Chapter 13
Afew days had passed since I’d last talked to Princess.
I had always prided myself on being able to put away my emotions when it came to my time in the studio.
No matter what went on in my life, I could walk into a studio and shut the rest of it off.
Bills, woman problems, family bullshit, doubt—none of it mattered past that soundproof door.
Music never judged me. It listened, and it gave back to me.
But that day, when I stepped into the studio, I didn’t feel safe.
When I walked into the booth, Malik was already inside. With his hood pulled up and his head down, he went over his lyrics. He didn’t look up when I walked through the room. He lifted one finger as if to say, give me one second, please, and then nodded when he felt ready.
I respected that about him. Most young artists came into studios, raring to get going before they even knew music theory.
Malik came into sessions wanting to warm up like he was, in fact, learning.
He took notes every time I pulled him aside to speak, and it was as if he took my advice in that very first session and immediately went to work.
“You sleep?” I asked him through the glass.
He smirked. “Kind of. Been up rewriting that second verse. Said it didn’t hurt deep enough last time.”
I nodded. I was proud he even remembered that.
“I just don’t want to be hype and rap, you feel me?” He continued without any arrogance in his voice. “I wanna build. I don’t wanna be hot for just the summer.
I pressed play. The beat filled the room, loud and cinematic. Detroit 808’s laid over an orchestral sample. It was the music that demanded your attention. Normally, I would feel it wash over me the second it began. Instead, I felt heavy.
He entered the first verse, calm and collected. He wasn’t trying to rush his lines or chase the beat. He just coasted on it like he was supposed to be there.
Halfway through the first verse, I realized I didn’t hear a single bar.
Something Princess said earlier had echoed in my mind and drowned everything out.
We don’t know how to not hurt each other.
I cut the track. Malik sharply snapped his neck to look at me behind the glass.
“What happened?”
“Again,” I said.
He stared at me for a moment with his brows dipped.
Then he nodded and adjusted his headphones.
He ran it again. It was even stronger this time.
It was clearer and hungrier. I knew he meant the pain behind his words.
He lived and breathed for this, just as I had at his age.
He hit the pocket in the second half so smoothly that it should’ve made me react.
When he finished, he waited. Usually, I would have been building, critiquing, coaching, or at least talking from that moment. Instead, I just stared down at the board.
“You want me to punch in that last line?” he asked, cutting through the silence.
I looked up slowly. “Which line?”
He frowned and let out a breath. “The one where I flipped the hook cadence.”
I hadn’t even noticed. I didn’t remember him doing that. That bothered me more than anything. I frowned and shook my head. Malik stepped out of the booth and walked into the control room. The door slung open, and he stood there with one hand on the handle as the headphones hung around his neck.
“You good?” he asked quietly. “You like . . . somewhere else.”
I stared at him for a moment. I thought my expression was blank, but it must have been something else because he quickly tried to correct himself.
“I’m not being disrespectful,” he replied. “I just . . . You usually locked in. You hear everything. You woulda said something by now.”
He was right. That kid paid attention. That was why he was different.
“I’m good,” I said out of instinct. But even I could hear the lie in it.
Malik opened his mouth to say something else, but my phone dinged from my pocket. I clicked the side button to make it stop, but the dings came back-to-back. He looked at my struggle to stop the noise, and he chuckled.
“It’s all good, bruh. Go ahead and check that.
I’m ’bout to order somethin’ on DoorDash.
” He came inside, letting the door gently close behind him, before walking over to the couch behind me.
Once he sat down, he plopped one leg on the table in front of him.
With his phone out, he scrolled through and didn’t look up at me again.
I pushed away from the soundboard and pulled my phone out. When I glanced at the screen, I saw there were multiple texts from Yana.
I felt my chest tighten.
Yana: What time we gotta be at the airport for Auntie Kennedy’s wedding?
Yana: Did you get your tux fitted already?
Yana: You should see the shoes mom got for me. They so cute.
For a second, I just stared at them, relieved that it wasn’t anything bad. Only the Lord knew I didn’t need any more bad news. Suddenly, what she’d asked flashed across my mind.
Kennedy’s wedding back home in Detroit. Me, walking her down the aisle. Princess was going to be there. It would be the three of us: Yana, Princess, and me in all the pictures.
I had no idea whether Princess was even still going.
I typed my response out carefully.
Me: Ask your mom when y’all coming. She booked the flights.
