Chapter 2 #3
“Oh yea, you officially lost yo last bit of fucking mind. Get your simple ass off my porch and take your murderer with you.” Shabu opened his door to stick his head inside and shouted, “Aye, Killer Kenn! Yo crazy ass nigga here!”
“Fuck you. This is why I didn’t tell your ass about the tracker or her connection to that nigga.”
“That exact thinking could’ve ended with you dead!
” Shabu snapped, knowing that his brother’s plan could’ve backfired.
“You know how easy it could’ve been for her to get off on that charge by saying she shot you, thinking you were with the nigga who’d robbed her?
She’d be crying on Whoop’s pillow as I planned your funeral, dumb ass. ”
Relic didn’t have a comeback, so he went silent while allowing Shabu’s complaint to sink in. The longer he did so, the less logical his moves seemed, and after a while, he realized nothing was logical about them. He’d moved off the thing he loathed most. Emotions.
Kennedy had knocked him off his square and caught him lacking.
His biggest distraction had convinced him to save her ass and go against the grain because while he was aligning his pieces into place, she was doing the same and doubling down by weaseling her way into his damn chest through the cracks he’d shown her.
Kennedy was pulling out all the stops to win the game. .. to win him.
“It won’t happen again,” he muttered, knowing in his gut that he’d just told a lie.
He clasped a hand at the back of Shabu’s neck to mesh their foreheads before ordering in a whisper, “If I get lost in Kennedy... too fixated and blind to where I miss some shit, save me. Forget everything that I’ve told you and pull the fucking trigger, Shabu. ”
“I planned to, but I feel better having permission.”
Relic released him while the thought of that act being carried out immediately began to eat at his insides like an infectious disease.
He wanted to renege on it, but then his brother would point out how he was a hypocrite—how he had downplayed and degraded women before he met one who was making him question his own beliefs.
His eyelids fluttered and torso tightened as if Joseph had punched him in it for turning into a sorry excuse of a man by seeing a woman as anything other than a doormat to walk over. The front door opening relieved Relic of the torture of getting lost inside his head.
Kennedy trotted outside with Savvy on her heels, and he gave her a studious sweep of his eyes from head to toe, ensuring that not even a hair was out of place.
Those deep irises he revered glowered at him like she was hexing him to drop dead at her pretty feet.
A smirk still broke free on his face because, even while pissed off, her close proximity sedated his mind which hadn’t slowed since hearing those gunshots while on the phone with Drish.
Relic reached out for Kennedy’s hand and frowned after she recoiled like his touch was poisonous.
“Damn, Kenn Dog! My bro can’t touch you now?
The nigga is happy to see you,” Shabu defended with a simper to lighten the mood.
His eyes flitted between them, noting the brewing tension before he suggested, “Maybe you can stay the night with Whoop. My bro will pick you up in the morning. It’s late anyway. ”
“She doesn’t need to do shit but in get in that fucking car. The doors are unlocked,” Relic stated, never taking his eyes off his pretty but problematic partner.
His patience flew out the window after Kennedy gave him an insolent reminder that she didn’t respond to being pacified like most women.
Kennedy required tough love, a hard dick, and a nigga built as strong as tempered steel to endure her truculent personality and slick tongue.
Shabu, nor anyone else, could give Relic an instruction manual on what belonged to him.
No one understood Kennedy in the manner that he did.
“Larenn. How’re we doing this, baby? Come with me, or I make you come with me. Either way, when I leave this muthafucka, so are you.”
He kept it simple, seeing no point in elaborating since it wasn’t their first go around. If she wanted him to take it there and prove that she didn’t run shit but her mouth; he gladly would.
Kennedy matched his stare, challenging him because he lost his right to lead her the moment he put her life on the line without trusting her to play her role.
Seeing Relic in the flesh gutted her from the inside out, but she put on a brave front because it was senseless to pour frustrations out to a nigga who didn’t care to hear them.
If she pointed out the ways he’d wronged her, it’d get lost in translation because none of it spoke to his logic.
Her feet rooted to the porch in defiance, refusing to budge as his head tipped in visible impatience.
Relic chuckled at her believing she truly had a choice.
“I see, my dick ain’t the only thing you love to make hard, Kennedy. Suit yourself.”
He stepped toward her, but his advance was cut short when Savvy rushed in front of Kennedy, while his brother did the same to him, pressing both hands onto his chest to stop him from going further.
His jaw muscles ticked as his eyes lowered to Shabu’s hands before lifting to stare at one third of his heart in pure indignation.
“I’m not afraid of his ass, so you can move.
” Kennedy made that announcement and went around Savvy without waiting.
She rolled up on his brother like the big dog they claimed her as before fanning him off.
“You can move too, Shabu. And before you try to warn me about your brother, you ain’t telling me shit that I don’t know.
What you don’t know is, you should be more worried about what I’ll do to his ass than what he’ll do to me. ”
Shabu stared at her like she’d lost her damn mind but moved aside after realizing she was just as bullheaded as his brother.
Kennedy stormed into Relic’s face once given the go ahead, and that weird flittering she put in his chest started.
Arguing became the last thing he cared to do with her after witnessing her stand up to his brother, reminding him of the reason he’d claimed her.
Even after what Relic had done to her, she saw him as a human being—an equal and not a monster to fear or stand down to.
Kennedy had witnessed his worst sides but refused to bitch up because she loved to challenge him.
She proved his notion as facts when she cackled dead in his face, making him frown.
“I don’t think you wanna go toe to toe with me, Relic. You have no idea where my head is at, but I see you think shit doesn’t stink. So be it.”
Kennedy sashayed away, and Relic watched her until she reached the passenger side of his car and climbed in as if she wasn’t just combating him not to go.
He didn’t have to wonder why. She had some shit to get off her chest and didn’t want his folks to witness the volatile side of her that had roped him in and made him stamp her as his.
“Man, I don’t know who to worry about more at this point. Y’all need a mediator,” Shabu stated, scratching his locs before cringing when Kennedy slammed the car door shut. “Y’all can stay here, bro. Savvy cooked dinner, and I got more liquor on deck.”
“I’ll sleep in my car before I stay here. I’m good.”
“Well, fuck you too, then. Take your ass home, and if she kills you in your sleep, don’t call my phone.”
Relic chuckled before he left his brother’s olive branch hanging and made a hasty departure.
Being around Shabu too long sent his mind on a marathon run and left the door open to discussions that he’d rather pass on.
Kennedy and her shitty mood looked more appealing than talking to his brother long enough to acknowledge their familial issues ran deeper than the Mariana Trench.
Relic was acclimated to loving Shabu in measured doses and from afar.