Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
“Do you have a driver’s license, ma’am?”
The tech behind the pharmacy counter popped her gum along with her question, the two-inch acrylics on her nails digging into and denting the cardboard packaging of the pill I was trying to buy.
I held up a finger for her to wait as I opened up my purse in search of some identification.
In the state of Florida, you had to be at least seventeen years old to legally buy Plan B emergency contraceptive.
Today, however, I was far from home. I didn’t want to be recognized by anyone in the vicinity, so I’d taken an hour long drive cross-county and found myself at the counter of a sleepy town’s Walgreens pharmacy. The store was already decorated in anticipation of the Christmas holiday.
It was the second time in my life that I was buying the morning after pill. However, today would be the first time I actually took it.
Rashad and I had unprotected sex.
That, at least, was what I kept telling myself.
Images of me pinned under him, powerless to stop the violation that took place two days before, seemed to take a backseat in the evaluation of what had actually happened.
I refused to call it what it was. Instead, I simply kept telling myself that Rashad and I had unprotected sex, highlighting the fact that the main mistake of that evening was not in that we had one-sided sex, but that he wasn’t wearing a condom.
To focus on anything else would have seriously fucked with my mental health.
So, I just…didn’t.
Once upon a time, I narrowly escaped a very similar incident.
However, if I was being real, how similar would the experiences have been?
I didn’t know the first man who tried to forcibly have me.
I knew Rashad, however. In fact, Rashad was my boyfriend.
I would’ve said I knew him well. Somehow, I was unsure if this made what he did to me better or worse.
He didn’t do anything to you.
My inner thoughts berated me for forgetting to remember this.
It wasn’t rape.
It was unprotected sex.
The reminders came with repetition, sounding off in my head as if to convince me of something rather than to remind.
That night, after he was done, Rashad rolled off of me with a grunt, forcing out a breath and something that sounded like a mumbled apology.
I pretended not to hear it. To acknowledge his apology would have made me acknowledge that he had done something he needed to be sorry for.
And like I said, Rashad did not rape me.
We had unprotected sex.
That is all.
Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing to apologize for. The only thing that needed to be done was buy this stupid, stupid pill. That would fix everything and then I could just forget all of this.
And I would forget it.
Easily.
Because this certainly wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen to me.
A little over a year ago, I gave my virginity over to a total monster.
He allowed me to think he loved me. Hell, he even told me he loved me once.
He grew to know the depths of my body, and he really had me fooled, taking more than just my virginity in the process.
Kain had my heart. My whole heart.
I was so in love.
And then his father had me shot in cold blood.
It was a warm July morning outside a club where we’d been celebrating his birthday. I’d given my body to him that night as well, one last time among the dozens of times I’d shared myself with him that summer.
I lost so much that morning. That night I lost literal parts of my body, I lost my peace of mind, and hear my mother tell it, I nearly lost my own life. When I woke up, I learned I’d lost the life growing within me, a life that was half his. And lastly, I lost him.
But perhaps, given the fact that he’d been the one to hold my dying body in his hands, and then still take the stand and defend the man who’d done it to me… Perhaps I never actually had Kain in the first place.
Say you love me, and then go on to protect the man who tried to kill me.
Even now, I still couldn’t understand the lack of humanity it took to be so…cold.
I gave my virginity to that.
So, all things considered, even though what went down with Rashad created a gnawing feeling in the pit of my chest, it certainly wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Something might’ve been taken from me a couple nights ago, but it would never measure up to what was taken from me that summer.
After everything I’d been through, as both a blessing and a curse, it would take so much more to break me down. I certainly wasn’t the girl Kain found pinned to his bed nearly two years ago. The woman I’d become had a hard exterior and the lowest of expectations when it came to men.
My only concern right now was making sure I didn’t get tied down by a baby I didn’t want, with a man I certainly didn’t want.
I pulled out my debit card to pay for the pill, my eyes wandering to a rack of gossip magazines for sale at the register.
As the Plan B was being bagged for me, I stopped at a cover that made my heart sink.
