6. Bleek
Bleek
The second I heard Eternity scream my name, I was out of bed and quick.
I didn’t stroll over there; I put on a light jog because after all these years together, I knew the difference between my wife calling for me and my wife panicking.
This was panic. By the time I reached Maliah’s room, Eternity was standing in the middle of it with her phone clutched in one hand.
The look on her face immediately made my stomach tighten.
“What happened?”
She turned toward me so quickly that her robe shifted around her legs.
“Maliah left, and I can’t find her.”
For a second, I didn’t say anything. My eyes moved around the room.
The bed was made, clothes were scattered around, and makeup was on the vanity.
What caught my attention the most was the empty space where her purse should’ve been, and immediately, I knew that she was fucking gone.
Damn, I thought to myself as I used one of my hands to rub down the long side of my face.
Eternity held her phone up.
“Her location is off.”
I took the phone from her hand and looked at the screen myself.
Location unavailable
My jaw tightened. I already knew what that meant.
“Maliah wouldn’t just leave without saying anything. Did she say anything to you last night before she left? I saw on the cameras that she jetted out of here.”
The panic in Eternity’s voice was growing by the second.
I looked around the room again and then back at my wife.
And for the first time since she screamed my name, I realized I didn’t have a choice.
I had to tell her. I mean, I was going to tell her; I don’t keep secrets from her, ever.
But by the time she got in last night, I was asleep, and well, she was so excited about the baby this morning I didn’t want to bring shit up to mess that up.
“Eternity.”
The second she heard my tone, her expression changed.
“What?”
I played with my beard a bit, trying to figure out where to start.
“There is something I didn’t tell you about yesterday.”
Immediately her brows pulled together.
“What are you talking about?”
I looked away for a second.
“The boy.”
“Tahari?” she questioned.
I nodded. Even after I took a liking to the little muthafucka I never called him by his name. He was the boy or little nigga to me. Her confusion only deepened; I could see it in how her brows pulled together.
“What about him?”
A slow breath left my lungs before I spit the shit out. I had been keeping this piece of information myself for a minute. It was on some top-secret shit because the muthafucka that took from us was so close to home.
“Tahari is the one who robbed the auto shop.”
Silence. For a moment she just stared at me. It’s like she was waiting for me to laugh or waiting for me to tell her that I was joking. When neither happened, the realization started settling in.
“What?” she questioned.
“He did the first robbery,” I swallowed, “the second one too.”
Her mouth slowly fell open.
“No,” she whispered out in disbelief.
“Yeah,” I nodded.
The room fell completely silent. I watched the information hit her piece by piece. A wave of shock hit her first, then disbelief, and then confusion laced with slight doubt.
“You sure?”
I laughed without humor.
“I watched the footage myself.”
She sat down heavily on the edge of Maliah’s bed, just staring at me.
“Oh, my God.”
I could hear the shock and disbelief in her tone. I looked toward the window. Toward anywhere except her face because I already knew the next question and I wasn’t looking forward to answering it.
“What happened?”
There it was. I let out a slow breath.
“He admitted it.”
Eternity’s eyes widened slightly.
“He admitted it?”
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“I asked him who was with him.”
Her brows pulled together.
“With him?”
“He wasn’t alone.”
I looked down at the floor.
“He wouldn’t give the other person up.”
The silence stretched. I made eye contact with her before saying the rest.
“So, I shot him.”
The words sounded just as bad out loud as they did in my head. Eternity’s eyes widened.
“You did what?”
Her voice was a little raised, but she wasn’t yelling.
I could see a piece of anger in her eyes, but not so much.
She knew me inside and out, so she must have known that this was what the fuck was going to happen when I found out who did this.
I didn’t expect that it would be his ass.
Shit, I don’t think any of us did. I didn’t answer immediately because there wasn’t a version of this story that made me sound good.
“I shot him.”
She stood up so fast that the bed shifted.
“Malik!”
“It was a flesh wound,” I said as I rubbed the back of my neck.
“Malik!”
The disappointment in her voice hit harder than any yelling would have.
