Chapter 24 Deuce
The only faces in the courtroom that didn’t wear a look of shock were Mrs. Joanna Jones and Paul Ward. Apparently, he had learned about our affair by breaking into Lena’s phone and reading our text messages.
They were mostly written in code, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it out.
He learned about the baby the day that he killed her.
When he came over to meet with her, he thought she was trying to reconcile.
He hadn’t been prepared to be handed divorce papers.
But as he walked around her apartment, making his presence intimidating, he had spotted some paperwork from her doctor’s office about prenatal care.
It was a no-brainer that he wasn’t the father, because he hadn’t had sex with her in more than a year. That detail along with the divorce papers had been what set him off, not her attitude or anything she might have said.
Court was dismissed for the day after I gave my testimony about what I had witnessed between the couple. The defense attorney had requested that I be treated like a hostile witness, but the judge didn’t grant him that request. He deemed my testimony as unfavorable, not hostile.
Now that my testimony was over, I was attempting to make it out of the courthouse as quickly and quietly as possible.
It wasn’t easy with reporters on every side shoving microphones in my face.
My brothers in blue surrounded me, and my attorney, along with my lieutenant, led the way for me to make an escape.
“You didn’t say anything. Why didn’t you tell us, Fullwood?” Officer Gavin Tinsley demanded when we were crowded in the elevator making our way to the first floor.
I sighed, and my former lieutenant looked me in the eye. I knew that he had a million questions, and he was the only one who I owed an explanation to.
“Fullwood?” Officer Carson Jennings asked.
“You know why. If it were you and Kit Bryant. How would you handle it, Tinsley?” I asked. He had a crush on a cybercrime detective that he had once been a partner with.
He rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw. “I wouldn’t act on it. Which is why we’re not together now.”
I sniffed. “Well, I guess we all got decisions to make, don’t we?”
The elevator doors opened, and despite the tension that had built on the elevator, they all closed in rank around me. They didn’t break until we reached my car.
“I want to see you when you get a chance,” Lieutenant Edwards declared.
I nodded and hopped in my car. I waited until after I was far enough away from the courtroom to power my phone on. I needed to speak to Sevyn and make sure she was okay. She had probably seen the news and had dozens of questions.
Her phone went straight to voicemail when I dialed it back to back.
I noticed that I had several missed calls from my sister and a voicemail urging me to call her right away.
My stomach knotted, because I knew she and Sevyn were supposed to have lunch today.
With Sevyn not answering my calls, and Amani calling me numerous times, I worried something had happened.
“Hey, Amani. Everything okay?”
“Yes and no.”
“The hell, Amani?”
“She’s safe, but she’s not okay.”
“She saw the news.”
“Yes.”
I smacked my hand against the steering wheel as I sat at the light. My horn blew, and the driver in front of me looked in their rearview mirror. I held my hand up in apology.
“I was going to tell her about that today, but then the prosecution called me in this morning.”
“Yes. She was upset to find out those details the way that she did, but that’s not the major problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s reclaiming some other memories, Deuce, including the night of the accident. You should have told her. You hurt her real bad, and she deserves better.”
“What does she know?” I demanded through clenched teeth.
“That you weren’t called to the accident. She believes you were the cause of it.”
My stomach clenched in my chest, and I floored the accelerator to hurry home. “I fucked up by not telling her, you’re right. Is she still home? Please tell me she is.”
“She is.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m waiting for you to show up before I leave, because if I leave now, she won’t be here when you get here.”
“Did she say what all she remembered?”
“Just that you were the person who caused the accident that night. She believes that the only reason you’re still in her life is out of fear of what she might recall.”
“That’s not true.”
“I tried to talk reason into her and explain that she just needed to give you the opportunity to explain. She doesn’t want to talk.”
“I’ll be there shortly.”
“Okay, but Deuce?”
“Yes?”
“Whatever you do, don’t let her walk out of your life. She needs you.”
“Okay, Amani.”
I immediately dialed Sevyn, getting her voicemail again. There was something that my sister wasn’t saying, and I wasn’t sure what it was.
I pulled up a half hour later, thanked Amani, dropped my keys in the bowl on the foyer table, and headed to Sevyn’s bedroom.
