Chapter Seventeen
Tatiana
“Been That Way” by Bryson Tiller
I sat in bed with a glass of wine on the side table working through the night.
It was a little after ten when I finally washed the day off my body and climbed into bed.
My fingers glided across my keyboard like butter on toast as I confirmed a few meetings like it wasn’t the early hours of the morning.
My digital clock slowly waited its moment to turn four o’clock. I continued to work as I listened to my favorite Pandora channel lowly, careful not to disturb Nazira while she slept next to me. She randomly had those nights when she wanted to be close to me, and I never fought her on it.
There would come a time when all she wanted was time away from me, so I soaked up the moments where she just wanted to be my baby.
I smiled at her as she made a little snorting noise.
Lightly brushing her hair from her forehead, I placed a few kisses on it before shutting my computer down and climbing out of bed.
My alarm would soon ring, reminding me that I needed to work out before my day started. Routine was what kept me in order, so I tried hard never to stray from the routine that helped with mourning the death of my husband.
Lately, my workouts were less about routine or my late husband and more about Nazir Kane. I was trying to work out to forget about the night we shared a few weeks ago. I wanted to desperately forget that night. Like our last night before he left, that night was now forever etched in my brain.
The way he catered to my body, reminding me how much he loved and missed me. Reminding me that no other man would make me feel this way. Even with Karim being dead, I felt guilty because he had never been able to get that kind of reaction out of me.
Karim and I had a healthy sex life, and it was amazing. However, it wasn’t like what I expected with Nazir. Years later, and this man still owned my body, and he knew it. When he pushed inside of me, he knew that he controlled me. I was torn between hating it and loving it all at the same time.
Aside from never being able to sleep much, I was becoming frustrated with my realtor about the second location.
After seeing the location before Vegas, I knew I wanted it, but he hadn’t moved on giving us any more information on it.
He was using the excuse that he was out of the country to hold us off.
Rex thought Yaya was beautiful, so she was always able to get anything out of him with a simple bat of her eyelashes.
I knew things were bad when he wasn’t answering the call for her.
This second location for Hush was so important to me because it would bring new energy.
It was something Karim would have wanted for me, and I always wanted to make him proud.
Our Greenwich location generated a lot of revenue because so many people traveled to us.
With a location right in the city, I knew the buzz would be everywhere.
I quickly did my morning routine and changed into my workout clothes.
Instead of going to work out with Yaya this morning, I was going to work out in the home gym.
I didn’t need her pressuring me to talk about what I had going on.
All I needed was to run on the treadmill with my headphones and thoughts.
I grabbed my phone and headed downstairs to the kitchen to grab a smoothie from the fridge. My body froze when I saw Nazir sitting at the kitchen island with a bowl of cereal.
He spotted me and continued to eat his cereal. “Good morning, Mrs. Kane.”
I paused, trying to decide if I had heard him correctly. He surely didn’t call me Mrs. Kane, and he wasn’t eating my expensive protein cereal out of a mixing bowl. I had to be dreaming, because that wasn’t what was taking place right in front of my eyes.
“Nazir, what are you doing in my home?”
“Security, Tata. Emilio been working around the clock, and the nigga needed a break.” He shrugged like this wasn’t crazy.
“I…I don’t even know what to say,” I stammered, no longer concerned about the smoothie I couldn’t wait to have seconds before. “There are other members of security that could have filled in for him.”
“Why the fuck would I do that when it’s a man’s job to protect his wife?”
“What the fuck? Nazir, you sound crazy.”
He shrugged, getting up to put his bowl in the sink. “Nah, I sound like a nigga that had some of the best pussy and ain’t letting up on it.”
I stood by the fridge, and he moved closer to me. My legs wanted to move, but they were stuck like they had been glued down.
“It was just sex, Zir.”
Nazir looked down at me, holding my chin between his pointer finger and thumb. “Not even you believe that shit, Tata. All that whimpering you were doing as I fucked you hard enough to let you know I’m back, but gentle enough for you to know I missed you…us.”
A small moan escaped my lips. “Zir—”
My phone ringing interrupted the moment, and I wanted to kiss whoever was calling me. I removed myself from him and went to grab my phone from the end of the counter. Rex’s name popped up on the screen.
