Chapter 18 #2
Eternity had taken Mali upstairs so that she could clean up.
In the living room, MJ, Tahari, and I stood around in silence.
I should have been telling his ass thank you or something, but this is what the fuck you were supposed to do for the woman that you love.
I still don’t even know why he had broken up with my daughter to begin with, and that wasn’t something that I was going to get to the bottom of tonight.
MJ was pacing. I could tell that his mind was racing just by the way his brows were bunched in anger.
“Pops, I gotta touch that nigga. He came in here all primped and proper on some nerdy shit, and this is what he does.”
“He’s already been touched,” Tahari finally spoke for the night.
MJ spun so quickly on his heels that if I blinked, I would have missed it.
“But he is still breathing, right?”
I don’t even think MJ meant to yell, but he was angry, and he had every right to be. Tahari stood there with his chest poked out. He seemed unfazed by MJ’s shouting, but I could tell that he was getting frustrated by the way his jaw was flexing.
“Exactly.” MJ was crossing the room to get closer to Tahari, but I rushed over and stood in between the two.
If this were any other time, I would have loved to see it, but right now, it wasn’t. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Eternity leaning over the banister of the stairs from the second level.
“What happened, Ma?”
I asked while I stood between the two boys.
“She wants to say goodnight to Tahari.”
I cut eyes at his ass and then nodded toward the stairs. When he made it to the base of them, he came out of his sneakers, and I took notice of that. Our entire house had hardwood flooring except for upstairs.
“Pops, we need to find that nigga that touched Mali.”
“Oh, we will,” I said without hesitation.
To touch my daughter without her permission was punishable by death in my eyes.
Shit, even if you did it with her permission, a little nigga might be liable to get put in the ground.
I let MJ pace the floors and vent. He told me that Cornelius was a football player at the school.
I told him to fall back until I gathered more information, but I knew my son.
He was every bit of me, the younger version, so when he gave me a look like he was half listening, I already knew that he had all intent on taking things into his own hands.
When Tahari was taking too long to bring his ass back downstairs, I went to see what the fuck was going on. Slowly, I walked toward Maliah’s room. I stood on the side of the wall right before you reached her door so that I could hear what was going on.
“Don’t cry, baby girl. Look, he isn’t going to hurt you ever again.”
“I know I’m just,” my baby girl was crying to him.
“You’re scared,” he finished her sentence, “I know. Shhh, shhh. You don’t have any reason to be, you hear me. I’m here. I always will be.”
Just listening to how he was soothing my baby girl made me feel like I could be a little less hard on his ass. I walked to the hallway closet and pulled a pillow and blanket from it.
“What are you doing, Mr. Browne?”
I jumped at Eternity’s voice. She startled me a bit.
“The little boy brought her home safe. He could sleep on her floor for the night.”
I answered without turning around because I was grabbing the things out of the closet. When I turned around, she was standing behind me with her hand on her hip. She had this smirk on her face.
“What?” I questioned.
“You’re going to end up liking him.” She walked over to me and gently kissed me on the lips. “See you in bed.”
I watched as she walked down the hall, and I had to shake my head at the sight.
Her ass was jiggling in her house gown. I sighed and then headed back to Maliah’s room.
When I made my presence known in the doorway, Tahari took a step away from her bed.
He was standing beside it, leaning down, wiping the tears off her face.
“Here, little nigga,” I tossed the pillow and blanket his way, “you can make up a space on the floor and leave this door open.”
I walked out without saying another word.
“Thank you, Daddy.”
I heard Maliah say on my way out.
MALIAH
Tahari and I stayed up all night talking.
He had caught me up on everything I had missed in the last two months, but somehow none of it felt as important as the fact that he was there…
with me. At some point, the conversation slowed.
I didn’t even remember falling asleep. When I woke up, the door to my room was still wide open, just like my dad had said it needed to be.
Morning light slipped in from the hallway, mixing with the soft sunlight peeking through my curtains.
For a second, I just laid there, listening.
The house was calm. Too calm for everything that had happened just hours before. Then I heard it.
A soft, uneven snore. I turned my head slightly, and there he was.
Still on the floor, the blanket halfway covered him like he had been fighting to sleep before it finally took him out.
The pillow was barely under his head, and his arm was thrown across his chest like he didn’t even realize when he knocked out.
I smiled slightly before I could stop it.
Last night tried to break me. Cornelius tried to take something from me that I didn’t give him…
something he had no right to even reach for.
Just thinking about it made my stomach twist, but when my eyes stayed on Tahari, that feeling didn’t take over.
Being in the same place as me at the right time had to be God’s plan. If that wasn’t a time telling us both that we were meant to be together, then I don’t know what could be.
“Thank you…” I whispered so lowly because my voice was barely there.
He didn’t move. He just kept sleeping like the weight of the night had finally caught up to him.
My gaze drifted toward my open door again, and for the first time since everything happened, I let myself really feel it.
My family didn’t play when it came to me.
It was the way my dad didn’t even question letting Tahari stay.
The way my mom moved without panic, but still made everything feel handled. And then the way MJ reacted.
A sigh left my lips as I leaned back against my headboard.
My brother was going to take this hard. I already knew it.
He wasn’t the type to let something like that go.
Not when it came to me. And even though a part of me understood it…
another part of me didn’t want things to spiral because of what Cornelius did.
I didn’t want this to turn into something bigger than it already was.
My eyes fell back on Tahari. Everything between us had been complicated before last night.
His need for space was so messy and unclear to me.
It’s crazy how the drama from last night had shifted things between us.
Like whatever space he had needed away from me was gone.
Still, I didn’t know if he still felt the same when it came to us, although his reaction had to come from a different place.
From a place of love. Love for me and for what we had.
I studied his face, trying to find answers in a place that probably didn’t have any yet.
I was trying to picture what “us” even looked like after this.
A light knock at my already open door pulled me out of my thoughts.
Dad’s presence filled the space before he stepped in.
His eyes moved around the room once before landing on Tahari.
Without a word, he walked over and nudged him with his foot.
“Wake up, little nigga.”
Tahari stirred, then jerked awake slightly. Slowly, he sat up as he tried to catch up to where he was. His eyes flicked from me to my dad, and then he straightened up a little more.
“Oh, good morning, Mr. Browne,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.
My dad looked down at him, unreadable as ever.
“We’re going to the gun range,” he said. “Brush ya teeth. Eternity left a brand-new one in the hall bathroom for you.”
Tahari blinked, clearly caught off guard, but he nodded anyway.
“Yes, sir.”
I watched them quietly as my fingers tightened slightly in my blanket. Dad cut eyes at me before he made his exit. When I looked down, Tahari was looking at me with a smirk on his face.
“Guess he fuck with me a little.”
“Shhh,” I quickly said as I chuckled.
I watched as he folded up his blanket and then tossed his pillow on top.
He walked over to my bed and then placed a kiss on my forehead before he went off to do what my father had told him to.
Dad could have kicked him out as soon as he opened his eyes this morning, but what he was doing was something that I thought I would never see him do. He was trying to bond with him.