Chapter 12
Iwoke up the next morning with the weight of yesterday’s events still on me.
I caught a crook in my neck from the way I’d slept.
After I left Amora’s, I drove straight to the studio.
Malik and I laid another track, then we chopped it up over a few glasses of champagne.
I may have gotten a little tipsier than I’d intended; I woke up in bed, fully clothed, with my arms and legs spread across like the letter X.
I wasn’t a heavy drinker, but after the day I’d had yesterday, it was the first thing I thought I needed.
My bedroom was quiet. The curtains were half-closed, but the sun had forced its way through the blinds anyway. I blinked a few times and stared at the ceiling, replaying the scene from Amora’s living room in my mind.
My phone vibrated on the nightstand. I didn’t have to pick it up to know there were more emails, missed calls, and/or calendar reminders, but I did it anyway.
With my arm stretched in the air as I continued to lie across the bed, I tapped the message from the only person that mattered from the piled-up list of notifications.
Kam: Lab appointment pending. I’ll confirm.
I rubbed my face with my free hand and sat up slowly.
He handled everything, like always. I knew it was a part of his job as my manager, but I appreciated the genuine, big-brotherly love he showed me. However, I knew this wasn’t something he should manage for me.
I unlocked my phone and scrolled through the notifications. My name was trending, but only in small corners of the internet. Nothing was official yet, just whispers here and there. Hints.
I locked the screen. That shit could wait.
I swung my legs off the bed and stood there for a second, letting the silence stretch. I should’ve called Princess the night before. I knew that. I just convinced myself I needed one more hour. That turned into one more thought and then one more plan.
Quit being a bitch.
I unlocked my phone and quickly hit her name before I could talk myself out of it. I swore I heard the longest, loudest rings I’d ever heard in my life.
“Hello?” Princess answered the phone dryly. There was no softness to it, or at least that was what I thought I heard.
“Hey,” I said. My voice sounded heavier than I expected. “You good?”
“I’m fine.”
There was a brief moment of silence between us. Then she sliced through it.
“You ain’t ask how my flight was,” she added calmly.
That caught me off guard. “What?”
“My flight yesterday,” she said. “You ain’t ask.”
I closed my eyes briefly and let out the breath I was holding. “Oh, my bad. I just. . . I just got busy.”
She didn’t respond. It grew quiet again, so I cut in.
“Prin,” I said carefully. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “I’m straight, Zay.”
“Oh,” I said carefully.
“You good?” she asked with a puzzled tone.
“I’m okay.”
“Hmmm, that’s interesting. Because word on the internet is that Zay Woods got another baby,” Princess shot back. Her tone leveled. I couldn’t decipher if she was upset or not.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. I had rehearsed it in my head ten different ways, yet none of it felt right in the moment.
I opened my mouth, but before I could speak a word, she cut back in.
“Before you say anything,”—her voice was steady but firmer—“think hard. And be honest. I only want the truth, Zay.” That did something to me. I didn’t know what I expected her reaction to be, but what she whispered next was what shocked me the most. “Just please, tell me it’s not true.”
She didn’t yell. She didn’t scream. Her voice was small, almost defeated. I instantly felt bad. My initial thought was to deny it, or just downplay it a little, laugh it off. Then I realized she deserved the truth. No matter what it would do to our relationship, Princess deserved the truth.
I swallowed, then took a deep breath. “Amora had a baby.” Silence followed. I continued to pour it all out. “I went to see her. I brought Kam with me,” I added in with a little rush. “We’re doing a DNA test.”
There was another pause. I sighed, sat back on the bed, and placed one hand over my head.
I felt as if it would be the end. I recalled the last time I was on the other end of the phone, when I went on tour in Amsterdam.
I delivered her this same news. I felt terrible back then, the same way I felt when those words left my lips.
After that conversation, she hadn’t spoken to me again.
My heart pounded at that thought. Would I lose her? Would this be the end of what could be?
“Is it your baby, Zay?” she asked.
“I . . .” I hesitated. “I really don’t know.”
“What happened when you went over there? What did she say to you?”
“She just showed me the baby. I asked her why she didn’t tell me. She said her plan was adoption, but she changed her mind. I told her we need to handle it the right way, and I wanted a DNA test.”
“And . . . you wasn’t gon’ tell me.” Her voice wavered.
