Chapter 16
I had the driver take me straight home after that lunch, sitting in the back seat feeling sick over how everything had gone down with Nyla. I sent her a text before we even made it out the parking lot.
Me: I love you. I want to talk when you feel up to it. Just call me whenever you’re ready.
She texted back a few minutes later.
Nyla: I love you too.
Her text was short, dry and to the point, but it was something.
I held onto that the whole ride home. I appreciated River and how accepting and understanding she was.
She’d always been the calm one. Nyla’s ass always needed to be in control and this situation had placed her completely outside of that.
I have never been the woman to kiss anybody’s ass, but I value my friendships.
I’ve only ever had two real friends, so yes, I cared about their feelings and didn’t want to lose them.
When I got to the house, I went inside and immediately looked for my husband. Kaseem was still in his office, doing work I assumed. I was walking toward the door to go in when I heard him already on the phone, his voice low and cold in a way that stopped me right in my tracks.
“What you mean his house and traps are empty?” he said.
“Where the fuck did the nigga move to, again! I need Demon like yesterday. Find that nigga. It’s a bag on his head.
Let the streets know that I got a 100k payday for this nigga, but I need that nigga alive.
Namier just had the drop on him a week ago, so he can’t be too far gone. Handle that.”
My stomach dropped immediately after hearing that.
Not because I cared about Demontae. That nigga left me for dead years ago, never even knew we had a child together, never gonna know if I had anything to say about it.
But hearing my husband talk like that, in that flat cold voice, that stayed sitting on me a little longer than I wanted it to.
This was just a confirmation of who he really was, and the type of shots he called.
I didn’t know whether to be scared, or turned on.
When I finally walked in, he looked up from his desk and saw straight through whatever face I was trying to put on. He no longer cared about the call that he had just ended, he was concerned with what was bothering me.
“What the fuck happened?” he asked, concern replacing that hardness in his voice almost instantly.
I walked over and climbed into his lap in the computer chair he was sitting in, and I told him everything about lunch. River, Nyla, the whole story that I had tried to explain to them. He just held me and let me get it all out without cutting in once.
“I don’t like this shit at all,” he said once I finished.
He was rubbing my back slow. “But you did what you needed to do. Now you just gotta give your girl time to come around on her own. Your other friend already showed you she’s supportive and understanding.
So you know it’s possible to get something good out of a messed up situation.
You just gotta let shit be what it’s gonna be.
” He tilted my chin up so I was looking right at him.
“You know you’ll always have me, right? Ain’t nothing gonna run me off.
And as long as you got me, you ain’t never gonna need a friend, so if you lose one over some shit like that, fuck it. ”
He kissed my face, soft, right on my cheek, then again closer to my mouth.
I don’t even know how we ended up in the bedroom after that, but we did, and I let him love on me the way he wanted to, cause I knew that was his way of trying to fuck all my problems away, and honestly, tonight I wanted him to.
—
Later in the night, I laid on his chest while we watched movies and talked about our future.
“What you think we gonna have?” he asked, running his hand slow across my stomach. “A boy or girl?”
“What? Why you talking crazy?” I laughed, but his ass was trippin.
“I’m not talking crazy,” he said, and I could hear him smiling even without looking up at his face.
“The way you been putting that pussy on me, ain’t no way I ain’t knocked yo ass up already.
And if you ain’t, I promise you it won’t be long.
” He got quiet for a second. “But if I’m being real with you, I want a daughter.
I’m scared to have a son, cause I don’t want him growing up to be like me. ”
“Why would you say that?” I sat up a little so I could see his face. “You’re perfect to me, Kaseem.”
“That’s to you, Tatti,” he said, shaking his head.
“I’m not no perfect nigga, far from it. I scare myself sometimes.
I’m a problem solver. I’m a hunter. I don’t stop till I make shit right when somebody wronged me, and that shit don’t always look pretty.
