Chapter 25 Khloe
Khloe
I couldn’t see the road through my tears. Everything blurred into streaks of red lights, headlights, and shadows as I sped down the empty streets, crying so hard my chest physically hurt. I understood why Kairo was angry. But at the same time… I didn’t understand where I had gone wrong.
For years I had been told: Choose yourself. Speak up for your needs. Stop abandoning your feelings. Stop shrinking. So I finally did. I finally put Khloe first. And somehow… I ended up more broken than I had ever been.
A sob ripped out of me as my foot pressed harder on the gas. I wasn’t thinking about slowing down. I wasn’t thinking about calming down. I wasn’t thinking about anything except the fact that my life felt like it had just exploded in my hands. Everything was messy, complicated, and ugly.
I grabbed my phone with shaking fingers and called Stacks. It rang and went to voicemail. I called again. And again. And again.
“Come on…” I whispered through tears. “Please answer.”
Nothing. I checked the time. It was almost two in the morning. He should’ve answered. He always answered. I hit call again and it went to voicemail.
My breathing became uneven, panic creeping into my chest. The light turned red and I slammed on the brakes, stopping in the middle of the empty intersection.
I called again and it went straight to voicemail. Something inside me snapped.
“ANSWER THE FUCKING PHONE!” I screamed, throwing the phone onto the passenger floor before dropping my forehead against the steering wheel.
I cried so hard my shoulders shook. I didn’t know the light turned green until a car behind me laid on their horn. I jumped, wiped my face blindly, and drove forward.
I just needed to see him. I had hurt him. I had hurt my husband. I had destroyed everything trying to convince myself I could balance two worlds. My mind told me I was managing it, but my heart knew I was lying.
I drove straight to his house. When I pulled up, my chest tightened. His car was in the driveway and not in the garage like it usually was when I wasn’t there. I ignored that and parked anyway.
My hands trembled as I walked toward the side window of his bedroom. I knew his son was there, so I wasn’t trying to go inside. I just needed to talk. I knocked softly on the glass. Once I heard movement, I walked back toward the front door just as it opened.
Stacks stood there holding a gun. I gasped, stepping back, and he immediately lowered it when he recognized me.
“What the fuck, Khloe?” he said, shocked. “What are you doing here?”
The tears started again. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I just… I needed to talk.”
He rubbed his eyes, clearly just waking up. “You okay?”
“No,” I said honestly. “I just really need to talk right now.”
He hesitated and that hesitation felt… wrong.
“Right now ain’t a good time,” he said, lowering his voice.
“I know your son is here,” I rushed out. “I don’t have to come inside. We can talk outside.”
He took a long breath. He was thinking and weirdly quiet. Something felt off. Then I heard footsteps.
A woman’s voice drifted toward the door. “Baby… who’s at the door?”
My heart stopped. A woman appeared behind him wrapped in nothing but a sheet. Everything inside me went cold. His head dropped slightly like he already knew there was nothing he could say.
He turned, kissed her forehead and said calmly, “It’s just a friend. Go back to bed. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She nodded, kissed his lips, and disappeared down the hallway. I felt something inside me shatter so quietly it almost scared me. More tears slid down my face. He stepped outside, closing the door behind him.
My voice was trembling but strangely calm. “Who the fuck is that?”
He dragged a hand down his face. “A young lady I’ve been seeing… for a few weeks.”
I nodded slowly trying to hold myself together. Trying not to look as hurt as I felt.
“Khloe… don’t do that,” he said softly.
My eyes snapped to his. “Don’t do what?”
“You can’t expect me to sit around waiting while you go home to your husband every night,” he said, looking at me like I had a clown nose on.
“I told you I was married!” I shouted.
“I know,” he replied. “Which means you should also know I wasn’t about to keep begging for your time like I’m some fantasy you run to when home ain’t hitting right.”
That hurt because it was true. But it still hurt.
“So this an every weekend thing?” I asked bitterly. “She’s here while your son is here. Is it that serious?”
He sighed. “Khloe… don’t do this.”
“Why not?” I laughed brokenly. “I was honest with you. You weren’t honest with me.”
“You never asked!” he snapped.
I stared at him in disbelief that he really said that.
“Look,” he said, tired. “Call me tomorrow. You can’t just pop up at my house.”
I laughed. “Oh… so now I can’t pop up?”
“No,” he said firmly. “Because I can’t just pop up at yours.”
That shut me up instantly because he was right. God, I wanted to slap him.
I turned to walk away, then stopped because I had one last question burning in my chest.
“And why did you lie about being a day trader? I heard all you do is run quick schemes and sell drugs.”
He shook his head like he was exhausted. “I didn’t lie. I do day trade.”
He paused. “I trade drugs for money in the daytime.”
I stared at him, waiting for the joke, but it never came. Embarrassment washed over me. I felt stupid, naive, played, used. Everything at once.
“Fuck you, Stacks!” I yelled, turning away before he could see me completely fall apart.
