Chapter 16 Aaliyah
AALIYAH
Icouldn’t stop crying. I could barely get my baby dressed.
My tears kept falling on Junior as I tried to change him into a wool onesie.
This wasn’t supposed to be my life. This wasn’t supposed to be how I started my new year.
I just wanted and needed to get the hell out of Chicago fast, but when I realized that I now had very little money to get anywhere, I just sobbed hysterically.
Fabe had just taken everything I had. The only person that had ever helped me was Rah, but I couldn’t go back to him.
That was not an option. He now knew that I had stolen from him.
He had obviously sent Fabe to my room to get his money, and Fabe had played me and played with my feelings in the process.
I did love Fabe. All this time, he had been on my mind and in my heart, and I was too damn young and naive to even know what love was.
I thought that Rah loved me. I thought that our relationship was real.
But that had all been nothing but a fraud.
That wasn’t real love. But shit, obviously I didn’t know if Fabe’s love for me was real either because that nigga had played me too.
“Shit!” I began to freak out as I heard the door of the hotel room opening. I started to tremble as I stared at the door, with large eyes filled with fear.
Whomever it was had a key. I was so petrified that it was Rah on the other side of the door. My heart sank as I figured that Fabe had told him where I was and had even given him the key.
My cries became sobs as the door opened wider.
Remembering what Rah had done to me before, I could only imagine the way he would beat me now for stealing from him, possibly even kill me.
I remembered that he was the cause of his own best friend’s awful death.
If he was so cold to do that to Carlos, there was no telling what he had in mind to do to me.
Then I heard a sweet, “Baby, what’s wrong?”
My eyes darted up towards him. When they rested on Fabe’s concerned face, my cries were now of relief.
I left the bed and rushed towards him, wrapping my arms around his large frame.
His coat was so icy cold, but I didn’t care.
I held him so tight. I was so relieved that he was back, that I wasn’t alone, and that he hadn’t played me.
Maybe this was real love after all.
“What’s wrong?” he asked again.
“You left,” I cried. “I thought you left me.”
His chuckle was so cute as he attempted to hold me with his hands full. “I took your key and went to get breakfast, babe. I was hungry. You wouldn’t wake up. You were knocked out.”
I looked up into his eyes and softly beat his chest with my fists. “Why didn’t you answer the phone?”
“It’s dead. I just realized it when I pulled up.”
Relief was still leaving my body in a rush. I finally left his space and sat on the bed next to Junior. “Oh my God,” I sighed as I wiped my face dry.
Fabe watched me with worry as he sat a duffle bag down next to the table. Then he sat a brown bag that smelled of food on the table and took off his coat. The familiar smell of pancakes and sausage filled the room and my stomach suddenly growled.
As he started to take the food out of the bag, he asked, “Why would you think that I left you?”
He sat next to me and picked up Junior. As he placed Junior on his chest, I was suddenly jealous, wanting to take my baby’s place.
“You weren’t answering your phone, and you took the money.” I looked at him, hoping that he was about to give me the right answers that wouldn’t make me regret letting my guard down with him. “How did you know about it? Did Rah send you here?”
Fabe’s eyes suddenly filled with reluctance as he sighed. “Yeah. He sent me here because he knew that you would answer for me. He wanted his money back–”
“Is that why you took it? Did you take it back to him?” I asked reluctantly.
Fabe kissed his teeth. “Fuck no. I took it just in case he figured out where you were and showed up before I got back. I knew that he wouldn’t kill you before he got his money back. It’s in that duffle bag.”
“Do you know how he got it?”
Fabe nodded his head slowly. “Yeah...I know. He told me because he is so thirsty to find this money, and he knew he could only get to you through me. I’m disgusted with that nigga.
I kept my cool in the moment ‘cause I didn’t know what he might do.
Carlos was like a brother to him. How the fuck do you snake somebody like that?
He said he did it because Carlos would have killed Moses over the money Moses owes him.
But Carlos wasn’t about to kill Moses over some lost weight.
Rah did that shit for his own reasons, and he’s trying to spin the story to make himself look like the victim. That’s what snakes do.”
I sighed heavily. “You should probably leave. If he would kill his own best friend, he would kill his brother for keeping him from that much money.”
“Fuck, Rah,” Fabe spat with a sneer. “I called to tell him that I couldn’t find you, but he didn’t answer.
He is so busy chasing a dollar that he won’t be smart enough to figure out that I lied.
” Then Fabe scoffed angrily. “I’m done with him, Aaliyah.
Family or not, once you cross a line like that, there ain’t no coming back. ”