I don’t need a little version of me running around this world causing the same kind of havoc that I cause.
What I want is for you to go get your daughter from your people, and I want us to have another daughter too, so we can raise our girls together.
I won’t treat Nariyah no differently than if she was mine. ”
I looked up at him and felt something in my chest tighten up real bad, something bigger than anything I’d ever felt with anybody before him.
He cared about Nariyah. He was already building her into our future without me having to beg him to.
Most men wouldn’t take on another man’s child like that, not without making it uncomfortable, not without holding it over your head.
“Why are you so good to me?” I asked him. “I know who you really are, out there, in the streets. But you different with me.”
“When you had every reason to hate me for kidnapping you,” he said, “you ain’t hate me.
You helped me solve shit I couldn’t have solved on my own.
You showed me you cared about me, not what I could do for you or give you.
You trusted me with your heart before either one of us even knew what the fuck we were doing.
” He pulled me in closer. “You were everything I ain’t even know I needed.
You just feel different, Tatti. You feel like home.
And I just knew, from early on, that you were made for me an that I needed to step up and show you how bad I really wanted this shit.
I love you, Tattiana. I ain’t ever loved a woman other than my momma before you.
You make that shit feel easy. You ground me. I need you.”
“My God, Kaseem,” I said, feeling my eyes filling up.
Only this man could make me emotional like this.
I think that it’s the fact that he’s always being vulnerable with me, and that makes me emotional because I know the other side of him is far from sweet.
“You trying to make me cry? I love you too. You mean more to me than you can ever imagine. I met you at a time my whole life was falling apart and I ain’t even know it yet.
You put me back together while you was dealing with your own stuff too.
I watched you fight for your family and what you knew was right while opening up to me.
You let yourself be somebody different when we home together.
You protect me with everything in you, and I feel safe here.
I would love to have your daughter, your son, a set of twins and whatever else you want from me.
” I said jokingly, but was serious as hell.
This man could get whatever he wanted from me.
I kissed him, slow, and I felt him smile against my mouth.
“Shit,” he said, lifting me up off his chest and sliding his boxers off, “then come get back up on this dick and show me!”
He demanded and I did exactly what the fuck he said.
—
The next morning, I woke up to Kaseem’s phone ringing over and over, buzzing against the nightstand loud enough to pull me straight out of my peaceful sleep. I sat up off his chest, still groggy, watching him reach over half asleep himself and answer it.
“Yeah,” he said, voice thick with sleep. “Okay. I’m about to buzz you in.”
He hung up and set the phone back down, rubbing his face before he looked over at me.
“Get up and get dressed, baby,” he said. “Your dad is here, he wanted to have a sit down and talk to you this morning. I think it’s time that you hear him out.”
“What the fuck, Kaseem?” I sat all the way up, pulling the sheet up around me. “I don’t want to see him or talk to him. Especially not this time of morning. Send him home, since yo ass the one invited him over. I’m not doing it.”
“Listen to me.” He sat up too, looking me dead in my face.
“You can’t run from your problems forever.
Listen to what that man got to say, then make your decision on how you feel after that.
We grown. We don’t run when shit gets heavy and is no longer comfortable for us.
We face it head on and be done with it.”
“Did he lie to me? Did he sell me off to a gangster family? Did he have a secret baby with his partner’s wife after he killed his own partner? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then send his ass right back home.”
“Girl, this ain’t no damn gangster family.
What the hell? Get up like I said, woman.
Don’t make me drag you out this bed,” he said, and I could hear him fighting back a laugh even through how serious his face was trying to stay.
“Just do it and get it over with. I ain’t saying you gotta forgive the nigga, or agree with a single thing that man say.
I’m saying there’s a conversation that needs to happen. So go have it.”
We stared each other down for what felt like a full five minutes, neither one of us blinking, but he wasn’t backing off, and I already knew he wasn’t gonna let this go.
I got up and stormed off to the closet while he laughed behind me.