2. Asha
Asha
The door clicked shut behind me and I sagged against it.
Omar Baptiste.
Omar Baptiste, sitting at Supreme's table.
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.
My heart was kicking so hard I could taste it in my throat.
I clamped both hands flat over my chest like that was going to do anything at all and dragged a shaky breath in through my nose.
Held it. Let it out slow. My hands wouldn't stop trembling so I curled them into fists and pressed them against my collarbones to make them stop.
I'd held myself together for the seven seconds it'd taken to look Supreme in the eye, lie, and walk out of that room.
The second the door closed I'd nearly slid down the wall to the floor.
I made myself move. If Supreme came looking I needed to be anywhere but pinned against this door with my eyes blown wide and my chest heaving like I'd run a mile.
I crossed the upstairs hallway of the warehouse, slipped into the small office at the end of it, shut that door behind me too, and pressed both hands over my mouth.
It'd been fourteen years.
We were sixteen, both of us. In love so deep it had its own gravity, before the lies, before the breaking, when the future was still up for grabs.
We had it all planned: a daughter named after his grandmother, a son after mine, a brownstone with a yard, a dog.
He'd work for his dad, I'd do hair. We'd be the couple old people pointed at and said, They've been together since they were kids. And we meant every word.
Then Ray, I can't even bring myself to call him dad anymore, came home one random Wednesday with that look on his face I knew, the one that meant he was in trouble, and told me to pack a bag.
By Thursday afternoon I was in the back of a U-Haul on I-95 heading to Atlanta, my whole life folded into a duffel, and a boy, my Omar, on a corner in Bed-Stuy who didn't yet know I wasn't coming back.
Until now. I'd been back for just one month.
Supreme had kept me in Atlanta for the three years we'd been together. He said the city had enemies, that he didn't want me near his business. A year in, he bought a house outside Atlanta and stayed there with me, rarely bringing me up to New York.
Then a month ago, he showed up with two of his men and that tone in his voice, the one I knew too well. He said he was bringing me back to Brooklyn. Things were getting hot with TK. He needed his baby close.
Close, he'd said, like that was a tender thing.
Only back a month and I'd already ran into Omar Baptiste.
Supreme's slap was still smarting on my ass.
I was almost certain he did it because he'd seen something on my face he didn't like when I locked eyes with Omar.
Fuck. And even though we'd both denied knowing each other, deep down I could tell he wasn't convinced.
I'm sure he had to do that to remind the room what was his, and I had to take it standing because flinching would've made it a hell of a lot worse.
My phone buzzed in my cardigan pocket. Nene.
Denise 'Nene'. My best friend in the world.
We'd first met in Atlanta back when I was rebuilding my life from a duffel bag.
She'd been the one constant through all of it.
Then eight months ago she'd packed up her shop and moved to Brooklyn for a man.
I'd cried the first night without her in my city, and now here she was, on the same part of the map as me again, the one person who could text me at this hour and mean something.
You good, sis?
She was the only person on this earth who knew the truth of what I was actually living.
The only one who knew about my dad, Ray, the debt, the deal that I was stuck in.
Who knew that boyfriend was the polite word for what Supreme was, that I'd been paying my father's tab with my life for three years.
The only person who could ask me you good, sis? and mean it.
I typed back: I'm good.
I wasn't. But there wasn't a single thing she could do about it tonight.
I put the phone away and made myself think about anything that wasn't Omar Baptiste. My clients the next day. The nail appointment I had to rebook. The dinner reservations for the weekend. Every five seconds I had to push the image of him back down again.
I unstuck myself from the door and went out into the hallway like nothing in the world had happened.
Supreme found me in the kitchenette of the warehouse pouring myself a glass of water and slid his arms around my waist from behind, settling his chin on top of my head.
"You good, baby?" he asked.
"I'm good." The lie came out naturally.
"You seem a bit..."
"It's been a long day. Salon was packed."
He was quiet for a moment. I could practically hear him weighing me in the back of his throat. Then he kissed the top of my head.
"Go on home and get some rest," he said. "I gotta wrap a couple things up here. Imma holla atchu later."
"You sure?"
"Take the Escalade. Mike's got the keys."
I turned around inside his arms and kissed his chin because I knew that's what he was waiting for.
His hands came up to hold my face, looking down at me a couple seconds longer than he needed to, reading my expression.
I gave him soft eyes. A small tired smile.
The performance I'd built over three years and could deliver in my sleep.
After a moment he was satisfied, and let me go.
I made it three blocks before I had to pull the truck over. I sat on a quiet stretch of Eastern Parkway with my forehead against the steering wheel, breathing.
Then I drove home.
The apartment was dark when I let myself in.
I left the overheads off, turned on only the lamp in the hallway and the small light under the kitchen cabinets.
I took the longest shower I could justify.
I did my whole nighttime face routine in front of the bathroom mirror without looking once at the woman staring back at me.
I put on the silk slip he liked and got into bed and turned the lamp down to its lowest setting, lying there in the dim gold light with my eyes on the ceiling.
