Chapter 3 #3
I could see him from the corner of my eye as I stared down at the shoes I had on now.
A pair of pink Nike slides covered a fresh pair of black socks.
When I left Sabrina’s apartment, I went down to mine, snatching my Crocs and white socks in the hallway, pausing after noticing the pink tint to them. Sabrina’s blood.
I was traumatized. Couldn’t get the sound of the kids screams out of my head when the police came. I kept them inside of the room for as long as I could. But… yeah. Cops came and had to remove them. It was horrific. Definitely something that would be talked about at The Woods for a long time.
“You cool?” Rocc asked.
I’d been quiet the whole time.
Ignored my ringing phone.
Ignored the text messages. Everybody wanted to talk. They knew I found her. They had questions. Wanted to check on me. I didn’t want to talk.
Just sat there, eyes on my feet, thinking about the blood. Thinking about the tub. Thinking about my bathroom. Sabrina was leaking from the ceiling.
I was mortified.
I nodded at Rocc, telling him I was okay. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t okay at all.
Words couldn’t fall from my lips. Felt like if I opened my mouth to speak, I’d break down in tears. Finding Sabrina took me back to the time I found my momma. The similarities were too similar. Both victims… killed by the hands of the man they loved.
“You want me to get Big Dawg on the line? I can tell him—
“No,” I said, my vocal cords rattling.
Clearing my throat, I shifted my gaze to the window.
We were on the freeway, approaching the bridge.
I didn’t want him to get Big Dawg on the line for shit.
I could work. I had to work. I didn’t want to go back to The Woods.
In fact, I never wanted to go back. I couldn’t go back.
That apartment… it was tainted for real now.
Once tainted with my mother’s blood, now tainted with Sabrina’s.
Lonely. Cold. Empty. I didn’t want to be there.
Despite the memories. Despite the connection…
it was time for me to leave. So, what if it was without Meech.
The rest of the ride to First Lady’s house was spent in silence, with the exception of Rakim playing at a low level.
Every now and then, I’d catch Rocc looking over at me, but he didn’t say anything.
Good. I honestly, truly just wanted to get to work.
I didn't know how my mood would be when I walked into First Lady’s house but for some odd reason, I was really eager to get there.
To a point where my heart raced the closer we got there and a sense of calmness began to wash over me.
When we pulled up to the gates, they slowly opened and I grabbed my tote bag from the floor, draping it over my shoulder. With a deep breath, I placed a piece of hair behind my ear and stared out of the window as we continued up towards the house. In the distance I could see landscape workers.
Rocc pulled into the circular driveway and shifted his truck in park. He looked over at me and started to say something but before he could, I was out of the truck.
I didn’t want to talk about what happened and I made that very clear when we left The Woods. Literally told him I didn't want to talk about it.
The minute my feet hit the pavement, and I headed up to the house, my attention fixed on the landscape workers.
One of them smiled at me. I forced one in return.
Hell naw. Landscape workers. It might’ve sounded crazy, but a bitch had only ever seen anything like this in the movies.
Like I said before, Marv’s fat ass did a piss poor job tending to the greenery over at The Woods.
Landscape workers were something you’d only catch in Wildermere, for real. Here and in the movies.
Before I could knock on the door, it opened and Exodus stood there, looking down at me, that infamous scowl plastered on his face.
The racing of my heart eased a bit and that calmness I spoke of before returned.
Crept up the nape of my neck, radiating through my whole body.
We locked eyes. He chucked his chin, pushed the glass door open and stepped aside.
I crossed over inside, my arm brushing up against his stomach in the process.
Solid. Exodus was so got damn solid. Brushing up against him made me want more.
Made me want his arms around me. I wanted to be engulfed by him.
Held. I needed it. I needed it so bad. But because I wasn’t there with him…
because I wasn’t there with ‘anybody’, I suffered, deciding to wrap my arms around my own body instead.
“Cold?” He asked.
I looked over my shoulder at him. “No.”
He eyed me up and down. I looked away, slipping out of my slides, I put them on the shoe rack.
His eyes were fixed on me. Could feel them burning into me from behind.
He had questions. I wondered if Rocc had told him about what happened.