I walked back to my truck feeling like I had just lost everything. My marriage. My escape. My illusion. And most importantly… myself.
The hallway outside Coffee’s hotel room felt endless. Every step toward her door felt heavier than the last, like my body finally understood what my mind had been refusing to accept all night.
I stood there for a second, staring at the number on the door, my hand trembling before I knocked. The door swung open almost immediately.
Coffee took one look at my face and didn’t ask a single question. “Oh, baby…” she whispered.
Her arms wrapped around me before I could even speak, pulling me into her chest like she was trying to hold me together. And the moment she touched me, I broke. A loud, ugly sob tore out of me as she guided me inside, kicking the door shut behind us.
“I got you,” she kept saying softly. “I got you.”
She walked me to the bed, but my knees gave out halfway there.
I collapsed onto it, curling into myself while the tears just kept coming.
I was grateful she got a hotel and didn’t stay with one of her parents’ home or mine because I needed somewhere to fall apart without witnesses, judgment, anyone seeing how stupid I felt, how embarrassed I was, and how badly I hated myself in that moment.
I buried my face into the pillow, crying so hard. On the drive over, I had called her, barely able to breathe, words tumbling out between sobs while she kept repeating:
“Calm down. Focus on the road. Just get here safe.”
But I couldn’t stop talking, crying, or replaying everything.
Coffee sat beside me, rubbing slow circles on my back.
I finally lifted my head, eyes swollen. “I think I just ruined my life.”
She pulled me into her arms again. “You shook up a lot of things,” she said. “But you didn’t ruin your life.”
I shook my head violently. “He hasn’t even called me,” I cried. “I know he hates me. My husband hates me.”
Coffee kissed the side of my head while holding me tighter. “He doesn’t hate you. He’s hurt. Big difference.”
I sniffled.
“He called me,” she added before my head snapped up.
“What?”
“He called to make sure you were okay before you got here. I told him you cried yourself to sleep but you were safe.”
Relief hit me so hard it hurt and that made me cry even harder.
“He doesn’t want to talk to me,” I whispered.
“Good,” Coffee said. I blinked at her like she was crazy.
She leaned back “Because right now you don’t need to talk to him. You need to get yourself together.”
“I’m gonna let you sit in this depressing ass mess tonight,” she continued. “You can cry. You can hate yourself. You can feel every bit of this.”
She pointed at me. “But tomorrow morning? You getting the hell up out of it.”
Coffee crossed her legs on the bed, looking at me like a therapist who loved me too much to lie.
“You let your mind convince you that everything you were doing made sense,” she said. “You got so deep in your feelings that reality stopped existing.”
“You built an illusion, Khloe. One where your pain justified your choices. One where your loneliness made the rules.”
“Yes,” she continued. “Kairo dropped the ball. A lot. You were starving emotionally, and that man stopped feeding your marriage the way he should have.”
Tears slid down my face again.
“But instead of fixing the hunger,” she said, “you went outside your house to eat.”
“You didn’t just go get attention,” Coffee said. “You went and collected pieces of yourself from another man. You caught feelings for someone who was mentally fucking you from day one.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“I can’t even be mad at Stacks,” she said, shaking her head. “You think he was supposed to sit around getting crumbs while you went home every night to your husband?”
“If a married man came to me talking about how unhappy he was at home,” Coffee said, “I’m supposed to believe everything he tells me without ever seeing his real life with my own eyes? Come on, Khloe.”
She leaned closer. “You don’t know what happens behind closed doors when you’re not there.”
“If you were gonna fuck him,” she said bluntly, “then just fuck him. I told you that.”
Despite everything, I let out a small broken laugh.
“But you didn’t,” she said softly. “You built emotions. You built dreams. You built something that never had space to stand. And now it has collapsed.”
Coffee took my face in her hands. “What happens next?” she said, rubbing my fingers. “That’s on you.”
“You know Kairo better than anyone walking this earth. You know how to reach him. But you also gotta stop shutting down every time you don’t feel seen.”
“That man cannot read your mind,” she said. “You expect him to know what you need without saying it, and when he misses it, you retreat instead of fighting for your marriage.”
My lips trembled.
“This is fixable,” she said with tears in her eyes. “But only if both of y’all do the work. Hard conversations. Ugly honesty. No hiding or pretending to be okay.”
She brushed my tears away. “You don’t fix a marriage by running when it hurts,” she whispered. “You fix it by staying long enough to rebuild what broke.”
I broke down again, leaning into her. She wrapped her arms around me and rocked me gently.
“Cry,” she said, holding me tight. “Get it all out.”
Her hand rubbed my back slowly. “Cry tonight. Feel everything. Hate yourself if you need to.”
She kissed my forehead. “But when that sun comes up? You don’t shed another tear.”
She pulled back just enough to look at me. “I won’t let you stay stuck here. We are going to get through this.”
I nodded weakly as exhaustion finally overtook me. I was still crying, still hurting, still ashamed, but no longer alone.
Somewhere between her holding me and my tears running dry… I fell asleep.