I said that as if it would make the situation better.
To me, it was better because I could have killed his ass, and she knew that.
For a moment, neither one of us spoke. Then she shook her head and started pacing.
The same way Maliah did when she was trying to make sense of something.
“There’s more to this.”
I stayed quiet because she was right.
“There has to be.”
She looked over at me.
“I bet you told Maliah she couldn’t see him anymore.”
“Yeah.”
“Without explaining why?” she questioned with a raised eyebrow.
“What exactly was I supposed to tell her?” I said with a sigh.
Eternity looked away. For a second I thought she was going to argue. Instead, her shoulders dropped, and when she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
“Shooting him wasn’t going to stop her from loving him.”
I frowned immediately. Because deep down? I knew that. Love wasn’t logical. If it was, half the people I knew would’ve ended up with somebody else. Eternity shook her head slowly.
“Love is strong, Malik.”
I looked away.
“You can’t get in the middle of something like that and expect it to disappear.”
Neither one of us said anything for a moment. Then her expression changed to fear, and I mean real fear.
“What if she went to him?”
“What?” I looked at her as I folded my arms over my broad chest.
“What if she went looking for him?”
My stomach tightened because now she was saying out loud exactly what I’d been thinking since I walked into this room.
“Maliah loves that boy,” her voice cracked slightly, “If she thought something happened to him…”
The rest didn’t need to be said because we both knew. Eternity’s eyes widened.
“Oh, my God.”
She looked toward the door.
“What if he’s angry?”
“What?” She was rambling now.
“You shot him, Malik. What if he retaliates?”
Immediately, I shook my head.
“Tahari ain’t gonna hurt Maliah,” I said in a sarcastic tone.
That boy was soft as fuck. I didn’t think he had it in him.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
She stared at me like my statement was the craziest shit she ever heard.
“Do you?”
The question sat uncomfortably between us because the truth was that over the last few months, I had taken Tahari under my wing.
I would never have thought that he would be a thief.
I spent time around him. I talked to him, taught him things, and trusted him enough to let him around my daughter and let him into my home.
Pulling him so closely into my family made me think that I was finding out who he really was. Now? I wasn’t sure of much of anything. Eternity twisted her neck and then folded her arms across her breast. I could feel the attitude seeping from her.
“Where does he live?”
The question hit me immediately, and I hated the answer because I didn’t have one. I was allowing Maliah over the past couple of months to spend time somewhere when I didn’t know where it was. I stared at her then looked away.
“I don’t know.”
Her face fell.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean exactly that.”
I didn’t mean to snap at her, but the frustration immediately started building in my chest because she wasn’t the only one who hated that answer.
I did too. I was off my game, and that is what got to me most. Unknowingly, I had trusted his ass, and I promised myself that any little nigga after him wouldn’t get that from me.
I knew where he worked because his ass worked for me, but his address?
I never asked. I felt like I never needed to.
Now I stood in my daughter’s empty bedroom wishing I had.
If I had followed proper procedures and protocol before hiring him, I would have had his address on file down at the shop, but I didn’t even do that.
For the first time in a very long time, I found myself standing in the middle of a situation without an answer. I hated that feeling, always had.
MJ
I was still sitting on my bed when I heard my mother’s voice carrying through the house.
“Malik!”
At first, I didn’t think much of it, but then I heard it again.
Something about the way she said my father’s name made me put my phone down.
My brows pulled together as I listened. The house had been full of excitement a few minutes ago, but now something felt different.
I stepped out into the hallway just as my father disappeared into Maliah’s room.
I stood there for a while. I heard them talking, but it was muffled.
I wanted to give them their privacy, so I waited for a bit.
When neither one of them came out of the room, curiosity got the better of me, so I followed behind my dad.
When I reached the doorway, both of my parents were standing inside.
My mother’s phone was in her hand, and my father’s expression was hard to read.
The room itself looked normal, everything looked exactly the way Maliah would leave it when she was trying to decide what to wear. The only thing missing was her.
“What’s going on?”