Chapter 19
After everything went down, I took some days to myself. I needed to think without anything else being required of me. Being a husband, big brother, and the head of this organization, it was cool, but the last few days showed me that I needed a mental break.
I’d been responding to Tattiana texts whenever she’d hit me up, keeping it short but steady. I knew that she liked to check my temperature to see if I was still mad with her, but I didn’t give her ass a clue of what was going on in my mind.
She had been keeping me updated on everything with her and baby girl.
She told me Nariyah took the news really well, and that she’d been happy to finally get the truth.
I knew that was a relief for Tatti because she was worried about how everything would play out and what Nariyah would think of her for leaving her.
That right there made me feel a way, knowing my wife was handling all that on her own while I was off somewhere trying to sort through my own head. I wanted to hold her hand through this, but I just couldn’t because of the timing.
—
I called around the other day and found out Ron was in a medically induced coma still, hanging on. He was still on my list of niggas that needed handling. Him and the aunt both, matter of fact, they were both sitting right at the top.
But right now, I had to just breathe. The last week had worn a nigga down in a way I ain’t never experienced before, and right now, I didn’t know if I was coming or going most days.
Taking them days alone made me reevaluate my whole life.
It gave me real time to think, and to put things in perspective for once instead of just reacting.
I had to decide if Tattiana and Nariyah would be staying with me for good, or if they’d be going back to her old house, starting over separate from all this. And separate from a life with me.
I was big on loyalty and I wanted my woman to always keep shit real with me, no matter what. I had to figure out if Tatti and this marriage was worth fighting for. Especially when I was the muthafucka in the situation who did the right thing.
Then, I had to sit down with myself and see shit for what it really was.
Yeah, my wife lied. But she ain’t do that shit with malicious intent behind it.
I had to think of it from her side, understand why she did what she did.
She didn’t want to lose me, and I understood that on a level deeper than I wanted to admit out loud.
The love we shared was some different shit, some shit that happened so fast it was almost scary looking back on it.
Still, I knew, sitting with myself them few days, that I’d never find another woman like her in this world. And honestly, I ain’t want to.
That time alone also made me realize something harder to swallow.
I’d taken away the opportunity for Tattiana to get real closure on her own terms. Taken away whatever small chance Nariyah might’ve had at knowing her real father, even if that nigga turned out to be somebody who ain’t deserve the title.
I felt like I’d made the best decision for both of them in the moment, protecting them the only way I knew how.
But at the same time, I knew, sitting with it, that decision wasn’t ever fully mine to make alone.
I couldn’t take it back now though. What’s done was done. That nigga was in the dirt and he’d soon be pushing up daisies.
The morning of day three, I woke up, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and called my head of staff first thing.
I ran down everything I needed. Pink paint.
A canopy bed, full size. Every single thing a little girl could possibly need to make a room feel like it was made just for her.
I was bringing my wife and our daughter home.
When I signed up for this life, when I put that ring on Tattiana’s finger, I signed up for everything that came with her, everything, and all I could do now was hope I was the best husband and father I was capable of being.
I got down on my knees right there in my room and asked God to guide me through this.
Asked him to not let me fail that little girl, whose life had already been hard enough before I ever entered the picture.
I needed the big man above to help me on this.
I wanted to do right by my family and be someone these girls could be proud of.
I wasn’t finna let my pride get so big that I lost the one woman who made me feel something real, maybe for the first time in my whole life.
Yeah, I was getting my family back today.
Was it gonna be strange, knowing my stepdaughter was actually my niece by blood?
Probably so, for a while at least. But all that felt irrelevant now.
That man was gone. Nariyah would never get the chance to know who he really was, and after everything I’d learned about him, that felt like a mercy more than a loss.
I was gonna be the best male figure she could have and that was a promise I made myself the moment I decided to step up.
As I got dressed, I called my mom again, third day in a row with no answer. Nobody had seen or heard from her at all. This wasn’t like her. I knew she was mentally torn all the way up, watching her own son get gunned down like that right in front of her, by her other three sons no less.
The fact that she couldn’t choose between us and him when it came down to it, that made me, Namier, and Zaire feel a certain kind of way we ain’t fully talked through yet.
But she was still my mother. So I had to find it somewhere in my heart to at least try and forgive her for what she’d done to this family, even knowing it would never be the same between none of us again.
I left the house and drove to a florist near Nyla’s place.
I ain’t know exactly what to get. I walked in and told the lady behind the counter I needed something that said I was sorry, something that looked like I meant it for real, not generic.
I also wanted to get something for baby girl too.
We ended up settling on pink and yellow roses mixed with baby’s breath for Tatti.
For Nariyah, I picked out one of them tie dye forever roses, the kind that never wilts, never dies out.
I drove to Nyla’s crib going over what I was gonna say the whole way there, running different versions of it through my head. Then I decided I was just gonna let it flow natural when I got there.
Tatti made a nigga move and think different than I ever had before her, and without her around, my mind just wasn’t clear the same way. That was my wife. And no matter how bad she’d pissed me off, I was gonna honor them vows I made in front of God and everybody that mattered to me.
When I pulled up, I got out with them roses in hand, still running through what I wanted to say on the walk to the door.
I knocked, and after a few minutes, Namier opened it up wearing a muscle shirt and some sleep pants like he lived there now.
All I could do was shake my head.
“What you doing here?” Namier said, eyeing them flowers. “And you got flowers too? Oh, you finally coming to get your wife back. Come on in.”
I pushed him in the chest walking past him into the house.
“Nigga, you don’t even live here.”
“I mean, you might as well say I do at this point,” he said, laughing. “Let me go tell Tatti you here. Make yourself comfortable.” He nodded toward the couch and walked off down the hall. He knocked on one of the room doors and waited for Tatti to answer.
I heard him telling her that I was in the front waiting. I stood there in that living room, hands sweating a little around them roses, waiting on her.
She walked out into the front room wearing a sundress, hair pulled up in a messy bun, looking beautiful in that simple way she always managed even when she wasn’t trying.
I missed her so bad it was hitting me now, standing there looking at her for the first time in three days.
I just wanted to pull her straight into me and never let go.
But we needed to talk first, needed to actually work through this before we skipped past it.
I extended the roses toward her. She took them, brought them up to her face, breathed them in slow. Her face was damn near angelic when she sniffed them roses and something rose in my chest. I was proud to have something so beautiful as my wife.
“These are beautiful, Kaseem.”
“You’re beautiful, Tattiana,” I said. “I wanted to come get you, take you home today. But I need to talk to you first. I wanna apologize for how I reacted the other day, the way I shut you out. But I also need you to hear me on something important. It’s never okay for you to keep shit from me.
Ever. I’m here to help you carry whatever weight you got, not hurt you over it.
You can tell me anything, and I promise you, chances are I can fix it, or at least help you carry it.
Don’t ever hide nothing from me again, no matter how you think I might take it when you first tell me.
I need to be able to trust you completely for this to actually work between us. That’s if you even still want it to.”
“Yes,” she said fast, tears already building up in her eyes.
“I want it more than anything in this world, Kaseem. I regret keeping secrets from you, all of it. I didn’t want to lose you when you’re the best man I’ve ever met in my life.
I was scared. I know that ain’t no real excuse, and I promise you, I promise, I won’t ever keep nothing else from you again.
” She paused, biting her lip. “So I gotta tell you something else right now.”
I grabbed the back of my own neck, bracing myself. Here we go again. What secret could this possibly be?
“Please, Tatti,” I said, shaking my head. “Please mannn.”