Epilogue #4
Smoke held his hand out to me. I grabbed it, and he pulled me up from the floor before wrapping an arm around my waist. “You think you funny?”
“I know I am.” He kissed me before I could say anything else, and I wrapped my arms around his neck.
“Can y’all help wit’ all this shit and stop bein’ nasty?” Anthony yelled from the doorway of the bedroom. “That’s how y’all got baby number one!”
Smoke lifted his head. “Get the fuck away from my door.”
“I need to know where this box goes.”
“Read the damn label.”
“It says office.”
Smoke looked at me, and I frowned. “What office?”
Anthony looked between us with a smirk on his face. “The office downstairs.”
“There isn’t an office downstairs, high ass.” I laughed.
“There is now.”
Smoke released me and took the box from Anthony. “Nigga, go be useful.” Anthony laughed and walked away.
I looked at Smoke. “What’s he talking about?”
“Come see.” He carried the box down the hallway while I followed him downstairs. The second we passed through the kitchen, I reached into one of my mother’s pans and stole a piece of chicken.
“Solace, get your damn hands out of there,” she fussed without even turning around.
I bit into it and kept walking. “I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry now,” Keyana called from somewhere behind me.
“Mind your business.”
Smoke laughed under his breath and kept going, and I followed him toward the back of the house while I finished my chicken. He stopped in front of a door that had been closed every other time I’d been there and opened it.
The room wasn’t huge, but it didn’t need to be.
A desk faced the windows, built-in shelves lined one wall, storage cabinets stood along the other, and there was enough space for me to work without taking over the dining room whenever I was home.
My monitors were still boxed, but everything else was ready.
Holding my chicken bone, I walked farther inside with my mouth open in surprise. “Babe! You did this?”
Smoke set the box down beside the desk. “Yeah.”
“When?”
“While yo’ ass was in Chicago.” I ran my hand over the marble on the desk before looking at him. Smoke leaned against the doorframe. “Figured you needed somewhere to work when you get home.”
That simple sentence did more to me than the ring had.
I looked around the room again and thought about every version of myself that had believed coming back to Bellhaven meant giving something up.
Smoke hadn’t made room for the woman I used to be.
He had made room for the woman who came back, the career she had worked her ass off for, and the baby we were about to raise together.
I walked over to him and wrapped my arms around his waist. “You like it?” He asked, palming my ass.
“I love it.”
“You better. That desk took a lot of work. I needed hella weed to get through it.”
I laughed against his chest. “You ruin everything.”
“Nah. I just wanted you to know.”
I looked up at him. “Thank you.”
Smoke kissed my forehead before his hand slid down and rested over the small curve of my stomach. He had started doing that constantly without even realizing it, and I smiled when his thumb moved slowly against me. “I love you, Lace.”
“I love you too.”
My mother yelled my name from the kitchen before I could say anything else. I sighed. “What now?”
Smoke smiled. “Yo’ friend prolly movin’ some shit she ain’t ‘posed to touch.”
“She better not be.” I left the office and headed toward the kitchen with Smoke behind me.
By the time we made it back to the kitchen, everybody had gathered around the food my mother brought. She had baked chicken, mac and cheese, yellow rice, green beans, rolls, and a big salad spread across the island, with a banana pudding and peach cobbler waiting off to the side.
“Everybody better have washed those hands!” My mother side-eyed everyone.
Smoke glanced over at her. “Who the hell you think we is, Loretta? We been movin’ boxes, not diggin’ graves.”
“I said what I said, Sherrod.”
I laughed, but we all still made our way to the sink before touching the food.
Once hands were washed, plates started filling up fast. Within minutes, everybody was eating, talking, and going back for whatever they forgot the first time.
I stood there with my own plate and looked around the kitchen, feeling overwhelmed with happiness.
Smoke stood beside me, eating from the plate in his hand while I ate from mine on the counter. He leaned over and kissed the side of my head. “You good?”
“I’m good.” I smiled and rested my hand over the small curve of my stomach.
There was nothing left for either of us to fight against, run from, or figure out.
I looked around our house, at my family, at the ring on my finger, and then down at the small bump.
I had my career, my family, the man I loved, and in six months, we would have somebody else in this house, making it even louder.
I hadn’t given up shit to get here. We had made it through the fire, and when the smoke finally cleared, all that was left was peace.