Chapter 18 #2
Ava started trying to get up from the couch. “Oh, I’m about to tear that up.”
I put my hand out and stopped her. “Sit down. I got it.” Then I stood and left the den.
Once in the kitchen, I opened the fridge. Chef Eddie had leftovers packed up like he was meal prepping for a football team. I grabbed one of the containers and shut the fridge with my hip. Then I slid the bowl into the microwave and leaned back against the counter while it turned.
That was when Icon came in. He walked over to a cabinet and grabbed a glass. Then he went to the fridge and took out a Sprite. He filled his cup with some ice from the dispenser in the doorway of the fridge. He cracked open the can and filled the cup.
He leaned against the island and finally said, “You know ‘coming around’ isn’t some weak shit, right?”
“It ain’t weak. It’s just not what she deserves.”
“I didn’t want a relationship either. I didn’t want a woman all in my routine, emotional demands, or some soft-ass domestic situation. That wasn’t how I saw my life going. Then I met Livia.”
I folded my arms over my chest and listened.
“I didn’t want a relationship when I met Livia, and neither did she. Coming around to being with Ava isn’t some flaw in you. It doesn’t make it less real because you didn’t come into it begging for forever. Sometimes we don’t choose love. Sometimes love chooses us.”
I just looked at him, while feeling every emotion that I had been trying to outrun.
“Love and lust look exactly the same until sacrifice is required,” he said.
“Lust is easy. Lust takes. Lust wants what feels good and disappears when it gets inconvenient. Love is when sacrifice shows up and you don’t even think twice about the cost. And you know you’re there.
You know you’re ready to sacrifice anything and everything for Ava. ”
I wanted to push back and say it wasn’t that deep, that I was just trying to do the right thing by my son, that I was just being a stand-up nigga, that I was just protective because she was carrying my child.
But I knew better now. It was Ava too. It had always been Ava.
And that made all this feel bigger than I knew how to handle.
The microwave beeped. But I just stood there, taking in everything he’d said.
Then I finally said, “That still don’t mean I’m built for all the shit she wants.”
“You keep talking about what Ava wants like she asked you for a wedding ring and four more babies tomorrow.” As he began to walk out, he added, “Just make sure that your fear is worth seeing that woman with another man.”
Then he headed out of the kitchen, leaving me staring at the marble countertop, trying to figure out why suddenly the thought of losing any part of Ava made me feel like I’d never survive it.
A few hours later, I was sitting in the dark of a condo that didn’t belong to me, waiting on another man to come home.
I didn’t bother turning on any lights. I just sat there on the couch with my elbows on my knees, gun resting in my hand, letting the dark swallow me while I thought about how the fuck I had ended up there.
The answer was Ava. It was Ava always Ava. I couldn’t keep denying I loved her until one day I looked up and saw her walking down an aisle toward another nigga who didn’t have to be dragged into loving her right.
I had finally decided I was going to do what I had to do to get my woman. The thought of losing Ava made me feel sick. The thought of another nigga building a life with her, touching my son, raising him in ways I should’ve been the one stepping up to do, had been stalking me all day.
I loved her, and I had loved her for a long time. I was just scared to acknowledge it.
Finally, I heard keys at the door. Then the lock turned.
The door opened, and the hallway light spilled into the condo, cutting a long line across the floor before Kam stepped in and pushed the door wider with his shoulder. He shut it behind himself, tossed his keys on the entry table, then flipped on the light.
The second he saw me sitting there on his couch, he lost all the color in his face, as if he was looking at a ghost.
His hand moved toward his waist, but my piece was already aimed at his head before he could grab his.
“Don’t do it,” I told him.
He froze with his hand halfway there.
He stared at me, with regret in his eyes, like he knew what this was.
I angled my head toward the love seat across from me. “Sit down.”
He didn’t move.
So, I sat up a little. “Sit the fuck down.”
He walked toward the chair across from the couch I was sitting on, eyes still locked on the gun.
I bent down and picked up the duffle bag by my feet. It was heavy enough that when I set it on the cocktail table between us, the wood made a thump under the weight.
Kam looked down at it, then back up at me. “What’s that?”
“Open it.”
He didn’t reach for it.
So, I unzipped it myself and folded the top back.
His eyes dropped to the contents inside, then darted back up at me.
“That’s fifty bricks,” I said.
His eyes narrowed, hearing the quantity. “For what?”
“For you to move out of the building and leave Ava alone.”
Kam leaned back in the chair, still looking at the work, then back at me like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“I can’t kill you,” I admitted. “Believe me, I want to. It would be easier and much less expensive. But the fact that I’m second-guessing it lets me know I love her. I’m ready for her because I’m making a sacrifice right now. I’m humbling myself, nigga.”
Kam stared at me like he was trying to figure out whether I had lost my mind or finally found it.
“If you feel like you can do better by her than me, don’t take it. If you’re really in her life because you want to be with her and be a stepfather to my son, then don’t take it. Stay and I’ll move around.”
That made his eyes narrow.
I pointed at the bag with the barrel of the gun. “But if you take it, then I know you was just in my way.”
I zipped the bag back up. “Think about it. If you decide to stay, I know where to come get my shit.”
Then I stood up and backed up toward the door, keeping the gun on him until I was out of the front door.
I reached the doorway, opened the door, and stepped into the hall, closing the door behind me.
My phone rang before I made it to the elevator.
I glanced at the screen and saw that it was Langford.
I answered, then turned toward the stairwell instead. Kam’s condo was only on the third floor, so I took the stairs so the call wouldn’t drop while on the elevator.
“Yeah.”
“I just saw a picture from that pop-up event,” Langford barked.
I pushed through the stairwell door and started down the steps two at a time. “And?”
“You were in the background with your hand on Ava’s stomach.” Then he asked, “Is that your baby, boy?”
I stopped on the landing. “Who the fuck you calling boy?”
“Did you get that girl pregnant while you were with my daughter?”
I let out a dry laugh. “You forgot that relationship was fake?”
He exhaled into the phone. “Fake, but you were fucking my daughter in real life.”
I started down the next flight, asking him, “What’s your point, Langford?”
“The point is that I still don’t believe my daughter would leave and not contact me, nigga, and now you have a child on the way. All of this seems very fucking suspicious.”
I reached the first floor and pushed through the door into the empty side hall.
“And I’m going to find out what happened to her,” he went on. His voice got colder. “And when I do, I’m going to burn down any and everybody involved.”
Then he hung up. But I remained cool because Jamir was a beast at his job. Langford may have had his suspicions, but as long as her body was in that concrete, there was nothing he could prove.