, my nigga,” I said, waving him off. “Don’t become a headline looking too long.”
He walked off muttering something he purposely didn’t want me to hear.
“So strict,” she laughed and went back to dancing.
Another one materialized on her right and got a smile, warm and final, the same one I had watched her use on JD on that plane.
That was the thing about Skye in a room where she felt safe. The radar went off. She stopped tracking, stopped scanning, stopped doing all the quiet work she did when she was alone in the world. She just existed in it. Took up space. Let herself be exactly who she was without restraint.
She was with me even when she wasn’t standing next to me, and every man in the club felt and understood that.
Skye came back to the booth and slid into my lap.
“Thank you for my drink. Are you going to babysit all night?”
“You know it. I enjoy watching you. Protecting you. Have fun.”
“And then we can have some fun later.”
Her lips brushed mine. I grabbed the back of her neck, and our tongues danced until No Angel came on.
“Ouu, this is my song.”
“Dance for me,” I said behind low eyes. Her scent was intoxicating, fruity, and soft. She had me trailing her every time she moved through a room, no shame left to hide it. The first note dropped, and her hips found a slower rhythm, deep and private, meant for my fucking eyes only.
I set the cigar down and leaned forward.
Skye slid between my knees and started moving against me. I put my hands on her hips and stayed still, letting her have her way.
I stopped needing my own space the day she let me into hers.
She turned around and looked up at me with those brown eyes, catching the low light, the ring catching it too. I loved everything about her. She was mine, and she always had been. My dick was hard as concrete.
Her hand brushed across me, and I bit my lip, watching her enjoy teasing me.
“You’ve been watching me this whole time.”
“Every second, baby.”
“Not even a little jealous?”
“Why would I be jealous?” I pulled her closer by her ass cheek and nipped at her neck. “You’re here with me, aren’t you? I also think you promised me forever. Or did you forget?”
She smiled. The one I hoped was reserved only for me.
“Let’s go, Sugar Cane.”
I had her over my shoulder before she finished the sentence. She shrieked and grabbed the back of my shirt, and I carried her out of that club past every man who had been watching her all night and didn’t look back once.
Within ten minutes, we were back at the villa, she was still over my shoulder, laughing and singing My Funny Valentine.
“Why that song, Spot?”
“Ugh, why not that song?”
I set her down inside the villa door and dropped her heels to the floor.
“You got all my jams playing,” she said, winding her hips.
We Gon Love Tonight came through the speaker, and I pulled her to me and began to sway.
“I missed this,” she whispered.
“What is this?”
“Us, the love I feel every time we touch. The way we smile at each other. Our jokes. A person. You.”
We continued to sway as I chewed on what she said.
“That took a lot out of me to say, Duke.”