“Hey Rex,” I answered with a shaky voice, trying to control myself and slow down my breathing.
“Um, hi, Tatiana. Is it a good time?”
“Yes, the perfect time. What’s going on with the location?”
Rex sighed, which was a sure sign that something was wrong. “It was sold, Tatiana. The buyer offered above asking and didn’t want to send in an offer. The seller went with it and didn’t consider our offer.”
Rex didn’t sound like someone who just lost a big commission. I’ve purchased enough property with him to know when he was pissed that something slipped through his hands.
“Who is the realtor?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“The realtor for the buyer… I want to speak to him and the buyer. The Sterling money is long, and you know I can offer more and buy it from them.”
“Tatiana, I don’t thi—”
“Call them on three-way, Rex,” I replied, not wanting to hear any of the excuses I knew he would have.
“I’m the realtor, Tatiana.”
I snorted. “Figures why you’re on an island enjoying your new commission. Call the buyer, now.”
“He wanted to remain priva—”
“Call that nigga now, Rex!” I barked into the phone, coming out of character because I was pissed with him.
Have I not been his best client and always went through him for commercial properties?
Had I gotten my inheritance, I would have purchased more property with him.
My father made sure that I got married, which voided me receiving it because I married into a wealthy family.
It was a bullshit clause that I didn’t think existed.
A lot of fishy things often happened when it came to money and Malcolm Rich.
Nazir remained behind me, and his phone started to ring. I bet it was his girlfriend calling to check on him. Rex patched the call on three-way, and I paused when I heard the voice over the phone and the one behind me.
“What up, Rex?”
I ended the call and spun around on my heels to face this fucker. He kept the phone to his ear with a smirk on his face.
“She hung up?”
I reached up and snatched his phone from him. “Rex, you can go to hell. How long have I known you?”
“Tatiana, I can find you something better for half the pric—”
“Fuck you, Rex! I hope you accidentally drink something with mango in it!” I ended the call and tossed his phone across the counter.
Rex and I went to college together and lost touch after I dropped out. When the condo that was beside mine in the city went up for sale, he happened to be the realtor. I didn’t get an inheritance, but I received my condo.
“Tata, you can’t talk to our family’s realtor like that.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “I take you as security for you to snake me on a property that you weren’t even worried about.”
“The property is yours. No strings attached. I can transfer everything into your name by noon,” he said all nonchalant, like the property wasn’t worth millions of dollars.
I stood there and then stormed off downstairs to the gym. I was going to run so hard that I would have to vomit by the time I was done. What the hell was going on in my life, and why was Nazir in it? He was supposed to be a thing in the past, and he was making me see that was no longer the case.
“Tata…”
I turned as I started stretching, and he was standing there watching me. “You should be with your girlfriend and child. It was just sex, and we both know it should have never happened.”
“Why the fuck are you trying to hurt my feelings, Tata?”
I scoffed because he was serious. “Your feelings? What about my damn feelings? Nazir, this is crazy. Why are we even having this conversation? You fucked me and then had the nerve to have a little family.”
He remained quiet. “You right. I do have a little family.”
His honesty shattered me. I expected him to deny it or make an excuse, but he did the opposite.
“Get the fuck out of my house.”
“You always had a problem with hearing what you want to hear.”
I nearly broke my neck with the way I twisted to look at him. “You held an entire conversation in front of me, and never said anything to me. Fucked me knowing you had a family.”
“You allowed me to fuck knowing I had a family.”
I couldn’t turn and look at him because that was the truth. As a woman, I should have stopped whatever was going on, but I allowed it. Allowed him to have my body in a way that only he could.
“Won’t happen again.”
I could hear his house slippers shuffle across the floor. When the fuck did he get house slippers in my house?
He kneeled down until he was almost eye to eye with me. “Nazani is my daughter. Natalie is my best friend, and we have a child together.”
I snorted. “As if that ever works out. She knows that she’s your best friend?”
He nodded. “Yes. We dated before she realized that she wasn’t you, and she would rather have my friendship than try to compare to a woman who she couldn’t compete with.”
“What? That sounds crazy.”
