Chapter Thirty-Two Right Beside Him
“She got this softness… but you know she been through some things.”
It was a slow Friday morning at Bladez & Fadez off Poplar and Highland. Derrick had stopped in before work, still smiling over a voice note Sunni sent him that morning. Two chairs over sat a man Derrick had seen only once before—in an old funeral-program photo Sunni kept tucked in a family album.
Derrick looked twice. Fuller beard. Older face. Same eyes. He told himself it could not be Marcus. Dead men did not sit under barber capes checking their phones.
And definitely not since Kane walked away from him without blinking.
But this morning he was trying to feel normal. Get a cut. Reclaim some pride.
Then one of the barbers asked Derrick why he was grinning at his screen.
“Woman I been seeing,” Derrick said. “She got me smiling before noon. That’s new.”
The barber laughed. “That serious?”
“Getting there. Her name’s Sunni.”
The man two chairs over stopped scrolling.
Derrick noticed.
Marcus noticed him noticing.
“Sunni who?” Marcus asked.
Derrick’s smile faded. He studied the man again, and the old photograph clicked into place.
“Lane,” he said carefully.
Marcus looked into the mirror instead of at him. “Figures.”
Derrick sat straighter. “I know your face.”
The clippers kept buzzing, but the shop seemed to quiet around them.
Marcus gave a humorless laugh. “Then she showed you the funeral picture.”
Derrick felt his stomach drop.
“You Marcus?”
Marcus finally turned toward him.
“Yeah.”
Derrick did not stand. Did not puff his chest. “Does Sunni know you’re sitting here talking to me?”
“Sunni knows I’m alive.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Marcus looked away first.
The barber cleared his throat and went back to lining Derrick up, suddenly very interested in his work.
Marcus spoke low. “She deserves somebody steady.”
Derrick’s jaw tightened. “She deserves to decide that for herself.”
Marcus nodded once, like the answer stung because it was true.
“You right.”
Derrick watched him in the mirror. “I’m going to tell her we met.”
“You should.”
That was all.
No threat. No blessing. No man-to-man handoff of a woman who belonged to neither of them.
Just two men sitting in the same room with the consequences of Marcus’s choices.