Chapter 6 Kyleigh #2
His gaze flicked to Aziza, then back to me. “Be quiet. I’m not here to scare her or hurt you. But I’m not leaving ’til we talk.”
My brain scrambled to catch up with the facts. He was in my bedroom. In my bedroom. Upstairs. Past gates, cameras, alarms I’d paid very good money for. Oh, and my very noisy dog.
I didn’t let my voice shake. “How did you get in my house?”
He gave a small, humorless smile. “This house ain’t the fortress you think it is. Your system watching for the wrong kind of trouble,” he murmured.
I thought about the way my security company rep had smiled at me, promised I was covered from “all conventional threats.” Lying ass. I guess he didn’t say anything about unconventional threats, though.
“You broke into my home, with my child in it,” I hissed.
He frowned at me. “You hid my child in it, some shit you will never be able to do again. I don’t care what kind of fucking alarm system you get, Ky. I don’t care if you run again. I will come for you. And I will cage you even better than you’ve caged yourself about mine.”
His words terrified me, but I refused to show it. We stared at each other across the room, Aziza sleeping peacefully between us.
“If I scream, my nanny is coming in here with her black belt and her Glock. And I’ll call the sheriff. You really want that?”
“You scream, I’m gone before they make it in here,” he said quietly. “And the next time I come, you won’t know until you wake up far away from here.”
There was no bragging in his voice, just straight up truth.
Fear shivered through me. I don’t know you, I’d said. That was truer than I had known. Where had he been and what had he done for the last ten years?
“You think this makes me feel safe about you being around her?”
“No. I think it makes one thing real clear. Your money can’t keep me out of my daughter’s life. Not physically. Not legally. Not socially. You can throw lawyers and land and attitude at me all day. I ain’t going nowhere, Ky.”
“Don’t call me that,” I said, the retort weak.
He smiled at me. “Why? Unless you’ve changed, I’ve known you more intimately than most people. Put a baby in you. And I can’t use a nickname? That don’t work for me, shorty.”
He stepped closer to the bed, not close enough to touch either of us. His eyes landed on Aziza’s face again, his gaze soft, affectionate.
“She’s beautiful. I can’t wait to know her,” he said quietly.
He exhaled slow, like he was trying to keep it together.
“Look,” he said. “You don’t want Zahara’s war?
Cool. I don’t really want it either. I’on want all the mess.
I’on wanna drag my little mama through that.
Hell, I’on even wanna drag yo’ mean ass through that.
But I will do it if I have to. I’ll let her drag yo’ name through every courtroom between here and Baton Rouge if that’s what it takes to get rights to my child. ”
He leaned forward a little, eyes locked on mine.
“It ain’t gotta be that way, though, Ky. I got another plan. We ain’t gotta burn everything down first.”
I folded my arms over my chest, refusing to let him see my hands were still shaking. “You in my bedroom at three a.m. after bypassing a six-figure security system. This feel pretty burned down already,” I muttered.
A half smile curved his lips, and I hated myself for noticing how fine he was.
“What do you want?” I asked, keeping my voice low so it wouldn’t carry down the hall.
He glanced toward the window, his gaze intense, like he could see down the hill and into the heart of the little town that caused me so many mixed emotions. Finally, he looked back at me.
“Option A is what Zahara told you,” he said. “Court dates, legal filings, DNA.”
He paused, shifted his weight, stared at me. I waited, my hands balled into fists, like holding them tight would hold in the fear his words caused me.
“But there’s an Option B, Kyleigh. You and I can sit down like adults and write out some shit we both can live with. We can figure out custody, time, holidays, all that. We can even let the lawyers look at it after, make it official without getting nasty.”
“That’s your terms?”
My voice was soft, small. Anxiety seemed to swirl from my stomach into my throat where it threatened to choke me. He wanted her on some holidays. There could be Thanksgivings or school breaks where I didn’t have my baby. It sounded horrible. It was too much.
“It’s part of it. The rest… You might not like,” he admitted.
Part? I had to take a minute, press a hand against my throat where it ached with unshed tears.
“I don’t like any of this. Go ahead. Get it over with,” I gritted eventually.
He looked at our sleeping child again, and something flashed in his eyes I couldn’t name.
“The way you feel about Christmas—I think it’s unfair. You hate this time of year so bad, you shut the whole town out. You shut her out. She sitting up here with a mini tree in her room talking through a damn fence about how she wishes she could see more Christmas lights. That’s not right.”
Anger flared inside me, making my head snap back, my eyes tangling with his.
“Aziza is a well-adjusted, happy child. You don’t get to tell me anything about my baby from something you heard in the streets of a town I couldn’t care less about.
Something’s wrong with me because I don’t wanna take part in all that gaudy, loud, over-the-top shit they do every year supposedly in the name of Christmas? Please!” I spat. “I don’t care—”
“Nah, I don’t care, shorty. I don’t care bout none of that shit you saying.
Her feelings trump yours with me, especially when you sitting up here cold and mean.
