Chapter 3
I watched Jaxxon step out of the oversized SUV.
His gleaming white sneakers hit the ground first. My eyes swept up from there—highly toned, warm hued legs, torso, and arms were visible, and finally, the piece de resistance .
. . his beautiful face. He wore a Chicago Coyotes baseball cap and a bright smile.
“Get over here.” He beckoned to me from where I leaned against my own truck, awaiting his arrival.
My own smile was as bright as his, and I had to stop my feet from running to him. When we were close enough, I fell into his arms. He wrapped me up and held me tight. I melted into the cocoon of love. The bastion of safety. After hugging me for a few moments, he lifted my chin and kissed my lips.
“I ain’t know if you would be here when I got here.”
“You asked me to,” I reminded him, still languishing in his muscled arms.
“I know, but you’re so fucking hardheaded, Home. You don’t do what I tell you. You do what you wanna do.”
I chuckled lightly, because he was telling the truth. I hated the thought of people telling me what to do. I liked to control my own self.
“The house has furniture?” He nodded to the two-story home that stood behind us. The home I helped him pick out, that he bought sight unseen.
“The house is furnished.”
“You like the house?”
“I love the house,” I assured him.
“Let’s go inside.”
We made our way up the walk, and I handed him the key.
He unlocked the place, swung open the door, and stepped inside the spacious two-story foyer.
The decorator I worked with took my affinity for the modern organic style and ran with it.
The décor was minimal, with clean lines, and a neutral color pallet—lots of white, and natural wood tones throughout. I loved it.
Jaxxon did a 360-degree turn before letting his eyes meet mine. “This looks like you, Skyy. It’s modern and minimal.” He ran his hand along the console table that sat near the front door. “All the furniture has clean lines. And all this damn white.”
“I know. I know. When I was picking out fabric, my eye just kept being drawn to the white. I really wanted to incorporate more color, but?—”
He cut me off, a grin on his handsome face. “I see that you incorporated some blue.”
I chuckled. “Blue is my signature color, Jay. Hello. My name is Skyy.”
“I like everything about it, so far. It’s the opposite of the house on Iredia.”
One of Jaxxon’s first purchases when he made it to the league was a home on the Caribbean Island of Iredia.
At the time, I thought I wanted to be an interior designer, even though I had a degree in sports management.
I couldn’t find work in my field, and I liked decorating.
I thought it would be a good fit. But decorating Jaxxon’s place showed me that some things were just meant to be hobbies for some people.
I liked decorating for fun and having a big budget.
I liked looking at fabrics and shopping for furniture.
I wasn’t interested in measuring. Interior design had way more math in it than I realized.
I didn’t want to know formulas. I wanted to choose what went where.
I had fun decorating Jaxxon’s place, but I hadn’t done it since.
Not until he asked me to decorate the home we were standing in.
“Ugh, I was twenty-three when I decorated that place. I didn’t have any taste. I need to fly back out there and redecorate it. It’s dated and probably looks a mess.”
“Let’s talk. Which way is the living room or the family room?”
“You don’t wanna get your stuff out of the truck? Get settled?”
“I’ll get my suitcase later. The stuff from my house in Oregon won’t be here until Saturday.”
“Okay. You’re not hungry? You don’t want to eat?”
“We’ll eat. I’m taking you out to eat. Remember, I have to go to the baseball game tonight. The South Siders are playing the North Siders. Mickey, my rep, sent me a hat for each team. I’m supposed to wear one for half the game, then switch.”
“That’s dumb. I’ll just wear one . . . or are you contractually obligated to wear both?”
He chuckled. “Nah. You can wear one, and then we’ll switch.”
“Whatever.” I led him into the family room.
“At least the couches aren’t white. I don’t know what the hell I would do with white couches, except dirty them up.”
The sofa was a cream-colored chenille-type fabric. “It’s a performance fabric. These covers come off, and you can throw them right in the washing machine.”
