Ysis
The second we reached the top of the stairs, I nudged the nursery door open and motioned for Kayla to follow me inside.
Downstairs, I could still hear the faint hum of conversation between the men, Mama Sina, and whoever hadn’t wandered off to find something else to do around the house, but up here everything felt different.
It was the first real moment either one of us had gotten to breathe since she and Yayo walked through the front door looking like they hadn’t said two words to each other the entire ride home.
The nursery looked the way we’d left it only a couple hours earlier.
Storage bins lined one wall waiting to be broken down, tiny folded onesies filled the dresser drawers, and diapers were stacked neatly inside the changing station after Bree, Lauren, Nia, and I had spent the better part of the afternoon arguing over the best way to organize everything.
Somewhere between assembling furniture, washing baby clothes, and laughing over old memories, the room had stopped looking like an empty space and started looking like a place my babies could actually come home to.
I smiled as I looked around.
Watching those women pour so much love into my babies had filled a place inside me I didn’t even know still existed.
Growing up the way I had, I’d never imagined I’d have friends who loved me enough to spend an entire day helping prepare a nursery for children that weren’t even theirs.
Life had a funny way of giving you exactly what you needed when you least expected it, and somewhere along this journey God had replaced everything I’d lost with people who chose to become family anyway.
I leaned against the doorframe, studying my best friend while she pretended to admire the room. Most people would’ve missed it, but I knew Kayla too well. She wasn’t really looking at the crib or the rocking chair. She was somewhere else, carrying whatever had followed her home from Vegas.
“So...” I smiled softly. “Come on.”
“What?”
“Don’t ‘what’ me.”
She looked down at the floor with a guilty smile. “Let me show you what me and the girls were working on in the nursery before y’all got here.”
She followed behind me as I walked farther into the room.
Sunlight poured through the oversized windows, casting a warm glow across the sage green walls and white furniture Kade had insisted on having custom made.
Two matching cribs sat side by side beneath hand-painted clouds stretching across the ceiling while a bookshelf already overflowed with children’s classics, stuffed animals, and little keepsakes everybody had been dropping off for weeks.
Against one wall sat the glider I’d fallen in love with the moment I saw it, complete with an oversized ottoman Kade swore he’d never use but would probably end up sleeping in more than I did. Kayla slowly turned in a circle, taking everything in. “Ice...”
“I know.”
“It’s beautiful.” Her eyes started watering. I rubbed my stomach absentmindedly as one of the twins shifted.
“They’ve been kicking me all day. I swear they know everybody been in here talking to them.” She smiled, placing her hand over mine for a second before another look of sadness washed over her face.
“You know...” I said, still staring at one of the cribs. “I’ve been thinking about something since we left the hospital.”
“What?” She looked over at me.
“That night when Emory, Mama Sina, and Alessia were all there. I think everything happened so fast that my brain never really processed it.” I lowered myself in the glider, rocking it back and forth.
“The woman who performed my abortion is the mother of the same woman who made it her mission to ruin my life because she wanted Kade.”
The realization didn’t feel real. “I’ve been so wrapped up in these babies, Aretha dying, Mama Sina almost losing her life, Sera, Marius...everything...that I don’t think I ever stopped long enough to connect the dots.”
“Damn...” Kayla frowned.
“Damn is right.” I rubbed slow circles over my stomach, my thoughts beginning to settle into place.
“Not to mention Kimora was her nurse assistant, which of course we couldn’t have known before you and Yayo got together. Then after Kade found out about the abortion...”
I paused, shaking my head in disbelief. “He burned that Planned Parenthood to the ground.” Silence settled between us, neither of us saying a word as the weight of it all landed.
“Sera spent months trying to destroy my relationship because she wanted Kade, all while her mother was the very woman who changed the trajectory of my life the day I walked into that clinic.”
I let out a breath, trying to wrap my own mind around it. “The whole time I never stopped to think about who Alessia really was outside of being Sera’s mother.”
Kayla leaned back against the wall, staring at me.
“That’s some sick-ass irony.”
“It really is.” I nodded.
“Sera’s gone. That clinic is gone. Kimora is gone from their lives. Then Alessia walks into that hospital grieving her daughter...” My voice softened as I looked down at my hands. “I can only imagine what she’s thinking now.”
