22. Echo
ECHO
I set Forever’s wedding bands on the nightstand in her apartment while she showered, then went back to mine.
We were past moving slow, and how I’d wanted her to remember first; none of it mattered anymore.
The only thing that’d satisfy me now was her wearing the rings that signified our commitment and killing Jayden for thinking she was his to claim.
“When you invite people to your home, you shouldn’t leave them waiting for a lifetime,” Solei complained from the kitchen, while digging through my fridge.
I cut my eyes at Oliver to find him engrossed in his phone. Now was the perfect time to drop the news.
“Your mother’s name wasn’t Aurelia Samuels but Soleme Fairchild,” I confessed, sort of enjoying the way they slowly turned to look at me. “She has a twin brother named Solomon, who’s the head of the Collective.”
“Aww,” Solei said, closing the fridge. “Do you think that’s why she gave me an S name?”
I ignored her and waited for Oliver to ask the question, which he wouldn’t want the answer to if there were bad news attached.
Solei didn’t care if our mother was alive or dead; she never had. As for our brother, guilt ate at him more than anything.
He was the reason Forever wanted to dig into her whereabouts to begin with. They had a bond, the three of them, and it meant something to my wife. Their needs and wants went from being just mine to ours.
“Is she dead?” Oliver finally asked, looking at me expectantly.
I shook my head.
“Nah, she’s alive and asking for my help. Just not in the way we thought.”
He nodded and sat back.
“So, she wants something from you?” Solei asked before kissing her teeth. “I told both of you she would be no good.”
It didn’t surprise me that the woman who loved her mother deeply as a kid felt indifference for her now. Anger disguised as indifference.
“You still mad about her leaving and can’t even admit it,” Oliver argued, like always. “Why should we listen to you?”
Here we go.
I dropped down on the love seat to let them get their quarterly argument out of the way in peace.
“Because I’m not thinking with my emotions!” she yelled, throwing her hands up. “Your mother leaving don’t have shit to do with the argument you had. No matter what you did that night, she was going to always leave us, Oliver.”
He knew it to be true; we all did.
But Solei and I hadn’t been the last ones to see her like him.
“Yeah, but that ain’t mean she wanted her only daughter to become—”
It was on the tip of my tongue to stop him, but to my surprise, it was Forever who stepped in.
“It’s probably best you keep that to yourself,” she mused, looking between them with a familiar frown on her face. “I feel like I’ve heard this argument before, because I’m tired of it already. Say sorry and make up.”
This woman amazed me.
“Sorry,” they both mumbled at the same time, which made me laugh and earn a glare from my baby.
She was holding onto a paddle brush and spray bottle in one hand, hair wild and hanging slightly in her face. I smiled and rested my head in my hand.
“You need something from me, my forever?”
Solei gagged, but we both knew she was locked into whatever was happening, Oliver, too.
Forever pushed her closed fist out and opened it, revealing her wedding bands inside.
“You didn’t give them to me properly,” she said, tilting her head.
This beautiful creature had me wrapped around her fingers.
“My bad, baby,” I replied, standing and crossing the room to her. “Please allow me to make it up to you.”
I took the rings from her hands and got down on one knee.
Oliver and Solei were snickering like two bad ass kids, but I didn’t give a fuck. Whatever my baby asked for, she’d get.
“Forever Reid Cannon, my pretty dragonfly, will you allow me to properly give you these rings and recommit to being the only man worthy of your love?”
Her smile did it for me; she was mine all over again, and wanted to be mine all over again.
“Yes,” she agreed, holding her hand out. “And I’ll recommit to being your wife, Demetrius Cannon.”
I slipped the engagement ring on first, then the wedding band to complete the set, and stood.
“Much better,” she murmured, taking my left hand after spotting the ring on it. “Thank you.”
I pulled her into me and kissed her forehead.