You don’t care about Christmas being commercialized, Kyleigh.
That’s an excuse for what really bothers you about this time of year.
But you almost thirty and rich, like you pointed out.
You know ways to deal with your feelings.
You can go to therapy and cuss people out in a journal.
She nine. She should not be the collateral damage for what happened to you ten years ago. ”
My eyes stung. I blinked hard. “Could we get back on track, please?” I asked.
He nodded. “You want to avoid Zahara waging a war on your ass? Fine. Then we do two things, to start.”
He held up a finger. “One. You let the town decorate them damn pine trees again. Give ‘em full access, like Mrs. Amanda did. Lights, ornaments, the whole thing. We put safety measures, waivers, whatever make you feel better. But that hill lighting up is part of this town’s heartbeat at Christmas. It means a lot to people. You can’t take that.
And I think our daughter would love seeing it. ”
“Absolutely not,” I snapped, too loud. Aziza moved beside me. We both froze until she settled again. My next words came out in a whisper. “Those trees are mine.”
“And that girl is ours. You want her to grow up in a house everybody side-eyes ’cause her mama too bitter to let people hang lights? You want people mad at her, treating her like an outsider? Bad enough you got her isolated up here on this hill.”
I flinched. He saw it, probably counted it a victory. He knew, more than anyone, how much I had hated being treated like I didn’t belong. To imply that I would cause that for my baby—
“And two,” he went on, holding up another finger. “You agree to three Christmas things with me and her. Together. Non-negotiable.”
I shook my head immediately. “No. No. We not a family. We will never be a family, and I refuse to give my baby the wrong impression—”
“We are her family. She deserves to see her parents in the same space doing normal stuff, at least sometimes. She not about to feel uncomfortable or like she gotta choose.”
I knew he had a point, even if I hated to admit it. “What kind of ‘stuff’?” I asked begrudgingly.
“Put a real tree downstairs. Not that little thing in her room. A big one. In that empty foyer where Mrs. Amanda always had one. We could decorate it together.”
My chest tightened. I knew he’d said he didn’t care about my feelings, but my God, did he have to make it so clear? A tree was a symbol of everything I’d worked to forget or avoid over the last ten years. Seeing one every day in my living space… “No.”
“Also, you come to the cocoa walk with us. Not hiding behind your fence and your frosted glass windows. You put on a coat and walk down that hill with our baby and let her see her town at night,” he said, ignoring my previous reply.
I swallowed hard. Said nothing. He continued.
“You pick the last one. I’on care what it is, but it’s got to be Christmas-themed, and it’s got to be all three of us. You, me, Aziza. No martial arts nanny or stiff ass butler running interference.”
Jabali stopped, looked at me. He looked content with himself and his ridiculous ass plan. Anger surged inside me to meet the fear.
“You trying to blackmail me with Christmas?” I hissed. “You really gone sit here in my bedroom and tell me I got to do holiday activities with you or you gon’ unleash your lawyer sister on me?”
He chuckled. “Oh, she already unleashed after ya little performance earlier. I’m telling you the terms to rein her back in. I’m telling you the terms to keep me from being your nightmare. Be a shame if you had those. You look so pretty when you asleep, Ky,” he said.
I wasn’t touching that at all. “This Christmas thing… it’s not even that serious. Why does it matter if I don’t want to participate? What are you even doing, Jabali?”
Frustration laced my tone, and I was a minute away from losing the battle with these tears.
“I’m making sure my daughter don’t grow up thinking she got to lock herself in a tower away from the people she comes from because her mother chooses to.
I’m making sure she knows there’s no guilt in finding joy where she can in this fucked up world, even if it’s in a string of lights around an old pine tree. ”
His words tap-danced on my insecurities, triggered the kind of parental guilt that sometimes kept me up at night. “You make it sound like I’m hurting her. She’s happy. She’s safe—”
“She’s limited. Her world should be broader. From what I hear, she wants it to be.”
My heart ached, felt like it was being carved from me and torn. I blinked and shook my head.
“I’m sorry. I am unable to agree to those terms. I will pass your information to my attorney—”
“Kyleigh? Don’t fucking play with me. Zahara is the least of your worries in this situation.
Stop trying to fight me like I’m some random.
You will never keep me out, never keep me away.
Your system ain’t built to stop me. Your money can’t fix what my training can do.
I’m not saying that to scare you. I’m telling you that you don’t know what I have become in the last ten years. Please don’t make me show you.”
A shiver slid down my spine. He stepped back then, like he’d said what he came to say.
“I’m coming to meet her tomorrow evening. I’ll text you. You have until then to decide.”
He looked at Aziza one more time, and the longing in his eyes almost shamed me. Then, he glanced at me. “Goodnight, Kyleigh,” he said.
Then he was gone.
I lay there rigid, scared, angry, sad, crying, for a long time.
And then I picked up my phone. Before I could stop myself, I started to type.
Me:
Could I call? I’d like to see you, too.