I was sure he had. I scrambled through my mind, trying to think of a time where he would have been able to and it hit me.
In the middle of my conversation with the police, Rocc stepped out into the hallway.
Exodus knew.
It was only a matter of time before he asked how I was doing. Only a matter of time before I was picked apart like some mental patient. Some fragile little girl who’d lost her brother not even a month ago, just to discover her neighbor gruesomely murdered shortly after.
I didn’t like that.
I didn’t like it at all.
Not just that. But whatever the fuck was going on with my life.
Why had I found Sabrina? Why had I lost Demetrius?
Questions swam around my mind, fighting against one another like crazy, putting me in a mental battle I didn’t want to be in.
I just wanted to be okay again. I just wanted to be me.
Wanted life to feel normal and not like I was coasting through it, living life as someone else.
I looked around. Eyes landing on that massive mural that caught my eye the first time I was here.
The mural that told me we weren’t at Exodus’s house.
The colors, they reminded me of what LaLa drew on that dirty wall in her bedroom.
Would she create again? Or would losing her mother, and life as she knew it, strip her of her creative freedom?
Would she smile again? Would she lose her spark?
I lost mine. When my momma died… I lost so much.
“How is she today?” I asked with a deep breath.
“The same as every day,” he countered, hands stuffed into another pair of basketball shorts that did absolutely nothing to conceal his thick ass dick. Today they were steel grey. My favorite pair yet. My God it was juicy.
I glanced at it. Eyed him up and down like I did the first time I saw it.
Noticed when his brow flinched, slightly pinching together, confused.
I was subtle with my gaze. Didn’t linger long at all at his print so he had no idea I was checking him out.
Thought I was judging him. Giving him a nasty look and I preferred it that way.
I didn’t want Exodus Christ to know I liked him. He had enough women liking him.
Yes, I liked Exodus.
Didn’t start to like him until breakfast that day. If he hadn’t gotten me what I wanted… if he hadn’t shown me that he had an inkling of a heart, this little crush would have never happened. I didn’t care about how good he looked—it was his heart that got me.
“You give what I said any thought?”
“Said about what?” I asked, feigning ignorance, as we continued into the house, walking down the hall.
I glanced over into a room that had to be an office.
It was behind a pair of frosted French doors.
I wanted to look inside. Wanted to explore the entire house, honestly.
I hadn’t. I didn’t want to be nosey, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to be here.
In a place so grand… In a place so lavish.
A place where fucking landscapers came out to tend to hedges.
What the fuck were even hedges? I’d only heard them referenced before.
Had to be some fancy ol’ rich people shit.
First Lady and Exodus and them… they had hedges.
Had to have hedges. Lawn was too fire not to have them.
“The live-in position,” he said, shooting me a look that said he knew I knew what he meant.
I looked away from him. Put my focus on what was in front of me.
A big portrait. Hanging on the wall at the end of the hallway.
It was of First Lady and Pastor Isaiah. Their wedding day.
She was happier. Isaiah was alive. All was right in her world.
And then one day, everything changed. Like mine had. Life was so fucking fickle, bro.
“Oh,” I said, playing it cool as if I didn’t decide to switch over to the live-in position the minute I saw Sabrina laying in that bathtub full of bloody water. “I did. I was going to talk to you about it at the end of my shift.”
He flicked his wrist, looking at his watch. I’d bet all of the money in my little Chime account that it was an AP. Niggas loved AP’s. Specifically rich niggas. “We can talk about it now.”
We made it to the kitchen. Stood at the island.
Him on one side, me on the other. I hiked my bag up over my shoulder and looked away.
Put my eyes on First Lady and cringed at the outfit she had on.
Stretch pants and an oversized t-shirt. Fluffy socks.
No shoes. Hair in the same braids, except they were fuzzy now.
She didn’t sleep in her bonnet last night.
I told Solomon to make sure she slept in her bonnet.
Probably should have mentioned it to Genesis.
Didn’t think I would have had to, honestly.
But then again, First Lady wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe they just didn't care.
“Sereia.”
“Hm?” I asked, snapping out of my trance, looking over at Exodus. “Oh yeah, I would like to transfer over to live-in.”
His brows snatched together, mouth turned down a bit. “You sure?”