Chapter 9 Eternity
Eternity
The moment Malik walked through the door, I felt it.
Something was off with him. It didn’t matter that he didn’t say anything was bothering him.
Or that he didn’t slam the front door behind him.
Or even that he didn’t look at me long. I knew that man inside and out.
We had this weird way of reading each other, and we didn’t even need words to do it.
Something was sitting on him. And it was heavy.
For the past couple of days, he has been coming in late and barely speaking when he is here.
The kids had just finished eating dinner and were off in their own spaces in the house.
I was at the kitchen counter, wiping my hands on a towel because I had just finished cleaning the entire kitchen.
I didn’t even bother asking Malik if he was hungry because on nights when he had come home this late, he usually ate before he came home.
I watched him as he dropped his keys into the dish on the counter.
He was trying his best to move like everything was normal.
But I knew him, so I knew better. It was the way his shoulders looked tight and how his posture was slightly off.
“Hey,” I said, trying to lighten his mood.
“Hey,” he answered while leaning in to kiss me.
It was quick. Too quick. My eyes followed him as he kept walking. He was heading straight toward the stairs. Yeah, something is definitely off, I thought as I tossed the towel on the counter and went after him.
“Malik,” I called out softer this time when I reached the bottom of the stairs.
He didn’t stop moving up the stairs. He just glanced back at me.
“I’m about to hop in the shower,” he said lowly.
“Okay,” I said, already following behind him, “me too.”
That earned me a small look, but he didn’t question it. And his facial expression didn’t show that he was against my request either.
When we made it to our bathroom, he undressed and turned on the water to the shower so quickly that I couldn’t keep up.
Steam started to build as the water ran.
Fog slowly crept across the glass as I undressed.
The bathroom always felt like a different world.
We had put a lot of money into this room for the atmosphere to feel this way.
There was stone along the back wall and glass everywhere else.
I wanted a clean spa kind of look when we were renovating the space.
I stepped in behind him and closed the glass door behind me.
I let the heat wrap around me as I watched his shoulders for a second.
They were still tense. Even under the double shower head jet, they were still carrying whatever it was that he was holding in. It had to be something big, too. I slid my hands lightly along his back before resting my cheek there.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” I murmured.
For a second, all I heard was the water hitting the stone on the side and beneath us. Then, after he sighed, he finally spoke.
“One of the smaller auto shops got hit.”
I lifted my head slightly.
“Hit how?”
“Car parts, money,” he paused, and as I looked up at him, I could see his jaw tightening just a little. “…and some work.”
That made me alert as hell.
There were no secrets between my husband and me. I was just shocked at something like that being at one of his auto shops, when he had a whole manufacturing basement for it placed in the lower level of his biggest auto shop.
“Work?” I repeated.
He nodded once, confirming things. There was a moment of silence after his statement. I tilted my frame around his body so that I could see his face.
“Are you going to be the one to handle that?”
This is what I worried about. My husband, stepping back into the field, gave me an ache in my stomach.
He had survived in the game for over twenty years unharmed and unsentenced.
That kind of shit was unheard of. But he quickly eased away the unsettling feeling with his response. He started to shake his head.
“Nah. Sha got it.”
I was glad that my husband wasn’t the one handling things, but momentarily, I did worry about my younger sister because her husband would be the one who was.
And if Malik was letting Sha take charge of things, then it was already in motion.
Sha never played when it came to handling business in the street.
That’s how Tori and I had met him many moons ago.
I nodded slowly as I turned back to stand behind him.
I gently kissed the middle of his back while we let the water run over us.
I could feel the tension leaving his body with every kiss I placed.
I could tell that even with him telling me, it eased something in him a bit.
But my mind didn’t stay there in the bathroom with us for long.
It drifted back to earlier. Back to Maylee on the bed, talking about school like it was the biggest thing in the world.
Back to Maliah, trying to keep a straight face but still laughing at her.
Shit, even MJ rushed in the house earlier, telling me all about his date with his little girlfriend.
I smiled to myself as I rested against Malik’s back again.
Our kids were growing. Right in front of me.
Right in front of us. And for the first time in a long time, I felt it.
That space. That missing piece I hadn’t really said out loud before.
I lifted my head and looked up at him.
“Babe…”
He tilted his head to the side and looked down at me. His expression was softer now than it was moments before.
“Yeah?”
I hesitated, but not for long.
“I want a baby.”
The words came out steadily, and I watched them hit him.
I loved our family, but I had never asked for any of our other children.
Maliah was conceived by accident. MJ was literally tossed into our lives, and well, with Maylee, let’s just say that we had a drunk ass night.
Before we had the children, we had now, we survived a loss that would break some, but it somehow brought us closer.
Losing a baby is not for the weak, especially the way we had lost ours, but that is a dark place that I try my hardest not to revisit.
I could tell that he was having doubts. With every pregnancy, I hit a wave of depression after just thinking about the son we had lost. I knew that this time things would be different, though.
It had to be because it’s something that I want.
I wanted to have a happy pregnancy for the first time ever, and more importantly, I wanted to stay in the right mindset even after the birth.
There was a shift on his face. It was the way his thick brows pulled in slightly that showed me that the same memories I was thinking about, he was also.
“You serious?” he asked in a low tone.
“Yeah,” I nodded.
I was sure about my decision. This is what I wanted. He turned around fully to face me, and when he did, he searched my face like he needed to be sure this wasn’t just a feeling passing through. A phase that I would later regret.
“E…” he exhaled while shaking his head just a little. “I don’t want to lose you mentally again. Are you sure?”
With each patch of depression that I hit, he was right there by my side.
Sitting behind me in the tub and massaging my shoulders while I cried out.
We haven’t had moments like that in a while, still, they didn’t see long ago either.
I didn’t look away. I held his glare. And I didn’t second-guess my statement once I said it.
“Yes.”
My response was sure and confident. And this time, when he looked at me, he saw it.
I could tell by the way his expression softened.
And even with everything sitting between us from the past, he didn’t shut my idea down.
He just stood there holding me under the water.
He leaned in and kissed me deeply. The air was thick with steam.
heat clung to our skin, and water traced slow paths down his chest and over my shoulders.
His hands slid up along my sides. His touch was firm but careful, like he was holding something fragile.
Like he was holding something he didn’t want to mishandle.
And it was me. Malik would always handle me with care.
I stepped closer without thinking, and my hands found what they always would. Without hesitation, I started massaging his strength, which caused him to hiss out. His forehead pressed to mine, and his breath was warm against my lips as his eyes closed for a brief second.
“E…” he murmured, my name quieter now but this time rougher around the edges.
I took one hand and started tracing it up his chest while I was still working on his tool with my other one.
“I mean it,” I whispered. “All of it. I want a baby.”
His grip around my waist tightened just slightly. Not enough to hurt, but firm enough to let me know that we were about to take it there. He reached down again and kissed me again. This time deeper than before. Slower.
I melted into it, and when he turned me around and gently pressed me against the glass, I assumed the position and arched my back in a way that would give him full access to me.
The water ran over us, but neither of us paid any attention to it.
All that existed was the space we created between breaths…
between touches… between the quiet understanding passing back and forth without words.
I wanted a baby, and by the way he was digging deep into my garden, it was evident that he got the message loud and clear.
Every touch felt intentional.
“Mmm,” I hummed out when I felt my climax on the horizon.
“Let it out,” he instructed.
Every second stretched just enough to matter. And at that moment, there was no past loss, no hesitation, and no fear strong enough to pull us apart. It was just us.
“Malikkkkkk…” I hissed out with my climax.
“Yes, ma.”