“This is so disgustingly beautiful,” Solei said, walking to the door. “It’s time for me to go. Whatever you guys agree to, I’m down. But I’m only doing it for the two of you, not your mother.”
She left, and Oliver looked between Forever or me.
“I know you don’t care one way or another,” he said, gaze meeting mine. “And truthfully, I don’t know how I feel about all this. There’s more, right?”
I nodded and broke down our encounter with Lucien.
“They couldn’t ask you themselves?”
Forever took a couple steps back and said, “I’ll leave you two to talk.”
But Oliver shook his head before she turned away.
“I’d actually like to hear what you think,” he told her.
She cut those dark eyes my way, and I nodded. One day she’d get back to the point of including herself without permission.
“Meeting them now wouldn’t give us anything to look forward to,” she said, cutting through the lingering silence. “Taking their decision-making power and moving our own pieces on the board should bring one or both of them to us.”
I nodded.
Forever and I had decided after I dicked her down until the sun came up.
“Giving them back their power and uniting Everwood is a tall order,” Oliver mused, always thinking and plotting. “It makes sense to put some of our own pieces in play while we can.”
“I knew you were smart,” she exclaimed with a smile. “We got along well, didn’t we?”
He chuckled but left his response at that.
“What do you need from me?”
She pointed her brush at him.
“Demetrius said you were good at peopling, and I got to witness it the night of the gala. So, how about we shake shit up early and make you the secret head of the Everwood Group. I know just the person to place as the face. It’s best to move Millicent out the way now.”
I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
“I agree, my forever. But there’s no need to hide the real reason you want her out of your sight.”
She kissed her teeth and left, letting the door slam behind her.
“You being in love frightens me.”
I turned my attention to him.
“Do you accept? And if the answer is yes, is it because of our mother or Carmen?”
He immediately started toward the door, and I had my answer.
“If you don’t feel like you could kill your own brother for her, she isn’t the one.”
Our eyes met, and he smiled before leaving.
Mm.
Maybe she was the one.
I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Joel.
Gather the immediate family in the community building and prepare for my arrival in three hours.
There were twelve hours left before we needed to give Lucien an answer, enough time for me to fill the family in about everything. Including Forever.
I’m bringing a guest.
I went across the hall in search of my wife, knowing she struggled with her hair after nights I had the thick strands wrapped around my fingers.
As expected, she was in the bathroom with her hair sectioned into four parts. I took the spray bottle from her and finished wetting the section she started with.
“You think I’m too obsessed?” I asked, trading the bottle for the paddle brush. “I learned how to detangle your hair cause I’m that in love with you.”
She watched me in the mirror, gently starting at the ends of her hair and working my way up to the root. I finished three before she dropped her gaze.
“I think I really want to catch up.”
Her response made a nigga feel good.
“You want it slicked back?”
Forever nodded and opened the jar of gel, already certain I knew how to style her hair, too. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t or wouldn’t learn to do for her.
“Try not to kill my uncle when he starts to puff his chest a little too far out. My grandmother would be devastated.”
She met my gaze in the mirror, just as I secured the low bun.
“Are you blaming your low tolerance for disrespect on me?” she asked, frown deepening. “Why do I feel this is a recurring thing?”
I smiled and turned to leave.
For somebody who didn’t remember anything about us, she learned quickly. Forever had the patience of a saint, me not so much.
“There’s a stop we need to make along the way. Meet me downstairs when you’re finished.”
I was halfway to the door when she barreled into me and wrapped her arms around my waist from behind.
“I took good care of you, right?” she asked, the question muffled by my shirt. “I hope I wasn’t taking advantage of your love.”
Her concern fed a starved part of me. That desire she’d had to be my everything would peek through the fog soon.
“Nah, baby, you made a nigga feel like a king,” I told her. “Ain’t no doubt in mind we’ll get back to that. I’m happy right now, regardless.”
She didn’t let go, so I turned in her arms to hold her properly.