“May sound crazy, but it’s the truth. Nobody has compared to you since I left, Tata. I’ve been in and out of relationships before I decided to just fuck. It was easier to fuck a woman than to give her what was yours.”
“Giving them dick is giving them what’s mine,” I muttered. “And sleeping with your best friend was the best course of action for you?”
Nazir laughed. “I never slept with Natalie. We kissed a few times, but I never had sex with her. She was special to me, and I knew if we crossed those lines that it would ruin things.”
“Nazir, please get out of my damn face because clearly you are playing games with me. How do you have a child and never slept with that girl?”
He finally got down on the floor with me, his legs extending on either side of me.
“We had our daughter through IVF. Natalie wanted to be a mother, and I wanted to be a father. We decided to go in half on a baby. Nazani is the best thing that has happened for the both of us, and we co-parent. She knows about you…probably too much.”
The words wouldn’t come to me because I didn’t know what to say. What did I say to an explanation like that? Two friends, deciding that their friendship meant more than trying for a relationship, had a baby.
I don’t know if I was more shocked at the fact that he had a daughter with his best friend, or the fact that Nazira had a little sister who had a similar name to hers.
“There’s so much that I don’t know about you. You come back and expect me to give you my all. Nazir, you never even introduced me to your mother or family.”
He nodded his head, understanding where I was coming from. “I was protective of you. Shit sounds like a bullshit-ass excuse, but it’s the truth. I wanted to keep you away from that side of my life. You saw me as Nazir, and I didn’t want you to see where I came from.”
“What we had was fake then.”
“You introduced me to your family? Did I sit down and shoot the breeze with Malcolm Rich?”
He had me there. Nazir had been a secret like he made me his secret. I was afraid for the same reasons that he was. I feared my father would judge him and force me to end things. My mother would take one look at him and tell me that I could do better.
Nazir didn’t come from wealth, and that was what they expected from me. They wanted me to marry a man who could take care of me, and at that time, Malcolm couldn’t do that. I never held it against him, though.
“I never cared about the money, Zir.”
“That shit is easy to say when you have money. For me, everything was about money because I had a family to take care of, a father who died in prison…a mother who needed help, and a sister who needed to be raised. So, it was always about money for me. I couldn’t take you away from what you knew and introduce you to struggle. Nah, I wasn’t going to be that nigga.”
“We could have made it together. I’m not so far removed that I don’t realize that all people don’t live like this.”
He stroked my cheek. “The only thing I want to introduce you to is more wealth…never seeing you struggle. I don’t want that for my daughters.”
It was the way he said “daughters” that made me smile.
“I don’t know, Nazir. It’s so much.”
He kissed both of my hands. “Nothing has to be figured out today. I want to know my daughter, and whatever way you think works is the way we’ll do it.”
I ignored the call from my lawyer and placed my phone on the machine behind us. “Okay.”
“Give me a chance to make things right between us in the process. Let me love you and give you dick until tears spill from your eyes again, baby. Tata, give me a chance to break down those walls.”
“Nothing has to be figured out today,” I said, repeating his words, unsure if I wanted to grant him permission to break down my walls.
It was because I knew that he would. He would break them down and have me back in love with him. I couldn’t deal with that right now, and he respected that.
The softness of his lips caressed mine as he went to get up.
“Mommy?”
I heard Nazira’s voice at the top of the stairs. “Yes, baby? I’m working out.”
“Can I come down?”
“Yes, of course.”
Nazir went and sat on one of the sofas off to the side. I heard her feet coming down the steps.
She noticed Nazir first and smiled. “Hey, twin.”
“What’s going on, pretty girl?”
I melted when he called her “pretty girl” and looked at my baby. She came and climbed right into my lap as I kissed her on the head.
“Did you sleep well?”
It didn’t matter how old she got. She would always be my baby girl.
“I have to talk to you about something, Mommy,” she whispered.
“Okay, is it a secret? Why are we whispering?”
She had a serious expression on her face, and I became serious, too.
“What’s wrong, Zira? You’re worrying me.”
“Mommy, I saw Bloom kissing Pop-Pop,” she replied.
I looked over at Nazir, and we shared the same expression.