We sat down, side by side, Jaxxon’s arm leaning against mine.
I scooted over a millimeter because if I scooted over more than that, he would start with the whining. “You always have to be touching somebody.”
“And you can never stand anybody touching you.”
“It’s a whole sofa, Jay. There’s no reason for us to touch.”
He eyed me before scooting over a fraction of an inch. “Yo, whatever. Let’s talk. I’m ready to address the elephant in the room, the agreement.”
“The agreement.” I took my phone out of my purse.
“What do you have your phone for? This was a verbal agreement. Nothing was written down.”
“I know. I know,” I assured him. “I just have some . . . addendums that I need to add to the original agreement.”
“What was the original agreement, as you remember it?”
I adjusted myself on the sofa so that we were facing each other. “The agreement as I remember it was, if neither of us is married, or otherwise . . . engaged by the time we make thirty, we’ll see if we can make something shake between the two of us. Is that how you remember it?”
He nodded.
“Okay. So, when we said make something shake , what specifically did we mean?” I questioned.
“Right. We didn’t define it at the time, but it definitely needs to be defined.
” He paused before sighing deeply. “I’ve never made it a secret how I feel about you.
You’re my heart. I want to explore everything there is to explore with and about you.
I want to be your man, . . . but I need you to want me to be your man.
When we made this pact, we were kids in our early twenties.
Even though I’ve been teasing you about it for years, I’m not expecting you to keep the pact if you don’t want me as your man. ”
“I think we should skip straight to marriage,” I told him.
His jaw dropped, and his eyes widened simultaneously. His eyebrows immediately furrowed. I reached out and massaged the space between them on his forehead, to get him to relax them.
“What?” he questioned.
“What, what? We know each other inside and out, Jay. We love each other. We’ve dated each other.
I mean, you’ve taken me on trips, bought me gifts, flown me here, there, and everywhere.
What else is there for us to do except get married?
I mean, if you wanna be my man, and want me to be your girl—how much more you being my man, and me being your girl is there than marriage? ”
“Your mouth is so fucking reckless, Skyy. Do you hear yourself? Do you get what you’re saying to me? If we get married, you get that you’ll belong to me, right? I’m not having no marriage of convenience with you.”
“I get it.”
“Do you? Because in all these years, you’ve never wanted to belong to me. Now all of a sudden, you want to belong to me? What’s going on? You got an incurable disease? What’s going on?”
“First of all, it was never that I didn’t want to belong to you.
I couldn’t belong to you, Jay. I don’t want to say you were careless, but you were too .
. . carefree. Nothing anybody, any female ever did looked like it was crossing the line to you.
Everything those bitches did looked like they were crossing the line to me.
We were coming from two different places, and it would’ve broken us up.
You would have thought I was overreacting.
I would’ve gotten resentful because I would’ve felt like you were blowing my feelings off. It wasn’t worth it.”
“And you think it’ll be different now?”
“I know it’ll be different now. You’re different now.”
“No paper marriage. A real marriage.”
I grinned at him. “A real marriage.”
“You move in . . . here. You change your name to either Skyy McKissick or Skyy House-McKissick. You wear your ring. You give my mother the grandkids she’s been hounding me about. You sit in the stands with the other wives. Right?”
“Right.” My eyes went soft, and my heart started to thump in my chest. I understood that Jaxxon was about to place his heart in my hands, and he was going to trust me with taking care of it.
I scooted into his lap and wrapped him up in a hug.
“I’ll do all the things, Jay. Skyy House-McKissick, Home of Jaxxon McKissick. ”
“Fucking facts. Home of Jaxxon McKissick.” He kissed my lips, then pushed his tongue into my mouth.
I kissed him back, rubbing my hands over the soft hair of his close-cropped fade.
It wasn’t our first time sharing a kiss.
We’d shared kisses in the past. We’d tried to take our relationship from platonic to intimate in the past, but the women were always there, .
. . always on the periphery. And Jaxxon didn’t have the proper boundaries.
