16. Reiana
Reiana
Mona came and got Rhyse to hang with Quaylon to give me some time to gather my thoughts.
I didn’t fight her on it because she was right and Rhyse damn near begged me.
The moment he heard Mona here, he grabbed his stuff and beat her outside.
That had been a couple hours ago, and I’ve been alone with my thoughts ever since.
I stood in the kitchen staring into the refrigerator, trying to figure out what I wanted to eat without actually cooking.
I had spent enough money on groceries to feed three families, yet somehow nothing inside the refrigerator looked worth the effort.
I finally pulled out the container of pasta Taryn and I had ordered the night before and set it on the counter, but before I could even get the lid all the way off, somebody rang the doorbell.
Placing the food back on the counter, I headed toward the front of the house.
When I reached the door, I looked through the peephole and immediately frowned harder when I saw Lennox standing on my porch.
I unlocked the door and pulled it open, finding him dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans with his locs hanging down this time instead of being up in a bun.
I shamelessly let my eyes roam over him.
The first two times I saw him, I didn’t allow myself to take him on, but now I could see that grown man Lennox was fine as hell.
I mean the kind of fine that made women want to have his babies.
Hell, I see why Kree was on her dumb shit.
Snapping out of my thoughts, I shook my head before I addressed him.
“Rhyse isn’t here. He’s with Mona and Quentin,” I stated. “I thought I told you not to pop up over here, anyway?” I cocked my head to the side.
“I ain’t come to see Rhyse… well not until you say it’s cool,” Lennox told me as he kept his eyes on mine. “I came to talk to you.”
“About what?” I asked, watching him closely.
“Can I come in first?” Lennox asked as he glanced past me into the house before looking back at me.
I stared at him for another second before stepping aside. “I mean, since you already popped your ass up without calling… you might as well.” I shrugged.
“I called you twice, Ree,” he spoke as he swaggered past me.
I closed the door behind him, and I headed back to the kitchen while Lennox followed behind me without saying anything else. When we reached the kitchen, I grabbed my phone off the counter, and the screen showed two missed calls from him, and I pressed my lips together before putting it back down.
“Oh, well… I didn’t see it,” I said as I turned toward him. I took the container of pasta and slid it into the microwave. He stayed standing on the other side of the island, watching me like he thought I’d disappear or some shit.
“Okay, what did you want to talk about?” I asked as I folded my arms and stared at him.
Lennox dragged his hand across his hair before resting both hands against the edge of the island. “I figured out what happened with that message,” he started.
“Okay… and?” I asked.
“It was Kree,” he confirmed, and my blood pressure shot through the roof.
“What the fuck does Kree have to do with this?” I asked.
“A lot more than either one of us knew,” Lennox replied as he exhaled through his nose. “She saw the message and responded like it was me. She must’ve deleted everything afterward because I never saw any traces of it,” he explained.
“So, you’re saying Kree saw me tell you I was pregnant, but you never saw it?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Ree,” he agreed with a nod.
The microwave beeped behind me, but neither one of us moved.
I knew where this conversation was going, even though I didn’t want to believe it.
I pushed myself away from the counter as my blood started to boil.
I remembered exactly where I had been when I sent that message.
I had sat on the edge of my bed staring at my phone for almost an hour before I finally forced myself to type the words.
I had been hurt, angry, scared, and still trying to wrap my mind around being pregnant, but regardless of what had happened between Lennox and me, I knew he deserved to know.
Then that response came back so cold that I had read it over and over because I couldn’t believe the man I loved could say something like that to me.
“Do you know how many years I hated you for that shit? Even after I got over us and accepted that whatever we had was done, I couldn’t get past you knowing about your child and choosing not to give a fuck,” I croaked out.
“I know,” Lennox said, but his expression told me he understood that knowing it now wasn’t the same as living with it all those years.
“No, you don’t,” I shot back. “You don’t know shit, Lennox! Every birthday… every first day of school… every time Rhyse asked why his fucking father didn’t want him, I had to figure out how to answer without making him feel like something was wrong with him, I thought you had made that choice.”