“I didn’t want to stress you over something that might not even be mine,” I replied. “I wanted facts first.”
I heard her sigh from the other end of the phone. “So you made that decision for me.”
“That wasn’t—”
“You decide what I can handle,” she continued gently. “You decided what was best for me. Again.”
The word ‘again’ hit like it had back when we were teenagers, crazy in love, and even more hurt. I knew it had killed her inside. I took a deep breath, then exhaled.
“I was trying to protect what we just rebuilt,” I said.
“And I was trusting you,” she replied.
I stood up and started pacing. “Prin, I was going to tell you.”
“When?” she asked. “After the blogs confirmed it? After I got tagged in all the bullshit?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s what happened.”
I rubbed my forehead. I hadn’t even thought of that.
Of course, the internet was going to be the internet.
They always took a story, twisted it, and turned it into entertainment without any facts.
People didn’t care what was true. They just wanted something messy to talk about.
I was sure they tagged her or her team in some blogs.
Then I shook my head. I had to be honest with myself.
None of it was the people on the internet’s fault.
It wasn’t even Amora’s fault. It was mine.
Princess was right. I should have told her sooner, regardless of how I felt.
All that she asked me was to be honest with her. I didn’t give that to her.
“I’m handling it,” I said. “The test. The lawyers. Everything.”
“That’s not what hurts,” she replied. Her voice changed into a softer tone, more honest. “What hurts is that you didn’t tell me.” I didn’t have a comeback for that. She was right. I remained silent and let her get it all out. “I feel so stupid,” she continued quietly.
My chest tightened. “Stupid? For what?”
“For throwing myself at you last week. For believing we were ready for this.”
That cut me deep. “Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true. We said we weren’t going to move fast. We said we were going to be careful. I guess I should’ve known better.”
“Prin, really? Come on—”
“I’m not blaming you. It’s on me. You shut me out the moment you decided I couldn’t stand beside you. You didn’t even give me a chance not to run away this time.”
I stopped pacing. I didn’t even realize what she meant until that moment. I did shut her out. I had decided that she would leave. I did decide that she couldn’t handle it and would run away, but I never intended to push her away from me in the process.
“I wasn’t trying to push you away.”
“Well, you did,” she repeated.
Silence filled the line again.
“So what you sayin’?” I asked, my voice low.
“I’m saying . . . maybe we moved too fast,” she admitted. “Maybe we need to go back to what worked.”
My throat went dry. “What worked?”
“Just learning to co-parent,” she replied. That word felt colder than it should have. “We know how to do that,” she continued. “We know how to figure out how to be good parents. We don’t know how to not hurt each other.”
“Prin—”
“I’m not running away. I’m not disappearing. But I need space. I need to feel like I’m not competing with chaos.”
“You not competing with nothing,” I said.
“It just doesn’t feel like that.” Her voice cracked enough for me to know she was trying to hold it together. “I just . . . I need to step back,” she finished. “This feels like history repeating itself.”
I winced at the pain of how deep that cut. “I never wanted to hurt you again,” I said.
“I know,” she replied.
The other end was quiet again. I stepped out of my room and walked down the hallway.
“I gotta go,” she added quietly. “I have meetings.”
“Princess—”
“Handle your business,” she said. “Figure your shit out. Then call me.”
The line went dead. When I stepped into the living room, I lowered the phone, threw my head back, and stared at the ceiling.
It felt like the first time this happened all over again.
She disappeared completely then. This time, she said she wasn’t going to.
She just said she was going to step back.
But I couldn’t help but recognize that tone, that distance, that same careful movement.
I walked to the living room to grab a bottled water from the fridge, but none were there.
“Damn!” I exclaimed. “Motherfuckers keep wasting all the water!”
I stood there with my hand on the fridge and stared at it as if it had just disrespected me.
I was frustrated, but it wasn’t about the water.
It was the way someone could come in, crack something open inside of you, take what they wanted, then leave the rest sitting on the counter as if it never mattered—like it wasn’t worth finishing.
As my frustration settled, something hit me in my gut. That was probably how Princess felt.
She probably felt she opened herself up, let me take what I wanted, and I still found a way to leave her feeling empty inside.
I swallowed hard. The irritation turned into shame so fast that my stomach twisted as I came to a revelation. Princess had stepped back because she was tired of feeling wasted.