Chapter 10
I pulled up to The Nourish Nook, Self Ridge’s own Black-owned grocery store that felt like a soulful Sunday hug with fluorescent lights and two-for-one collard greens.
The Nourish Nook was one of my peace places; eight aisles of Black-owned goodness, walls dressed in framed Langston Hughes quotes, and paintings of brown hands breaking bread.
The smell of sweet tea, cornbread, and incense wove through the air like somebody’s auntie was somewhere back there stirring greens.
The Nook wasn’t just a market; it was a movement.
A love letter to us. There were shelves lined with honey from local beekeepers, fresh okra laid out like grandma had just snapped it, and old-school jams playing softly through the speakers, buttery and warm, blessing everybody’s grocery list. The walls were painted in warm, earthy tones with Black art on every aisle; portraits of thick-lipped women in headwraps, brown babies with bubblegum, and kings with beards shaped to perfection.
The chalkboard by the front doors always had something motivational scribbled on it, and today it read: “Rest in your joy. It’s sacred. ”
I needed that message more than I realized.
I was pacing through the produce section, balancing a box of strawberries in one hand and my phone pressed to my ear with the other. Elias’s voice poured through the speaker like the safest lullaby my soul ever rocked to.
“You want me to make the shrimp and grits tonight?” he asked, that low baritone rolling through the receiver like it had heat to it.
I smiled, running my thumb along the plumpest berry. “Mmm, you know damn well I’m not fighting you over the cast iron, baby. Go ’head and show out, Chef Edmonds.”
His laugh burst through my speaker, warm, wrapping around me like a hoodie fresh from the dryer. “Say less, Deputy Gorgeous.”
I was still smiling when the temperature dipped, and a hush that didn’t belong fell over the aisle. The cooler’s hum thickened like it was breathing down my neck. Plastic crinkled too loudly.
“Bitch, we need to talk.”
The voice cut sharp as a box cutter. I turned.
Kam.
He had the same busted smirk, and his cheap cologne was losing a fight with stale liquor that permeated from his breath. His faded tee was clinging like it didn’t even want to be there.
On the line, Elias’s tone snapped from velvet to razor. “Yo, baby… who the fuck is that talking to you like that? Calling you out ya fucking name and shit?”
“Kam.” I breathed, and the air cinched up tight, like the room was holding its breath.
Kam’s eyes flicked to my phone like he could hear Elias’s heartbeat. “You think you better than me now? You think that cop nigga gon’ save you from what’s coming?”
“This bitch-ass nigga Kam done pulled on my baby.” Elias growled, voice dipping into something unholy. “Baby, yell for help. I’m on my way to you now. Fuck!”
Kam stepped closer, breath hot and mean. “You ain’t shit.”
“Get the hell away from me, Kam,” I said steadily.
He lunged.
My reflex took the wheel. My forearm met his, bone slamming bone. I jabbed back, felt my knuckles graze his jaw. My hand fell toward my duty weapon.
His fist crashed into my cheek.
White heat bloomed. The world tipped. My ears filled with a high, electric ring. Somewhere far, Elias roared my name. “Jonay!” But it came warped, like I was underwater. My knees buckled, and tile hit the back of my skull. Another blow. Air tore out of me.
And then, black.
In that dark, time didn’t tick. It pulsed.
First was the ringing, a needle-scream I realized was my own pulse.
Then flashes: my hands on Elias’s chest last week, the way his laugh rumbled against my throat, his cologne living in my hoodie like it paid rent.
The ghost-weight of his palm on my back in this same store, my name turning into “baby” in his mouth.
I tried to swim to that voice, but the darkness was thick as river mud, dragging me by the ankles. Cheek throbbing in angry beats. Breathing shallow. Blood tasting like pennies on my tongue.
“Jonay!” Again, slowed like a melting record. My lashes felt cemented. My body? An abandoned house with the lights cut.
Chaos cracked the silence open. Voices shouted. Feet pounded the tile. The air shifted.
Two men from the meat section closed in on Kam, Crocs squeaking, forearms tight with effort. Shoppers froze, some filming, some praying. The music cut out mid-Frankie, like the speakers themselves didn’t want any smoke.
Outside, tires screamed. Red-and-blue strobes jittered across the glass.
Elias hit the doors so hard they sighed like they were scared. He stormed in, a storm in human form, black tee stretched across his chest, eyes wild, scanning, locking on me, breaking, then snapping to Kam with murder in the pupils. Chambers on his hip, jaw set.
Kam, dumb as always, lurched and swung at him.
Everybody saw it. Every phone caught it.
Elias snatched the wrist midair, yanked him forward, and buried a fist in his chest hard enough to knock the wind out of him. He hammered ribs, one and two, kneed him folded, then a hook to the jaw snapped Kam sideways into a sweet-tea shelf, bottles rattling like teeth in cold water.
“E! Chill the fuck out! We got him!” Chambers shouldered in, hands on Elias’s bicep, trying to leash a lightning bolt.
But Elias’s eyes were locked and loaded. He grabbed Kam’s collar, pulled him in close enough to fog his face with breath, and spoke like each word was a nail.
“Kam… if you even breathe in her direction again, look her way, let her name ride the back of your tongue, dream ’bout touchin’ her, I’ma peel you apart like old paint on a shotgun house in August. I’ll salt the bone while you still screamin’, make every second feel like a month in hell with no water break.
“I’ll feed the buzzards pieces of you till they get tired, then bury what’s left in a place so deep the devil gon’ need a flashlight and a shovel to find you.
Your shadow won’t walk these streets again, and your scent won’t even live in the air no more.
I’ll erase you like a name scratched off wet cement, and the only place you’ll exist is in the nightmares I let you keep.
Believe me, bitch… Your countdown just started, and when the clock hits zero? I’m comin’ to collect.”
Silence spread heavy as wet wool. Even the cooler’s hum held its breath. Officers hauled Kam up in cuffs; his lip bled, one eye closing like a curtain.
Elias turned, and the beast inside him folded at the sight of me.
He dropped to his knees, palms cradling my face like I was glass and gospel.
“I’m so sorry, gorgeous. Baby,… look at me, baby. I’m here now. You safe.”
“I…” My voice rasped. “I tried—”
“I know,” he whispered, thumb catching a tear. “You fought. And now I got you.”
He stood, scooped me with a care that made the room blur, and carried me out. As we passed, Kam didn’t exist; he didn’t have to. The promise hanging in the air was thick as gun smoke after the last shot.
Outside, sirens wailed, and August heat pressed down like a palm. But in Elias’s arms, all I heard was his heart steadying mine back into rhythm as the door sighed shut behind us.