He never wanted to hurt their feelings. A part of me felt like he wasn’t willing to hurt their feelings, so mine were sacrificed instead.
That taught me quick to keep my feelings to myself.
Anyway, we’d both grown up. We’d chosen each other.
We broke the kiss.
“Till the wheels fall off,” he whispered, a smile on his face that lit up his chocolate brown eyes.
Whew. This man was fine as hell, sweet as hell, and all mine.
As promised, Jaxxon and I went to dinner. We left the restaurant and went to the baseball stadium on the north side of the city, with the mascot that looked like a cute baby bear. It was the smaller stadium of the two baseball stadiums in Chicago, but the fans were dedicated and rowdy.
The Coyotes bought out a luxury suite. By the time Jaxxon, his security, Hezekiah (Hez), and I arrived, several people from the team were already there.
I knew all the players who were represented by Engineered Excellence , so I went around the room giving hugs and greeting people, with Jaxxon attached to my hand.
He took a lot of teasing from the guys who knew me, especially from my personal players.
They fake-threatened him about treating me well and being good to me.
We ended up right beside Travis and Kelcie.
“Did you two talk?” she asked close to my ear, so neither her husband nor my future husband would hear her.
“We did.”
“And you’re holding up the agreement?”
I chuckled. “Oh, I’m definitely holding up the agreement. We’re getting married.”
“What?” Her shriek caused every person in our vicinity to look our way.
Kelcie wasn’t the most popular WAG (wife and/or girlfriend) on the team, so her outburst also earned us some dirty stares.
“They can’t stand you.” I glanced around discreetly, noticing that we were really the only chocolate chips in the sea of milk. “Is it a . . . racial thing?”
“Yeah. I stick with the black WAGs. I don’t really mess with the . . . others. Anyway, what do you mean, we’re getting married? When did this come about?” She grabbed my hand, searching for a ring.
“I told him today, when we talked. I don’t see any point in us dating.
What is there for us to learn about each other that we don’t already know?
Plus, we’ve been dating since we were kids.
Do you know how many times this man has taken me out to eat, or paid for my birthday shenanigans, or bought me a gift? ”
“Probably more times than Travis has done it for me, and I’m his wife. Yeah, y’all definitely don’t need to waste time pretending to date.” She took a beat. “Are you having a real wedding?”
I cut my eyes at her. “And a real marriage. Jay said he’s not having a paper marriage. I’m moving into his house?—”
“The one you decorated to your taste?” She cut in. “Continue.”
“I’m taking his last name.”
“Are you hyphenating, or are you gonna be Skyy McKissick?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Feminism makes me feel like I should hyphenate, but part of me just wants to be Skyy McKissick.”
She caught me up in a hug. “I’m so happy for you, bestie. That man loves your dirty drawers. You’re about to step into your soft girl era. I know he can’t wait to legitimately spoil you.”
I giggled.
“Okay. First things first, we need to get some pics to sell the relationship. Go hug your man.”
I handed my phone to her, then went over to Jaxxon. Kelcie snapped picture after picture. Then she handed my phone to Hez, and the four of us, Jaxxon, Kelcie, Travis, and I, took group shots. Soon, even the WAGs got in on the action.
After the photoshoot, I thumbed through the pictures.
Baseball, for me and my attention span, was the longest game ever .
. . as well as the slowest. Embarrassingly enough, I had, on occasion, dozed off while at a baseball game, supporting one of my players.
But not this time. This time, I was wide awake.
I swiped through the pictures, posting the cutest ones to my socials and tagging Jaxxon and Kelcie.
It wasn’t long before I saw the comment from my ex, Mario, on one of my pictures.
@Rio_Grande0422 – You at the Crosstown Classic? That’s fucked up that I didn’t get the invite.
@MissScorpio_Skyy- Weren’t you the same nukka who told me that dates are for optics? GTFOH!
Then I blocked him on all my socials.