“You told him I didn’t want him?” He frowned.
“What else was I supposed to say? At the time, that was the truth. I wasn’t about to lie to him to preserve his outlook on you. You already did that,” I spat.
“But I didn’t!” He yelled before closing his eyes. “Ree, I didn’t know that shit, man. You should’ve known I’d never say no shit like that.”
I looked into his eyes and saw the sincerity in them.
I did believe it, but I was also hurt, so I said fuck it.
The truth didn’t magically erase the moments he had missed with his son.
It didn’t erase the years I spent doing everything without him because I thought that was what he wanted.
All because Kree had decided she had the right to make a decision for both of us.
“Why the fuck would she even do something like that?” I asked.
“Because she didn’t want you back in my life,” Lennox answered. “She claimed that you knew she wanted me first, and you still got with me,” he stated.
I couldn’t do shit but laugh to keep from getting in my truck and driving to Cannon Hills and breaking my foot off in her ass.
“So because she didn’t want me around, she decided your child didn’t deserve his father?” I asked as I shook my head. “What the fuck was wrong with her?”
“A lot… apparently,” Lennox replied.
“She was supposed to be my friend. She looked me in my fucking face after that, Lennox. She knew I was pregnant and still looked me in my face like she hadn’t done shit.” I was getting pissed all over again. I leaned back against the counter and studied him for a moment. “So what happens now?”
“With Kree?” Lennox asked, and when I nodded, he answered without hesitation. “Nothing changes with Lennyn. That’s my daughter, and whatever issue I have with her mama has nothing to do with her.”
That was the answer I expected, and honestly, I would’ve thought less of him if he had said anything different. I nodded slowly before asking, “And between you and Kree?”
“There ain’t shit between us outside of raising Lennyn,” Lennox said firmly. “I made that shit clear to her.”
“And you really think she’s just going to accept that without making shit difficult?” I raised my brow at him.
“I really don’t care what the fuck she accepts. She caused all this shit, so now she has to deal with the consequences of the selfish ass choices she made,” Lennox replied.
“You can’t guarantee that,” I told him as I crossed my arms again.
“Yeah, I can,” Lennox replied without blinking.
“Whatever Kree did in the past has already cost me enough. She’s not about to cost me anything else.
She’s not coming between me and my son, and I’on give a fuck how she feels about me being here or what she thinks about you.
Rhyse is mine… I’m his father, and that shit ain’t changing,” he said with finality.
“What about Lennyn? She’s five, Lennox. She’s not going to understand any of this shit, and I’on want her caught in the middle either,” I said honestly. Just like Rhyse, she was innocent in all of this.
“She won’t be if I can help it,” Lennox assured me as he rubbed his hand over his beard.
“I got a daughter who’s known me her whole life and a son who still doesn’t know I’m his father.
They’ll both have to adjust, and I gotta figure out how to make sure neither one of them feels like they’re losing something because the other one exists. ”
“And you need to hear me out regarding something else too,” he added.
“And what’s that?” I quizzed.
“What Kree did ain’t changing how I move with you either,” Lennox said as he stepped a little closer. “I didn’t know… you didn’t know that I didn’t know, and we’ve both spent years operating off some shit that wasn’t true.”
“That doesn’t erase everything else that happened between us,” I asserted.
“I’ain saying it does,” Lennox replied calmly. “and I ain’t pretending finding this out magically fixes everything either.”
“And it doesn’t mean we suddenly go back to being who we were,” I added as I searched his face.
“I know that too,” Lennox said, and the calm way he kept agreeing with me irritated me. “That’s what you were about to eat?” Lennox asked, changing the subject.
“Yes,” I answered.
For a moment, neither one of us said anything, and the silence between us felt heavier than it had a few minutes earlier.
There was too much still lingering. The breakup…
Kree… Rhyse… Lennyn, and eight years of us believing completely different versions of the same story were all still there, even if one piece of it had finally been cleared up.
I looked down at the container before speaking again. “I’m still pissed, and I might be pissed for a while. Not just at Kree either. I’m pissed about all the time that got wasted because of this shit.”
“You should be,” Lennox responded.