Chapter 27 #2
“I don’t even get it,” I confessed. “Lauren is just… You ever meet someone so good, that you feel morally obligated to keep them in one piece? It’s a lot of people in the world that deserve the fucked up shit that happens on the daily. Lauren ain’t one of them.”
“She’s Joshua Caplan’s daughter,” Vance reminded.
“And Caplan is one of the most lowdown brothers at that courthouse. He don’t care who did the crime so long as his conviction rate stays up.
In case you forgot, my case was supposed to be a mistrial.
And that nigga worked overtime to get a guilty verdict despite having almost no evidence.
There are hundreds of innocent black men behind bars because that ruthless-ass nigga is all about his numbers.
It’s more than just Silas who would like to get their hands on that girl. ”
“You got something you want to tell me?” I waited.
“Calm down, Youngblood. I don’t hurt little girls. I’m just sayin’—yeah, she may not deserve to get hurt, but her father sure does. And kids been sufferin’ for the sins of their parents since the dawn of the time. It’s called inherited karma.”
“I don’t care what it’s called,” I rebuffed. “And if staying outta prison was so important to you, you shouldn’t have taken the fall for some shit you didn’t do.”
Vance paused, catching his words before they could escape. When he finally did speak again, he decided to change the subject.
“You’re wasting your time trying to save this one,” he said finally. “You don’t understand girls like her, Youngblood.”
Over the past few months, the thing I’d grown to hate the most was people trying to tell me about my own girlfriend. Amir had done it incessantly, right up until the day he died.
My stomach felt heavy with the reminder. Death is a troubling experience. It doesn’t hit and stick when it’s supposed to. So you’re left with constant reminders. Over and over, you tell yourself this person is no longer with you, just to forget and break down all over again upon remembering.
Needing a distraction, I encouraged Vance to be a little more descriptive.
“Girls like that…” Vance sighed as if remembering something.
“Girls like Lauren want the kind of things you can’t give.
They have ideas about how the future should be.
You really think a girl like that, who grew up watching her parents playing tennis at some fancy country club somewhere, is just gonna fall into the role of a crime boss’s woman?
God only knows what those niggas from last night did to her, and yet she didn’t even have the stomach to watch them die.
She’s not gonna make it out here, Youngblood. ”
“You’re trying to talk me outta this.”
“Boy, you killed for this girl. You already in this. I’m tellin’ you to quit while you ahead.”
“And if I say fuck all that?”
Vance chuckled to himself, cleaning away at the carpet wordlessly. It was an hour of scrubbing in silence before he finally said something.
“You’ll learn the hard way.”
***
Lauren wasn’t in my bed when I arrived back in the room, but I followed the sound of running water to my bathroom, and found her brushing her teeth casually at the sink.
Her eyes glanced in my direction briefly, eyeing the orangey bleach stains on my black shirt before turning back to face her reflection in the mirror and continuing to brush without a word.
Acknowledging her cold demeanor, I didn’t immediately walk into the shower like I wanted to, but instead reached for my own toothbrush.
“Do you have something you wanna say to me?” I asked, squeezing some toothpaste onto the bristles. I leaned over from behind her to run my brush under the running water.
A deep V formed between her eyebrows, and I tried not to smile because she seemed genuinely angry. Lauren was amusingly cute when she was mad, though.
“You didn’t have to let me think you were dead for six days,” she hissed, her words coming out awkwardly as she tried to talk and brush simultaneously.
Now that all the commotion from last night had died down, she was allowing the gravity of what I’d done to her set in.
I was just glad she hadn’t brought up my response to her first ‘I love you’.
“You’re right,” I agreed, and her eyes narrowed. Somehow my agreement only made her angrier. Lauren spit into the sink, making a dramatic show of keeping eye contact with me as she did it. Shaking my head at her behavior, I sighed, “It’s complicated.”
“I’m a smart woman,” she countered.
A few weeks before, I’d let my guard all the way down with Lauren.
I told her about my childhood, about Vance, about Silas, even about my nightmares.
I was relieved to have gotten so much off my chest, but that didn’t stop the self-loathing that consumed me immediately after I did it.
All my life, I’d been taught to bite the bullet and maintain, at least, the appearance of having my shit together.
