A MONTH LATER #2
"I figured that." Monty stepped in slightly out of the wind. "My bad."
She looked at him, still catching her breath. "I'm Dream. Zuri's sister." She studied him. "I know who you are."
"I figured that too."
Dream looked him over for a second — sizing him up the way sisters do, measuring the situation — and then her expression shifted from startled to something more guarded. She folded the towel over her arm and crossed them both over her chest.
"Look, I don't know what you came over here for, but Zuri gon' be back soon and you cannot be here when she gets here." She was direct. No warm-up. "She’s working real hard to get herself together and I'm not about to let you undo that."
"I'm not trying to undo nothing." Monty said. "I just—"
"Then what are you doing here, Monty?" She kept her voice low, but it had weight to it. "For real."
He paused.
"I'm concerned about her. I been thinking about her and I couldn't just—"
"Concerned?” Dream repeated it flat, like the word didn't quite fit right. "That's what we calling it?"
He didn't answer that.
Dream sighed and walked over to the couch, sitting down with her legs crossed and her eyes still on him. She gestured for him to sit like she was deciding to give him five minutes and not a second more.
"My sister told me everything," she said. "Chad. The baby. All of it. And let me tell you something — Zuri don't talk to nobody about that. Not our cousins, not her girls, nobody. She has been carrying that by herself for over a year and a half because that's just how she is. Stubborn. Strong.”
Monty doesn’t say a word. He just listened, taking it all in.
“She keeps everything locked up so tight that it worries me.
" She looked at him steady. "I was the one who told her to open up to you.
I pushed her to do it because I thought—" She shook her head.
"I don't know what I thought. That maybe having somebody to be honest with would help her heal.
" She looked down at her hands. "So yeah, I feel some type of way about how all of this turned out.
But I'm not gon' put that on you. You were honest with her from jump about your girlfriend Candy. She knew what she was getting into."
"I still care about her, Dream." He said it direct. "And I know that probably ain't what you wanna hear but I'm done pretending like I don't."
Dream looked at him for a long moment.
"You got a whole woman at home, Monty." She said it even.
No judgment in her tone — just straight facts.
"A woman you said you love. A family you said you chose.
" She leaned forward slightly. "So, what exactly are you sitting here telling me you care about my sister for? What is that supposed to do for her?"
"It’s deeper than that, though. This is different."
Dream was quiet.
She looked at him and for a second her expression was less guarded.
Just a woman who knew her sister better than anyone, sitting across from the man who had done something nobody had ever done before, made Zuri feel something after all she’d gone through.
Made her open that door she kept bolted shut.
"My sister fell in love with you." She said.
"I don't think you fully understand what that means in her world.
Zuri don't love people easy. Not after everything she's been through.
" She exhaled. "And the fact that she let you go — that she sat there and told you to go be with your family and didn't fight you on it and didn't lose herself — do you know how much that cost her?
" She shook her head. "That took everything she had. "
The room sat still.
"She's trying to move on." Dream continued, standing now.
"And you showing up here — looking the way you looking, feeling the way you feeling — gon' set her all the way back.
" She looked at him directly. “All the way back, Monty.
" She pointed toward the door. "So, whatever you came here to figure out, figure it out somewhere else.
Go home to your woman, to your son. Be present.
Be what you said you wanted to be." Her voice softened just barely at the edge.
"Zuri gon' alright. She always finds a way to be okay.
But she can't do that with you coming around here stirring up what she's trying to put down. "
Monty stood there with his jaw flexed and his hands in his jacket pockets and everything Dream had just said landing on him like it deserved to.
She wasn't wrong.
She wasn't wrong about a single word of it.
He knew that.
And he still couldn't make himself walk out the door.
Dream watched him standing there and shook her head slowly with something that looked almost like sympathy.
"Go home, Monty."
Somewhere outside, headlights swept across the front window.
They both looked toward it at the same time.
Dream's eyes cut back to him fast. "Go."
Monty sat in his Tahoe parked outside of Zuri's complex, feelings all over the place.
His mind wouldn't settle.
Dream's words were still bouncing around inside his head.
Go home, Monty. Go.
Then there had been those headlights sweeping across the living room window.
The way they had frozen.
The way his stomach had dropped.
The way he'd slipped out the back door before Zuri could pull all the way into the parking lot, moving fast with his head down against the cold.
He'd made it out.
He'd done the right thing.
So why was he still sitting here?
He pulled onto the street, stopping at the stop sign at the end of the block and just... sat there.
Engine idling.
Heat blowing.
Jay played low through the speakers like he had somehow reached through time and built a soundtrack specifically for moments like this.
Left or right.
His mama's house was left.
Candy's house was right.
Both directions should've been easy.
Instead, he sat there staring through the windshield like the answer might be written somewhere in the evening sky.
Dream had told him to go home.
Hell, every ounce of common sense he possessed had told him to leave.
Candy was home. Twin was home.
Then he picked up his phone and made a call.
Candy answered on the second ring. "Hey baby."
"Hey." He kept his voice easy. Normal. "I'm leaving the office late. Thought I'd swing by Mama's and check on her before I come your way. You good?"
"Yeah, we good. Chunky butt knocked out. So, I’m about to take a good SbyS soak and sip on some wine.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
"Okay cool, I won't be too late." There was a pause. "Love you."
"Love you too."
The call ended, as Monty stared at the phone in his hand. For a second, he almost went left and headed toward his mama’s crib.
Almost.
Then he dropped the phone into the cupholder…
And turned back toward Zuri's complex.
In what felt like a matter of minutes, Monty found himself right back where he had no damn business being.
The realization irritated him almost as much as the guilt did.
He sat behind the wheel of his Tahoe staring at Zuri's crib through the windshield, wondering when exactly he'd decided to ignore every bit of good advice he'd been given over the last hour. Dream had told him to go home. Hell, his own conscience had told him to go home.
Yet here he sat.
Again.
His jaw flexed as he looked toward the kitchen window.
The curtains were still open, allowing him a clear view inside.
Dream and Zuri were seated at the table with wine glasses in front of them, talking about something he couldn't hear.
Whatever the conversation was, it looked easy.
Comfortable. Normal. The kind of normal he had spent the last month trying to convince himself he could live without.
Apparently, he couldn't.
His chest tightened the moment his eyes landed on Zuri.
It was the same feeling he'd gotten when she'd walked into his office.
Despite everything that had happened, she looked good.
Not in some overly dressed-up, trying-to-catch-his-attention type of way.
Just... good. Comfortable. Beautiful without effort. Existing without him.
That should've made driving away easier.
Instead, it made it harder.
Monty leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes for a second.
The guilt was immediate. Sharp. Unavoidable.
Less than ten minutes ago he'd been on the phone with Candy telling her he was stopping by his mother's house before heading home.
The lie had come out too easily. That bothered him.
Not because he didn't love Candy, but because he did.
He loved her enough to know he shouldn't be sitting here.
Loved her enough to know that every second he remained parked outside this condo was a betrayal of the life they'd built together.
Still, he couldn't make himself leave.
After another minute of arguing with himself, Monty finally killed the engine. The silence that followed felt loud. Final. Like the moment a man stepped across a line he knew he shouldn't cross.
The December air hit him the moment he stepped outside, sharp enough to make him pull his coat tighter across his chest. The cold carried that familiar pre-Christmas feel—the kind that settled into the night and seemed to slow everything down.
All around the complex, Christmas lights blinked from balconies and windows, splashing red, green, gold, and blue across the darkness.
Somewhere in the distance, holiday music drifted through the air, faint enough to be carried away by the wind.