CHAPTER TWO
The front door closed, and the house went quiet again. For real this time.
I stayed on the living room floor longer than I wanted to admit. My ribs hurt every time I breathed, my jaw throbbed, and the back of my head felt like somebody had taken a hammer to it. I rolled onto my side and pushed myself up slowly.
"Fuck." Even that one word hurt.
I sat there for a minute with my back against the couch, trying to catch my breath. Blood had dried on the front of my shirt, and broken glass from the coffee table covered the floor around me, but none of that mattered. My eyes went straight to the front door.
Kaior was gone. I already knew that. Still, some stupid part of me expected her to come walking back through it anyway.
She didn't.
I forced myself onto my feet and limped toward the hallway. The first thing I noticed was the little table by the door, her purse missing from where it always sat, her keys gone. I looked down and saw her shoes were gone too, not all of them, but enough to make the point.
I kept walking. The bathroom looked different the second I stepped inside, half the counter cleared out, her face products gone, the pink toothbrush that had been sitting beside mine for years nowhere in sight. I stared at the empty space where it used to be.
"Damn."
I opened the cabinet underneath the sink and found more of the same, and that's when my chest started hurting worse than my ribs.
I walked into the bedroom, where the bed was still torn up from everything that happened earlier, one pillow on the floor, the blanket hanging halfway off the mattress.
I looked toward the closet. Her side wasn't empty, but it damn sure wasn't full anymore either, and I stood there staring at the missing clothes like I needed more proof.
She really left.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. For three years, this room had been ours. Her bonnet would usually be somewhere on the floor, her work clothes laid across the chair, her perfume sitting on the dresser, and she'd be fussing at me for leaving something where it didn't belong.
Now it was just quiet.
I lowered my head and stared at my hands while everything started replaying in my mind, the bottle from the club, the hibachi at her job, the sneakers, the Gucci outfit, the purse, the texts that kept putting that little smile on her face. Every damn thing I'd ignored because I was too busy lying.
It all made sense now. While I was sneaking around with Talia, another man had been showing Kaior exactly how she deserved to be treated.
I laughed once under my breath, but there wasn't anything funny about it.
I'd been so busy trying not to get caught that I never noticed I was losing her anyway.
The arguments had stopped. She'd stopped asking where I was, stopped begging me to spend time with her, stopped waiting up, and stopped looking at me the way she used to.
At the time, I thought she was getting over it.
She was. Just not the way I thought.
My eyes burned, and I wiped at them, but it didn't help. One tear hit my hand, then another, and I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and covered my face. I didn't make a sound. I just sat there, defeated.
After a while, I got up and walked into the bathroom again. The man staring back at me in the mirror looked like shit, lip split, one eye already starting to swell. I touched the back of my head and winced when my fingers found the lump.
Jokah had beat my ass bad.
But somehow, that wasn't what hurt the most. I could heal from this. My ribs would stop hurting, the swelling would go down, the cuts would close. Kaior leaving was different.
I stared at myself a little longer before looking away, and that's when my phone started ringing from the bedroom.
I already knew who it was before I picked it up.
It was Talia. I stared at her name and let it ring until the screen went black.
A few seconds later, it started again. I finally answered.
"Yeah."
"Hey, you okay?"
"You wanna come over? I was thinking we could order something to eat and just chill."
I closed my eyes. "Don't call me no more."
"What?"
"I said don't call me no more."
"Kyrie, what's wrong?"
"I'm done."
"Where is this coming from?"
"Talia."
"What?"
"You helped me lose the only woman I ever loved."
She didn't say anything.
I ended the call before she got the chance to. I looked down at the shattered screen in my hand before dropping the phone onto the bed. The room was quiet again. This time...I had nobody left to call.
I lowered the phone from my ear and stared at the screen.
"What the hell?"
I looked at my phone like it was supposed to explain what had just happened. Five minutes ago, I was smiling. Now I was sitting on the edge of my bed wondering why Kyrie had just told me never to call him again. He'd never hung up on me before. Not like that.
I opened our text thread and scrolled through the last few messages. Everything looked normal. Nothing about them said this was coming. I tossed my phone onto the bed and stood up.
"This don't even make sense."
I started pacing across the room, replaying every word he'd said. You helped me lose the only woman I ever loved.
The sentence hit different every time it echoed through my head.
I stopped walking.
"How?"
Since Kaior found out, I thought this was what we were working toward. I thought we wouldn't have to sneak around anymore. I thought he'd finally be mine. Instead... He told me not to call him anymore.
My bottom lip started trembling before I could stop it. "No..."
Tears filled my eyes.
"No..."
I backed up until my shoulders hit the wall. My legs gave out beneath me, and I slowly slid down until I was sitting on the floor with my knees pulled against my chest. The tears came fast after that. I covered my mouth with my hand, trying to keep myself from crying too loud and waking Kyrah.
"How could you do this to me?" I whispered through my tears.
I buried my face against my knees and cried harder. This wasn't supposed to happen. Kyrie was supposed to choose me. Instead... He chose to mourn her.
A few minutes later, my phone rang. I lifted my head from my knees and wiped my face, expecting to see Kyrie's name on the screen. Instead, it was a collect call.
I sniffled and tried to get myself together before accepting it.
"Hello?"
There was a brief pause.
"You crying?"
"No."
"Man, stop lying. I can hear that shit in your voice. What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing."
"Talia."
I closed my eyes.
"What?"
"What's wrong with you?"
I hesitated. Solo already had enough to worry about where he was. I didn't want to dump my problems on him too, but I knew he wasn't going to let it go.
"Kyrie broke things off with me."
"What?"
"He told me not to call him anymore."
The line went quiet.
"What the fuck you mean he told you not to call him anymore?"
"I don't know, Solo. He just called me talking about I helped him lose the only woman he ever loved, and then he hung up on me."
"Man, fuck all that. You need to fix that shit."
I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it before putting it back.
"What?"
"You heard me. I don't know how this shit is about to go with this appeal, Talia. We need that money."
Fresh tears filled my eyes.
"He doesn't want anything to do with me."
"That don't matter."
"How the fuck does that not matter?"
"Because as long as that nigga thinks Kyrah his, he gon' keep looking out for her. That's all that matters right now."
My stomach tightened.
"But what if he don't?"
Solo huffed into the phone.
"You better figure that shit out."
"Solo—"
"I'm serious. Whatever you been doing ain't working no more, so do something different. Make that nigga think he can't live without you. Do whatever the fuck you gotta do to keep him around."
I wiped my face.
"I can't make somebody want me."
"Then try harder. Fuck him better, suck his dick better, stroke his motherfuckin' ego. I don't give a fuck what you gotta do. Just fix that shit."
My mouth fell open.
"Solo—"
The call ended.
I slowly lowered the phone from my ear and stared at it. He didn't call back. I pulled my knees against my chest again and buried my face between them. Then I cried even harder.