45. Omar
Omar
Kadeem was at Ma's kitchen table when I got there. Shanay had made coffee and left it on the counter before going upstairs. The house was quiet, still early, before Ma came down.
I poured two cups, set one in front of Kadeem, and sat down across from him. We drank in silence for a while. The kitchen was warm. Sunlight coming through the window over the sink, hitting the counter where Ma kept her spice jars lined up in order.
"You know what you're doing with her?" Kadeem asked without looking up from his coffee.
"Yeah."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, Deem. I'm sure."
He looked at me then. His face was calm, settled. Whatever questions he'd had about Asha, about the operation, about whether his brother's judgment was compromised, he'd answered them for himself somewhere between the Associates meeting and last night.
"Okay," he said. "Then that's settled."
We finished our coffee. He told me Devon was still running down the TK situation, that James was handling the cleanup from the warehouse operation, that the Associates were satisfied with the outcome. Business. The machine kept moving even after the war was won.
"Go be with your girl," Kadeem said when I stood up. "You earned that shit."
"When's the last time you took a day off?"
"Can't even remember." He almost smiled. "Shanay been on my case about it. Says I need to chill."
"She ain't wrong."
"She never is." He picked up his mug and took it to the sink. "Get outta here. I'll hit you up if something comes up."
I drove to the apartment. Asha was there. Nene had gone to stay with her cousin in Flatbush to give us space, which was Nene's way of saying she approved without having to say it out loud.
Asha was sitting on the couch reading something on her phone when I came through the door. She looked up, put the phone down, and smiled.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"How's Kadeem?"
"Good. Handling business."
"And you?"
I sat down next to her. "I'm here."
She leaned into me, her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her. We sat there for a while with the apartment quiet around us and the street noise coming through the window and nowhere to be for the rest of the day.
"This is weird," she said after a while.
"What is?"
"Just... sitting here. No timer running, no Cee outside, no Supreme coming home. Just sitting."
"You gonna be okay with that?"
"Give me a minute to figure it out." She tilted her head to look at me. "Ask me again tomorrow."
"I'll ask you every day if I have to."
"You won't have to." She kissed my shoulder through my shirt. "But you can if you want."
I turned toward her and kissed her properly. Her hand came up to my face, her thumb against my cheekbone, the same gesture she'd made the first time we'd been in this apartment together. But everything about it was different now. There was no clock. No Cee. No cage to go back to.
"Take me to bed," she whispered against my mouth.
I stood up, took her hand, and walked her to the bedroom. The late afternoon light was coming through the blinds, casting warm stripes across the bed. She stood at the foot of it and pulled her shirt over her head. I did the same.
We undressed each other standing up, facing each other. Her hands on my belt, my hands on her waist. She unhooked her bra and let it fall. I pushed her jeans down her hips. She stepped out of them, then pulled my jeans down, her mouth kissing my stomach as she went.
She stood back up and her fingers found the bruise on my cheekbone.
She touched it gently, her thumb tracing the swollen edge where Supreme's fist had connected.
Then her hand moved down to my forearm, where his nails had torn four lines through the skin.
She held my arm between both hands and looked at the scratches without speaking.
"It looks worse than it is," I said.
She didn't answer. She just lifted my forearm to her mouth and pressed her lips against the skin beside the scratches. Then she let go.
We were both naked and standing in the afternoon light and I looked at her. Her body, her face, the expression in her eyes that was different from every other time we'd done this. There was no desperation. No urgency. No fear underneath the wanting.
She was just here. With me. Because she chose to be.
"What are you thinking?" she asked.
"I'm thinking about when we were sixteen. About the life we planned."
"The brownstone with the yard."
"The daughter named after my grandmother."
"The son named after mine." She put her hands on my chest. "We didn't get any of that."
"We got this."
"Is this better?"
"This is real. That was a dream. This is better because we earned it."
She pulled me toward the bed. We lay down facing each other on our sides, our bodies close, our legs tangling together. I traced my fingers along her hip, her waist, up her ribs. She shivered under my touch.
"Don't rush," she told me. "We got all night."
"We got longer than that."
She smiled. I kissed the smile. Her mouth opened under mine and the kiss deepened, her tongue finding mine, her body pressing closer.
My hand slid between her legs and she was already wet, warm against my fingers.
She gasped into the kiss when I touched her clit, a soft circular pressure that made her hips roll toward me.
"Just like that," she breathed.
I kept my hand where it was, working her slowly, watching her face change in the afternoon light. Her eyes fluttered closed, then opened again. She looked at me while my fingers moved inside her and the eye contact was intense, intimate, two people seeing each other completely.
"I ain't letting you go again," I said.
"You don't have to." Her voice was thick, her breathing picking up. "I'm right here. I'm staying right here."
She reached between us and took my dick in her hand, stroking me while I fingered her. We lay there facing each other, touching each other, the room quiet except for our breathing and the sounds our bodies made.
"Inside me," she whispered. "I want you inside me."
I shifted position, lifting her thigh over my hip, and pushed into her from the side. She inhaled sharply, her nails pressing into my shoulder. We moved together slowly, our bodies rocking in sync, our faces inches apart.
This wasn't the desperate wall sex from the first time. Wasn't the riding, the car, the relief. This was something else entirely. Two people making love because they wanted to, because they could, because there was nobody left to hide from and no clock counting down and no performance required.
"Say my name," she whispered.
"Asha."
"Again."
"Asha." I pushed deeper. Her leg tightened around my hip. "Asha Cole. My girl. Mine."
"Yours," she breathed. "Always been yours."
I rolled her onto her back and settled between her legs, keeping the slow rhythm, keeping my eyes on hers. She wrapped both legs around me, her heels pressing into the backs of my thighs, pulling me deeper with every stroke.
"I love you," she said.
The words landed in my chest. She'd never said it before. Neither had I. We'd danced around it for days, shown it in everything we did, but the words hadn't come until now. Until there was nothing left between us but this bed, this room, this moment.
"I love you too," I said. "Been loving you since I was sixteen and I ain't never stopped."
She pulled my face down to hers and kissed me with tears on her cheeks. Happy tears. Free tears. The tears of someone who'd spent three years being told she was loved by a man she despised and was finally hearing it from a man she'd chosen.
I picked up the pace. Her breathing went ragged against my mouth, her body tightening around me. I kissed her neck, her shoulder, the soft spot behind her ear.
"Right there," she gasped. "Shit, right there."
I gave her what she needed. Deeper, harder, my hand sliding under her back to pull her closer.
She came with my name on her lips and her body arching off the bed and her hands gripping the sheets on either side of her head.
I followed her seconds later, pushing deep, a sound coming out of me that wasn't a word but carried everything I'd been holding.
We lay there in the aftermath. Her head on my chest, my arm around her shoulders. The light had changed while we were making love. The stripes across the bed were longer now, the afternoon sliding toward evening.
Her fingers traced the scar on my arm. I had my hand in her hair.
"Asha."
"Hmm?"
"This is real, right? This ain't gonna disappear?"
"This is real, Omar." Her mouth brushed against my collarbone. "This is the most real thing I've ever had."
We stayed like that until the room got dark. Asha fell asleep with her head on my chest, her breathing slow and steady against my skin.
I lay there listening to her breathe. The apartment was quiet around us. The operation was done, Supreme was gone, TK had run. There was still work to do, threads to pull, questions that needed answers. But tonight Asha was safe and sleeping and her hand was over my heart.
Tonight that was enough.