I knocked on the door lightly. The sound of her moving around in the room filtered to me through the closed door. I could hear her soft voice right on the other side of the door.
“What?”
“May I come in?”
“No.”
I pressed my forehead against the door between my hands and closed my eyes. “Please, Sevyn. Just let me explain everything.”
“Deuce, please leave.”
“Not until you let me explain.”
“You had months. I always said that there had to be a reason why you were hanging around. You wanted to keep an eye on me to see what I remembered.”
“That’s not true. I stayed in the beginning because you’re right, I felt guilty, and then I just fell in love with you.”
“Would you please leave me alone, Deuce? I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I can’t leave you alone, baby. I’m so sorry that I hurt you.”
“I wish that you would just walk out of my life as easily as you walked in.”
“It was never easy walking into your life because it came on the heels of devastation.”
“That’s fine, but it’s easy as hell for me to close the door on that part of my life I shared with you. Just give me a couple of days to work something out, and I promise you that you won’t have to worry about me in your space anymore.”
“I don’t want you to go, Sevyn.”
“If I had someplace to go right now, I would be gone.”
I thought about Amani’s warning again, and I wondered what it was all about. I needed to get to the bottom of things before Sevyn slipped through my fingers.
“Sevyn, baby, please let me in.”
“No. Go away, or I swear that I will leave. I don’t give a damn if I have to sleep on the streets. I don’t trust you.”
She could have told me that she hated me, and it wouldn’t hurt nearly as bad as hearing her say that she didn’t trust me. But I hadn’t given her a reason to.
I sighed and pushed away from the door and headed to my room to shower.
With everything that happened, I was tired as hell, but I couldn’t sleep. I had a feeling that Sevyn might find a way to get away from me, and I couldn’t let that happen until we discussed what happened.
I needed to know that I had given my all, even if I hadn’t done that when I had a chance to.
But I knew that if I allowed her to walk out of my life, she would never come back.
I heard the front door click close a little after seven in the morning.
She knew that I would probably be sleeping in because I didn’t have a shift to work, and there was no court since today was Saturday.
I jumped out of bed and peered out the front window.
She climbed into the back seat of a maroon Toyota.
I was already dressed and prepared for this.
Sevyn had forgotten that she had her shared rides set up to automatically send me a link to track her rides.
We had done that no sooner than she moved in, as a safety feature so I could keep track of her whenever she was out and about.
I grabbed my gym shoes and put them on before I rushed to the front foyer and grabbed my keys from the bowl. Within two minutes of Sevyn leaving my house, I was in my truck, following her. I kept a reasonable distance so that she wouldn’t spot me.
I synced the tracking link that was texted to me to my vehicle’s navigation system and took my time going to where she was heading. Based on the address, it wasn’t too far away. It was only a five-minute drive, and when I double checked it, I had a feeling what she was going to do.
I passed the car up and headed a block away, before I looped back around and parked in a CVS parking lot, one block away from where she exited the shared ride. There was a mini shopping plaza directly behind her as she crossed the street to the median.
My heart tumbled in my chest as she made her way across the busy intersection. I knew what she was doing, but it took everything in me not to drive down there and snatch her ass up. I had to let her work things out on her own.
My phone rang as I watched her.
“Hello.”
“The hell is wrong with you, nigga?”
“Frost, what is you talking about?”
“I told you not to hurt that girl. I promised her I would kick your ass if you did.”
“Frost, don’t call me with that shit right now.”
“Nigga, you think I’m playing with you? I should put a bullet in your ass. Only reason I won’t is because you’re my cousin.”
“Who the hell told you anything?”
“Amani. Who else?”
“Big ass mouth,” I muttered.
“Yeah, whatever. All I know is that you’d better make shit right with my future cousin-in-law and protect that seed in her belly.”
“The fuck you just say to me?”
“Protect that seed in her belly.”
“What seed?”
“Your seed.”
My heart constricted in my chest and skipped a couple of beats before it sputtered to life again. “What the hell are you talking about, Frost?”
“Oh shit. She hasn’t told you yet.”
“Told me what?”