Seven crown moulding panels above me. Six rows down. The corner pieces had little carved roses I'd noticed by my second night here. I knew this ceiling like the back of my hand. One month back and I'd already memorized every inch of it.
I told myself I wasn't going to think about Omar Baptiste, and then of course I thought about him.
His hands gripping the back of his chair.
The half-second before his brain caught up with what his body already knew.
Nah. Never seen her. Flat and quiet, with not one note of recognition in his voice.
He'd protected me. He hadn't given Supreme a single thing to grab on to, and somewhere underneath fourteen years of distance, the boy who'd walked me home from school every afternoon was still in there, still doing the same thing he'd always done. Putting himself between me and harm.
I rolled onto my side and pulled the blanket up to my shoulder.
Then I heard the front door.
The sound of his coat hitting the back of a kitchen chair. The fridge. His keys in the dish. The bathroom faucet. The hallway. I knew the sequence by heart. I knew exactly what was coming when he walked through that bedroom door.
I closed my eyes.
The door opened and the hallway light slanted across the bed. He stood there a moment looking at me as I kept my breathing slow.
"Baby," he said softly. "Asha?" he added after a moment.
I didn't move because I wasn't in the mood to deal with this man and his kink. Not tonight. Well, not really ever.
"Asha. You sleep?"
My eyelashes flickered before I could stop them. My body had betrayed me before my brain weighed in, and from the foot of the bed came a low satisfied hum that told me he'd caught it.
"Mmhm," he said, pleased. "I see you."
The mattress dipped as he climbed in next to me on top of the covers. He was bare from the waist up, his white undershirt rolled in his hand, his pants already undone. He turned the lamp on his side up to half and the light made a warm gold circle over us.
"Roll over here, baby," he said. "Let me see them pretty eyes."
I did as he asked.
He was up on one elbow already, watching me, that smile on his mouth I'd learned to recognize. Soft. Expectant. Smug. His other hand was resting low on his stomach where his pants gaped open.
"Hey, baby," he said.
"Hey."
"I missed you."
I didn't answer that one.
"I been thinkin' bout you all the way home," he said, sliding that hand down inside his pants. His eyes did a slow drag along my body. "Whole drive. You know what I need."
I knew what he needed.
He pushed his pants down off his hips, kicked them off the side of the bed, and took his semi hard cock in his hand. He gave himself a long slow stroke, exhaled, gave himself another, looking over at me to make sure I was looking.
"Tell me what you see, baby," he said.
"I see you," I told him.
"Yeah you do. Mmm. Damn, baby."
He wanked himself slowly, taking his time, watching my face as much as he watched his own hand.
"You see what you do to me?"
"Yeah, Premie, I do." I see that you get off having me watch you wank, knowing deep down that I don't want to be here. That I'm forced to be here or you'll likely kill me and hunt my sisters.
"Look at this," he said, angling himself toward me. "Look at this dick. This dick is yours. Whose dick is this?"
"Mine."
"Damn right it's yours," he muttered. "Damn right." His head tipped back against the pillow and a long groan rolled out of his chest. "Fuck. Look at me, baby. Look at what you doin' to me."
"I'm lookin'," I told him.
"Tell me."
So I told him. I told him slow because slow was how he wanted it, low and steady, mirroring back to him exactly what he wanted to hear about exactly what he was doing to himself.
His eyes half closed. His mouth fell open.
The sounds coming out of him were wet and unguarded, more whine than moan, and I lay there watching the man whose name made grown men in this borough cross the street suddenly become this.
Dangerous, terrifying Supreme in his own bed, eyes rolled back, talking dirty to himself.
"Oh fuck, baby," he panted. "Oh fuck. Fuck."
His hand sped up. His breath caught. He whined like a man being undone, watching himself watch me, and I thought: if Nene could see me right now.
"Tell me you watchin'," he gasped.
"I'm watchin'," I said back.
"Oh fuck. Oh... yeahhh."
He came with a long shuddering moan, mouth wide, head thrown back, a noise crawling out of his throat I wouldn't have recognized as his if I hadn't heard it eighty thousand times before.
His hand stayed wrapped around himself. He'd made a mess of his hand and his stomach, and he didn't seem inclined to do a thing about it.
His eyes closed.
"Goddamn, baby," he breathed.
"Mmm."
"Goddamn. You see what you did to me there?"
"I see," I told him.
He sighed deeply. His hand stayed where it was and didn't reach for the tissues as his breathing slowed against the pillow.
Within thirty seconds the rhythm of it had evened out.
Within sixty he was snoring, his chin tipped back, his mouth still hanging open, his soft dick still resting in his loose hand on his belly with his nut drying on his stomach.
I lay next to him in the gold light and looked at the ceiling before I rolled away from him and turned onto my side.
I closed my eyes and in the dark behind my eyelids I told myself I wasn't going to open that forbidden door in my head.
But I caved, and for one dangerous moment, I pictured Omar's face and saw the look in his eyes when he saw me.
A tear slipped out before I could catch it, and it ran sideways across the bridge of my nose before disappearing into the pillow.
I lay there in Supreme's bed listening to him snore behind me, and with every fibre of my being, I knew I had a problem.