I twisted my wedding ring around my finger, unable to shake the feeling sitting in the pit of my stomach. “Her daughter is gone, and somewhere in her mind I’m probably enemy number one.”
There were moments when I thought maybe life would finally slow down long enough for me to catch my breath, but every time I reached that point, something else happened.
Losing Aretha still didn’t feel real. Every now and then I’d find myself expecting to hear her humming in the kitchen before remembering she was gone.
Then there was Mama Sina nearly dying in that explosion, the twins deciding my ribs made excellent punching bags, Majeston calling earlier asking if we could spend some time together, and somewhere in the middle of all that I was still trying to finish a nursery before these babies decided they were tired of waiting.
Life had become beautifully overwhelming.
“So what happened when she showed up?”
“Girl...all hell broke loose.” I let out a breath, the memory replaying so vividly it felt like I was standing in that hospital hallway all over again. “After I hung up with you, I rushed over just in time.”
The elevator doors had barely opened before I heard yelling echoing through the corridor.
Alessia was marching toward Mama Sina and Emory like a woman possessed, tears streaming down her face as security and nurses scrambled to get out of her way.
I’d never seen grief and rage collide the way it did in that moment.
“You!” she screamed, pointing at Emory.
“You think you get to move on and be happy after everything you’ve done to this family?”
Mama Sina stepped in front of him. “Watch how you talking to him, Alessia.”
“Move! This don’t have shit to do with you homewrecker.”
“Oh, but it does,” Mama Sina shot back, refusing to budge.
“You don’t get to come in here acting a damn fool because life ain’t going your way.” Before either woman could close the distance between them, Kade and Cassian stepped in, each grabbing an arm and forcing space between the two.
“Enough!” Kade barked.
Emory finally spoke, his voice calm despite the storm unfolding around him. “Just sign the papers, Alessia. Release us both from this hell of a marriage.”His words only made her crumble more.
“I hate you! It should've been you that died. Not my daughter. This is all your fucking fault!” She yelled, then broke away before anybody could stop her, turning and storming down the hallway as the automatic doors swung open and shut behind her, leaving nothing but silence in her wake.
I blinked, pulling myself back to the nursery.
“Girl shut the fuck up...no she didn’t.” Kayla’s mouth fell open.
“Girl, yes she did.” I shook my head, still trying to process everything I’d witnessed.
“They already going through a divorce and all. Seeing Mama Sina step in front of Emory like that reminded me of when she and Yuki got into it at Kade’s party.
Mama don’t know how to stand on the sidelines when somebody she love is being threatened.
Whether it’s her sons, me, or somebody she cares about, she gone plant her flag every single time.
Looking back on it now, I think Alessia had been carrying that anger around for a long time.
Losing Sera was just the match that finally set everything on fire. ”
The room fell quiet again, neither one of us saying anything as we both sat there processing everything that had happened over the last few days.
“Ice.”
“Hm?”
“I think...” She hesitated before sitting down across from me. “I think me and Yayo might really be over.”
“What happened?”
“I told him.”
“Told him what?”
“I told him I loved him.”
“And?”
Her eyes filled with tears almost instantly. “He couldn’t say it back.”
I reached over and took her hand. “He loves you.”
She shook her head. “No...he’s crazy about me. There’s a difference, Ice.”
The pain behind those words broke my heart.
She wiped her eyes before continuing. “I overheard the entire meeting with Queen.” I listened as she walked me through everything.
Queen freezing the expansion. Somebody contacting her about everything happening in Memphis.
The pipeline being put on hold until Yayo cleaned up the war back home.
Every word painted a clearer picture of what had been weighing on him since they’d left Vegas.
“When I told him maybe this was his chance to walk away, he looked at me like I asked him to stop breathing.”
“Because that’s all he’s ever known.”
“I know.” She sniffled. “But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering if today’s the day somebody calls and tells me he’s not coming home.”
“You know what I think?” I squeezed her hand.
She looked up. “I think both of y’all right.”
“How?” Her eyebrows pulled together.
“I think you’re asking him to imagine a life he never believed he deserved.” I smiled sadly. “And I think he’s asking you to understand a burden you were never supposed to carry.”