Chapter 15 Kyleigh #2
“That’s a lie, Kyleigh. A bold-faced lie.
I was stuck on you. Waiting on you. The shit is low-key embarrassing.
I tried to reach you all spring senior year.
All summer after. First semester of college, I came home every weekend.
Every weekend. I’d watch y’all’s house, hoping you came home,” he said, voice gravelly in its sincerity.
“When Aziza must’ve been three, four months old, your daddy came to me. Not me coming to him. Him coming to me.”
He stared straight ahead, voice flattening in that way it did when he was trying not to lose his temper.
“He found me outside walking Freedom’s Field.
He walked up in his nice, silk shirt and told me how you had moved on with your life.
How you were settling into university, enjoying your classes, making new friends.
How you were happy. He said Mrs. Amanda told him I was still ‘sniffing around behind you’ like some stray dog. ”
My stomach turned. The words were almost exactly what my father had said to me… flipped.
“He said, ‘If you really care about my daughter, you’ll stay away,’” Jabali went on. “Told me he and his wife had prayed about it and agreed it would be best if I left you alone so you could have a clean break. Then that nigga pulled out an envelope.”
He laughed once, bitter. “Thick envelope. I didn’t even touch it.
I told him if he didn’t move it, I was going to break his face.
Only reason I didn’t was out of respect for your grandmother.
But I believed him about your being happy.
I thought if you wanted me, you would’ve fought for me.
So, I let it go before I did something that put me in jail. And I left.”
My head was spinning.
“That is not what he told me,” I said. My voice sounded far away, even to me.
“What did he tell you?”
I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “Right before Christmas, I told them I wanted to tell you. I was tired. I was lonely. I loved her so much, and the idea of you just out there not knowing… it ate at me. I told them I was going to call you after the holidays.”
I could see it so clearly, I almost felt like I’d slipped back into that old body. Sitting at the kitchen table in Houston, baby monitor on the counter, my parents sitting across from me like a board hearing my case.
“A week later, my father sat me down,” I said. “He told me he’d gone to talk to you. He said he wanted to ‘spare me embarrassment’ in case you rejected us.”
Jabali’s jaw clenched.
“He said you told him I was a sweet girl, but you’d moved on from your little high school fling. He said you told him you had big plans and you weren’t trying to be tied down. That you were… ‘good on that Grindley girl,’” I forced out.
His eyes went dark in a way that scared me a little.
“He had a recording. He pressed play and I heard your voice. Saying just what he told me.”
He just stared at me.
“I believed him,” I whispered. “I believed you.”
Silence fell, heavy and dark.
“I never said that. I never said those words. Not to him. Not to anyone. I had my moments, but I didn’t disrespect you like that,” he said finally.
“You’re saying my father lied?” I questioned.
“I’m saying your father lied, edited, or paid somebody,” he shot back.
“At this point, I think we know he’s capable of all three.
’Cause I remember that day clear. There were no other dudes there.
Just me and him. He never caught me saying that about you.
Your parents are science and tech people.
Really good, really rich ones. Who knows what they were capable of? Tomorrow, we asking him.”
I pressed my fingers to my temples. “My mama… she didn’t even want to hear it. She just cried and said they were doing what was best for me, that you’d already shown who you were. She said she’d never let me ‘go back to that mess’.”
Jabali swore under his breath. “Mrs. Amanda let that ride?”
“She didn’t know what they’d told me.”
“So, you thought I threw you away. And I thought you’d moved on and didn’t want me anywhere near you or your fancy new life.”
“And in the middle of that was a baby who grew up without her father,” I whispered.
The truth sat between us, ugly and simple. Tears burned my eyes again, hot and helpless.
“I kept you from her ’cause I thought I was keeping myself from chasing a man who’d already told me no, thought it let you live the life you wanted.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You made bad choices off bad information. So did I. They played us, Ky, to get what they thought was best.”
The past ten years played themselves in my mind. Late nights in Houston staring at my phone. Going home for holidays and feeling like a ghost in my own grandmother’s house. The story I’d been told—that he’d shrugged and walked away from me—had been the hurt under everything.
“I hated you. For a long time. I loved you and hated you at the same time. It was exhausting. It was easier to pretend you didn’t exist than to hold all that,” I admitted.
