Chapter 7
I had been sitting in that parking lot for twenty minutes before I got out of the car. I was debating on going inside or not. Just when I got up the courage, the doors to the gym opened, and they walked out.
I watched Street walk Kyla out, then I watched him hug her and I watched the way she looked up at him when they pulled apart.
I sat in my car and felt every single thing I had been trying not to feel for the past couple of days hitting me all at once like I had been holding a door shut and finally ran out of strength to keep it closed.
Then I got out my car anyway because I didn’t drive across town to sit in a parking lot. I came to talk to Xavier, and that’s what I was about to do.
He saw me coming and I watched his face change. He went from being shocked, then back into that neutral expression he put on when he didn’t want me to know what he was feeling. I knew that face. I had been reading that face since we were kids.
I looked between him and Kyla’s back as she walked away and I couldn’t stop myself.
“I need to talk to you.” I immediately said as I walked up on him. At that same moment, he called out to Kyla, letting her know that he’d see her tonight. Jealousy and anger was building and I couldn’t hide it.
I knew exactly who she was, the entire city and surroundings knew who she was.
The part that hurt the most was that he and I both knew that being with Kyla would upgrade his status and his life.
Seeing them together made me feel small.
Even the way that she’d just came here to the gym, dressed to impress.
She was just naturally that girl and it made me self conscious.
Was this how Street felt all those years? Like he wasn’t good enough?
“Is that who you’re with now.” I asked, without shame.
He looked at me for a second and something in his eyes shifted.
“You got a man Brielle.” His voice was even. Not mean. Just flat like he was annoyed by my question. “You don’t get to ask me that.”
“I’m just—”
“You’re just what.” He crossed his arms and looked at me like he was disgusted.
“What exactly are you just doing right now? This don’t look good, and I don’t want anybody getting the wrong idea.”
I didn’t have an answer for that and we both knew it. But I understood what he meant.
He looked at me for a long moment and then he looked away toward the parking lot and back at me and when he spoke again something in his voice was different from all the other times we had done this.
Not angry. Not hurt the way he had been hurt before.
Something quieter than both of those things and that quietness scared me more than anything else he could have said.
“I’m going to be honest with you because that’s the only thing I know how to be.
” He looked at me straight. “I love you. I have loved you since I was fourteen years old and I don’t know how to stop that and I stopped trying to fight it a long time ago.
” He paused. “But I’m done. I’m done waiting on you.
I’m done being the person you come back to when life gets complicated with everybody else and then disappear on when things get hard.
I never deserved that. Not once in all the years we’ve been doing this did I deserve to be treated like something you could just put down and pick back up whenever you felt like it. ”
I swallowed hard. My throat was tight in a way that was getting harder to manage.
“Street—”
“Let me finish.” He held up one hand. “You want to know if that’s who I’m with?
I want you to be happy Brielle. I genuinely do.
Whatever you have with Marcus or whoever comes after Marcus I hope it’s everything you need it to be.
” He looked at me and his jaw tightened slightly.
“But once another man has had you, really had you — there’s nothing I can do with that.
You’ve gave another nigga something that was supposed to only be for me, and I’ll never be able to move past that.
That’s just where I am. That’s just the truth of it. ”
The lump in my throat doubled in size.
I was not going to cry in this parking lot.
I was not going to stand in front of Xavier and fall apart because he was finally saying out loud what I had been terrified of him saying for years.
I had made my choices. I had made them over and over again and every single time I had chosen the safe thing,the comfortable thing, the thing that required less of me and this was what that cost.
He was supposed to be my only. That was the truth that had been living in my chest since the night at the Hilton when I was eighteen years old and I gave him something I had never given anybody else. I knew in that moment that I never would give myself to anyone else the way I gave it to him.
Four years of us not communicating this last time. Years of trying to talk myself into really liking Marcus, and into the life my family had mapped out for me and into believing that playing it safe was the same thing as being happy.
I was human. I had been alone for too long.
Marcus had been patient, kind and present in all the ways Street couldn’t be from a distance.
I had let things happen that I couldn’t take back.
That didn’t make me a bad person. It just made me human.
Street had to know that life was going to go on, for us both.
But standing here right now looking at Street’s face I would have given anything to take every single one of those choices back.
I also never wanted to see him with another woman, so that shit was eating me up inside because I knew how good of a man Street really was.
I’ve watched her grow and mature in ways that I didn’t think was possible.
I felt the tears trying to come up and I pushed them back down hard.
He watched me do it.
“Say what you came to say Bri.” His voice softened just slightly. Just enough to remind me that he still felt something even when he was done. “You didn’t drive over here to talk about Kyla.”
I took a breath.
And I told him.
I told him about the morning after the hospital. About hearing Marcus’s voice through the office door before I knocked. About standing in that hallway with my hand raised and hearing things that I couldn’t explain no matter how hard I tried.
I told him what Marcus had said.
That it shook him up. That the graze could have been worse. That was the point was to make him scared and wondering. That he didn’t know. That neither did she.
I gave Street all this information so that he could put the pieces together himself.
I didn’t know what any of this meant, but I still felt like it was something Street needed to know.
If Marcus was in any way connected to Mazi getting hurt, I wanted his ass handled and I would remove myself from him completely.
No matter what I had going on with him, I wasn’t going to stand by if he was wrong.
I watched Street’s face while I talked and immediately saw his whole expression change.
I expected him to get quiet the way he always did when something was serious.
What happened instead was different. His jaw twitched first. Then something moved behind his eyes that was cold in a way I had never seen on him before and I had known this man for thirteen years.
He was angry.
Not the kind of angry that was loud either. The kind that was controlled and pointed in a direction I couldn’t fully see yet.
“He said the twins ain’t too smart, so they won’t figure out what’s going on,” I continued. “And that the older brother was too focused on the title fight to be looking deep into anything right now.” I watched his face. “He said to let him stay focused on that.”
Street looked away from me. His hand came up and he pressed his fist against his mouth and stood there for a moment.
I could see his chest moving with his breathing and I could see him processing it all.
I could see how much it was costing him to keep his face from showing everything that was running through his mind.
When he looked back at me his eyes were hard.
“What exactly did you hear him say about Mazi getting shot? The night at the hospital, I felt that something was off with this nigga and that he was connected. I brushed it off to maybe I was just in my feelings that you brought a nigga around my muthafuckin family at a time like that. But what did he say?”
“He said it shook him up. That the graze could have been worse. He said that was the point.” I held his gaze.
“Street I don’t know for certain what any of that means.
I don’t have proof of anything. I just — something in me said I needed to tell you and I couldn’t sit on it anymore.
I’ve still been going through the motions with him, but I don’t feel right about all this.
I never knew he even knew Mazi like that. ”
He nodded once. Slow.
“With knowing what you know,” he said. “What are you going to do? You coming to me and telling me all of this, but it’s clear that you are still with that nigga.
I looked at him and felt everything in me go still.
“What can I do?” I said it straight because there wasn’t any other way to say it.
“You just told me you’re done with me. You made that clear.
So now I have to do what’s best for me.” I straightened up and held myself together with everything I had.
“Until I have something solid, something I can actually prove that shows he hurt Mazi or had a hand in it, I have to go back to my life. I have to go back to Marcus. But if I ever find out my assumptions are correct, my decision will be to walk away. You know the kind of woman I am, and I’m always on the side of what’s right.
I just can’t move off a gut feeling and make life decisions off of it though. ”
Something moved across his face. Fast. Then it was gone before it fully showed. I didn’t know if it was anger, disappointment or disgust.