I hit send and immediately regretted it. I felt like I had put Yana in the middle of my mess.
The three dots popped up almost instantly.
Yana: She told me to ask you.
That made my stomach drop in a different way. Princess hadn’t forgotten the flight details. She was the most organized person I knew. If anything, she probably had the confirmation emails printed and color-coded already. She wasn’t confused. She was redirecting.
Another text came through.
Yana: Why y’all acting weird?
I swallowed. The room suddenly felt too small. I glanced back at Malik, who was still scrolling on his phone. I turned around and typed back.
Me: Who acting weird.
A small twist shot through my stomach. Yana had noticed the shift between her mother and me. She was old enough to understand, even if we were apart from each other.
Her reply came quicker than I expected, and I had no time to brace for it.
Yana: Yes y’all are. I thought the baby stuff was just rumors? I seen the blogs.
That felt like more than just a text; it felt like she held a mirror to me and forced me to look at myself. She had seen the blogs. Of course, she had. She was at that age where social media wasn’t just entertainment, but it was information as well.
I leaned back in the chair and exhaled. I still had my back to the soundboard, but I felt the stare from Malik, which burned through the back of my head. I didn’t care. I couldn’t control the heaviness that sat in my hands.
Yana wasn’t asking about gossip. She didn’t ask whether the blogs were true or not or even mention if the kids were at school whispering in the hallways. She was asking about stability. She was asking whether her parents were okay or not.
She was asking whether her Auntie Kennedy’s wedding would look like the picture we all had in our heads just a few weeks before, during spring break, when we were joking and laughing around Los Angeles; whether she would see her mama dressed up, me in a tux, and all of us walking into the church as if we belonged to each other.
Her text made me read more between the lines. She wasn’t asking for flight information. She was asking if she would be safe in the middle of us—if this thing we were building was cracking.
I typed out a response but then erased it. I had to get it right. I spun around in my chair and then typed again.
Me: It is rumors. Don’t let that stuff get in your head.
She opened the text, and I saw that she read it. There was a longer pause that time. I waited for a second until the three dots appeared again.
Yana: Then why she ain’t just tell me the flight time?
That hit harder than the rumor question. Princess hadn’t told her to ask me because she didn’t know. She told her to ask me because she didn’t want to speak for me. That small shift was loud. Yana sent another message before I could respond.
Yana: I don’t like that y’all doing this.
I exhaled at those words. She had seen this before.
She’d seen tension and distance before when her mama was going through a divorce with the man she’d known to be her father growing up.
My throat went dry. I suddenly saw it from her perspective: two parents who had finally found their way back to each other, now moving stiffly again, talking through her instead of to each other.
That was how confusion grew in a child. I knew that all too well.
Me: I’ll check the flight info and send it to you. And we’ll talk tonight. I promise we good.
That word promise felt fragile. She didn’t respond right away. That silence from her felt heavier than any argument with Princess.
Before I realized it, Malik had walked over and was by my side.
“Everything straight?”
“I’m good, bruh. What you order?” I quickly locked my screen and slid the phone into my pocket.
“Cava, nigga. I been here in L.A. so long, y’all done turnt me into a bougie nigga.”
I laughed. “Ain’t nothing bougie about the nutrients you put in your body, my boy! You ain’t get me nothin’?”
“You know I got you . . . I got you that spicy lamb and sweet potato bowl. I don’t miss nothin’!”
I laughed again. “Yeah, I hear you. My shit better be right too! Get back in the booth. Let’s do this shit.”
I turned back to the console, and Malik stepped back into the booth. I played it cool, but something inside me still felt the weight of everything.
Behind the glass, Malik stepped behind the microphone, energized. He placed his headphones over his ears. “This next take gon’ be it,” he said. “I can feel it.”
I looked at him. He was determined and focused.
I knew he was building something brick by brick.
In that moment, I realized something I hadn’t before.
He wasn’t just another artist I wanted on my roster.
He had been watching me, studying me. He was learning what leadership looked like from me.
If I handled this situation wrong, if I were to hide behind silence, it wouldn’t just cost me the relationship I tried to build with Princess.
It would cost me my daughter’s trust.
It would cost me my prodigy’s stability.
And it would cost me becoming the kind of man I kept claiming I wanted to be.
For years, I had used work as an escape, but escape didn’t build legacy. Presence did.
That day, I finally felt the weight of how my silence wasn’t just affecting one relationship.
It would cost me everything.