“So, when I did come back, I didn’t mention you to Mrs. Amanda.
We told her that I was hurt when I went back to Houston, that I made a bad choice and slept with an old classmate that Christmas break. ”
“Because you knew she wouldn’t hide my child.”
“Because I knew she wouldn’t hide your child,” I agreed in a whisper. “And then you were just… gone.”
He looked tired. So tired.
“It was a lie, Kyleigh. I loved you. Even when I tried not to. Even when I was halfway across the world doing shit I don’t even want you to picture. I took missions to forget you, and you were still there.”
My heart jumped. “Jabali… Please don’t say that if you don’t mean it,” I whispered.
He slid forward on the bed until he was in front of me. Not touching, but close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him.
“I don’t have a reason to lie, shorty. I ain’t tryna keep things from getting bad—we already living in the worst version of what could happen. We lost ten years. I lost nine with my little one. There’s nothing worse than that.”
His eyes searched my face, gentle but mad all at once.
“You really think I could’ve known there was any chance you were looking for me and just turned my back?” he asked. “You know me better than that.”
I shrugged. “I used to.”
“Still do,” he countered.
We stared at each other, all those years and lies and “almosts” pressing in around us.
“I was in love with you. Back then.”
He side-eyed me. “Back then?” he repeated.
I stifled my smile. “Don’t push it.”
“You were in love with me. I was in love with you. Those things were true at the same time. That should’ve been enough to get us through some shit. But people thought we were a phase,” he said.
A tear slid down my cheek. I swiped it away, annoyed. He frowned and reached out before I could move again. His thumb caught the next one, warm and gentle against my skin.
“Don’t cry over them. If you gon’ cry, cry over us. Over what they took from us. Then we decide what we gon’ do with the time we got left.”
I should’ve pulled back. Told him to leave. Scheduled a time to discuss custody like civilized people. Instead, I leaned into his hand, just a little. Just enough. His gaze dropped to my mouth. Heat rolled through the room like an electrical surge.
“Ky, if I kiss you right now, it’s not gon’ be just because we sad.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“You tell me no, I’ll walk out that door. I mean that. I won’t pressure you. I won’t use all this against you.”
“I’m tired of ‘no.’” My voice shook, but I had never been more certain of anything in my life. “I’ve been living in ‘no’ for ten years.”
That was all it took. He cupped my face with both hands and kissed me. Open and hot and deep and hungry. His mouth slanted over mine, stealing my breath, then giving it back. I grabbed his shirt without thinking, knuckles brushing warm skin where the hem had ridden up.
He groaned against my lips. “Kyleigh.”
I almost laughed into his mouth. Then, I almost cried. I opened for him instead and let the kiss deepen. His hand slid to the back of my neck, thumb brushing the spot under my ear that always made me sigh. My body remembered him even when my brain wanted to pretend we were strangers.
He shifted, moving me gently until I was leaning back against the headboard. He braced a hand beside my hip, keeping his weight off me but close enough that there was no mistaking what this was.
“You good?” he asked. His forehead rested against mine. His breath was warm and a little uneven.
“Yes,” I promised. It was the truest word I’d said in a while.
His gaze dropped to my robe. The neckline had gaped a little, satin camisole peeking through. His fingertips brushed my collarbone.
“I missed this body. I missed this mouth. I missed this attitude. Damn, Ky.”
Heat spread across my skin at the way he said my name.
I tugged him down again because I didn’t know what to say, but I knew how to do this part.
The next kiss was slower. Deeper. His fingertips traced the line of my jaw, the curve of my shoulder.
My hands slid up his back, memorizing the differences, regretting the years I hadn’t had access to them.
When his palm finally slid under the edge of my robe and found bare skin at my waist, my whole body shivered.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmured.
I shook my head, shifted my body. “Jay… don’t stop,” I moaned.
He chuckled softly. “Yes, ma’am.”
His mouth moved to my neck, finding spots only he knew.
I arched into him, fingers curling against his scalp.
The want… it had always been there. Muted.
Denied. But there. Not now. I pulled him into me.
I didn’t care that we weren’t healed. I didn’t care that the past wasn’t fixed.
I didn’t care that there were still conversations to have, apologies to make, lies to untangle.
I let myself stop thinking.
And I let myself fall.