Silas always said that a man who can’t deal with his own problems without bitching about it is not a real man.
After Poseidon, and then the shit that went down in Memphis, I needed her.
Not want—need. The grief of losing my friend coupled with the guilt of knowing I caused it, made for a toxic mix of emotions that left me feeling drained and damaged.
Lauren’s absence only seemed to make me feel worse, which alternatively had me considering her presence might make me feel better—thus, a need was created.
And that shit scared the fuck out of me. So I ran from it.
I couldn’t own up to it out loud.
“It’s complicated,” I repeated. “But it won’t happen again.”
It was an empty promise. In truth, I actually couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t happen again. I could see in Lauren’s eyes that this response didn’t completely satisfy her, but she believed in my promise. For that, I made a mental note to do everything in my power to not break it.
We continued to brush in an almost comfortable silence. Almost comfortable.
After some time, Lauren leaned over the bathroom counter to spit into the sink again.
The shirt of mine that she had on rose up slightly, exposing just a bit of the bottom half of her ass—a view I felt all the way down to my dick.
I shook away the thoughts, leaning forward from behind her and aiming into the sink as she rose her head from it.
Straightening up, she backed up a little, bumping into me, and lingering for what felt like a second too long.
My eyes rose lazily from the sink, catching her expression in the mirror, as she mumbled a half-assed apology and giggled.
It wouldn’t be the first, second, or third time I’d need to take a cold shower because Lauren was out here playing games.
Lauren is the opposite of slick. If I didn’t like her so much, her easy-to-see-through antics might’ve started to get annoying.
“Are you actually hard right now?” she asked, her tone a mixture of faux surprise, teasing, and intrigue. I knew not to read too much into that last one. Lauren could be very wishy washy about sex, and I’d since learned not to let her get my hopes up.
It wasn’t like me to be so gracious about getting bait-and-switched on constantly, but for Lauren, I developed the endurance.
After all, our relationship literally started with me interrupting her almost-rape.
The last thing I wanted to do was to ever make her feel like I was taking ownership of her body.
Even though it is mine.
The thought drew a smirk out of me as I set my toothbrush down.
“What’s funny?” she asked, noting my smile.
“You’re cute,” I said in a way that really said, ‘You think you’re smooth, huh?’
She frowned at the declaration, sighing boredly as she dragged her shirt over her head. Lauren, I’d come to learn, seemed to be pretty comfortable naked. I suspected this was because she knew her body was fucking perfect.
Lauren had a long, slender frame that pushed out at her hips, and then back in at the base of her thighs, creating this masterpiece of a figure that I’d wanted to see naked since the moment I met her.
Her slim pear shape was unbelievably sexy, giving her an enigmatic allure when clothed, only to become breathtaking when seen for all it was.
Hers was the type of beauty to make a man write poems, for real.
“Who says I’m trying to be cute?” she asked coyly.
I smiled, shaking my head. Here she goes again with that bullshit.
I’d fallen into the trap of her enticing flirtation once already.
Lauren talked a big game, but she would switch up on me real quick once shit got intense.
She liked to feel wanted though, and after six days of making her feel unwanted, the least I could do was gas her up.
I leaned in, keeping my voice just above a whisper at her ear when I said, “I missed you, you know that?”
She encouraged me to keep going. “What about me did you miss?”
“Everything. Your company, most of all,” I replied, running a finger slowly down her spine, and noting the way it made her draw in a long inhale. “And, of course, the way you feel, the way you smell, the way you…taste.”
She exhaled. I cracked a half-smile, drawing back from her ear.
“I pretty much got it all back, ‘cept that last one,” I hinted.
Rather than say anything, she reached for the hem of my shirt, guiding it above my head. I let her, even though I was sure nothing was about to happen. Lauren liked to have her fun, and I didn’t mind the view.
“Do you want me?” she asked, her voice a pitch higher than usual, vulnerable.
She, of course, had to have known the answer. I said nothing at first, sloping forward just enough for the curve her forehead to fit perfectly against the space between my lower lip and the base of my chin. As always, her hair smelled like vanilla.
She repeated herself, sincerely wanting to hear my answer.
“That’s a dumb question,” I replied frankly into her curls. “Which you already know the answer to.”
“Do I?”