I understood what she was feeling to an extent. We were starting over, but I was wholly invested in her already, and she wasn’t quite there yet. But we were making progress, and that’s what counted.
“I’ll meet you downstairs,” she said after a while, slipping out of my arms and back to her bedroom.
We moved in silence once on the road. I could tell she was in her head about everything, and only wanted to be near her while she did it.
“You’ve become predictable…” She cut her eyes at me as I pulled in front of the Hollands’ private clinic near the compound.
Alyssa and her husband lived and worked on our private grounds, but the Holland family as a unit was successful enough to fend for themselves and lived all over the city near their many free clinics.
“Oh yeah? Did you guess I’d bring you here, or is there something else on your mind, Dragonfly?”
Since meeting her, she was either my forever or my pretty dragonfly. Whatever the situation called for.
Her silence felt more related to work than anything personal.
“I know you don’t want to do anything that’ll put us in harm’s way—”
I shook my head.
“Don’t take my willfulness to give in to your every desire as a weakness you need to fix, Forever…” She took her seat belt off and turned to face me. “Your wants are my needs, don’t make me tell you again.”
This was about my mother, and it didn’t need to be.
“I know you see working with them as an opportunity to break free completely,” I added, not giving her time to fight me on it. “Do I have permission to walk the same path as you? Life or death, all I want is to be together.”
She stared like I made no sense, but deep down, I could tell my words were feeding the old her. The one who would kneel for me if I asked.
“Saying no to you is becoming my worst opposition,” my pretty dragonfly replied, a tiny frown tugging at her full lips. “Permission granted. But if I feel like you’re being used in a way that harms more than helps, I’ll kill everybody, and you aren’t allowed to stop me.”
I stuck my pinky out and she tipped her head at it.
“What does that mean?”
“This is me agreeing and sealing the deal. Pinky promise.”
Forever looked up, nose and eyebrows scrunched, but didn’t hesitate to hook her pinky with mine.
“Are you always this childish?”
I nodded, and her lips spread.
Mmhm. You love me already, don’t you?
“We have to press our thumbs together,” she said, frowning, then smiling again in quick succession. “I remember this.”
Before I came into the picture, the woman had never sworn or promised to do anything in her life that hadn’t equated to ending a life.
I pressed my thumb to hers, and we leaned in to kiss them at the same time. She tried to pull back after it was complete, but I wrapped her fingers up with mine and tightened the hold.
“Now be a good dragonfly,” I murmured, giving a quick kiss before releasing her. “Alyssa fit you in for blood work and scans on her off day, be nice.”
She snorted and pushed her door open.
“Why would I be mean to Alyssa ?”
My lips lifted until they couldn’t anymore, but I didn’t respond until we were on the sidewalk together.
“I’ll never lie to you. Ask the question, my forever.”
She crossed her arms, not liking how well I could read her. Even after she’d fallen for me, my ability to pick up on cues nobody else paid attention to wasn’t easy for my girl.
“You two look at one another like there were feelings before,” she said, staring up at me like whatever I told her, she’d believe it. “The idea of that fills me with a lot of rage, but I won’t be mean. She didn’t do anything to me.”
There was my sweet assassin.
“When we were twelve, our grandfathers made a marriage pact on our behalf. It would’ve been a good look, me marrying the daughter from a family of rejecting doctors.
But she and I never had romantic feelings for one another.
Alyssa is married, and I see them as part of the family.
You don’t have anything to worry about, but I could easily fix that. Just say the word.”
Her eyes searched mine, then she rolled them and walked toward the clinic’s entrance.
“No need to plot the murder of your childhood friend, Demetrius…” She turned right as I stepped behind her. “But, thank you for—”
I kissed her, purposely stealing some of the gloss from her lips cause it tasted good.
“For what, my forever?”
It pleased me, watching how hard she struggled to keep control.
“—reassuring me,” she whispered without missing a beat.
Pleasing my wife in every way possible was the bare minimum in my eyes. She deserved so much more.