As if to torture myself, I found my hands reaching for the booklet, adding its price to my total.
“I’ll take the magazine, too.”
Eden Xavier was being called this generation’s Lauryn Hill.
She wrote her own songs. She played her own instruments. She was an artist to the bone, fresh out of the Berklee College of Music up north. There was no doubting that Eden Xavier was talented.
I liked her music, the last two singles she released ahead of her debut album, EX, were in my music library and I knew all the words.
If anyone had asked me any time before today, I might’ve called myself a fan.
Though, I’d never really cared much to do any research on her.
For all I cared to pay attention to, she was just another face in the ever-evolving music industry.
I didn’t even know who she was signed to.
When it came to Eden Xavier, I’d never been given much of a reason to look beyond her music.
Until now.
The magazine on my lap displayed a gorgeous photo of her.
Eden had the most flawlessly sun-kissed brown skin, matching well with her green highlighted, honey brown hair that stopped just above her shoulders.
Some girls are just objectively pretty by any standards.
Eden was one of those girls, as most people in the entertainment industry needed to be.
Split down the middle of the magazine cover, another face was photographed.
His.
The headline and subtitle written above the two side-by-side photos, on the cover of Fame Weekly, read: Friends in High Places? How Eden Xavier’s Romance with Kain Montgomery Might be the Secret to Her Success.
This wouldn’t be the first time I’d found myself alone in my car, reading some gossip piece on Him.
More times than I cared to admit, I found myself checking blogs and magazines like Fame Weekly for tidbits into a life I was no longer a part of.
There had been stories about Kain being seen with a woman here, a woman there, but this story felt different.
Different because Eden and I had nothing in common.
At least, not physically.
The women Kain had been linked to before her… They looked like me. At least—they looked like the me he used to know. All of them were dark brown, big haired, with slim thick figures. I didn’t look so much like that anymore.
I’d lost so much weight when I was in the hospital, and after waking up, the depression that followed made gaining it back damn near impossible.
My desire to be outside was nonexistent—so naturally I grew paler than I used to be.
My wild mane of curls was kept lowkey these days, pulled back or up into conservative buns that kept my hair out of my way.
Kain was pursuing clones of the girl I used to be, not realizing that wasn’t even me anymore. If he’d developed a type, I no longer fit that mold.
However, neither did Eden.
And perhaps that was why I felt a heaviness in my chest. His connection with her marked a meaningful switch in his preferences, a clear sign that he had likely moved on.
I couldn’t be sure why I was so pressed.
Even if he hadn’t moved on, it wasn’t like I wanted him anyway.
He defended the man who tried to kill me, for God’s sake.
And yet…
I cracked open the booklet, swiftly turning to the pages that held the cover article. The article was clearly written by someone heavily in favor of the pairing. The author threw around terms like power couple, love, and soulmate, completely ignoring the obvious story the photos of them told.
Kain didn’t look interested.
They didn’t look good together.
I didn’t feel that way due to some childish kind of jealousy, either.
In the candid shots of them tucked away in the corner of some vaguely familiar diner, Kain looked bored, looking down at a menu, as her undivided attention rested solely on him.
If pictures could speak, they would say he wasn’t even a little bit into her.
Still, I finished reading the short article, learning a few things I didn’t know before.
Eden Xavier was evidently the younger sister of Kain’s business partner, Dr. Marlon Xavier. I squinted, recognizing the name immediately.
Marlon? As in the Marlon that Kain introduced me to over a year ago? His friend, Marlon?
I vaguely recalled Kain once telling me that Marlon and his siblings had lived with him when he was growing up.
Was Eden some childhood first love that he’d eventually gravitated back to?
Was she the girl I always thought he needed—worldly and unfazed by the horrors of his inner circle because she’d grown up around them, too?
Was she The One? Did he lie awake at night, watching her sleep and wondering how he could ever have given any other woman his time? Were the love songs on the EX album about him?
Why did I even care?
Tossing the magazine in the passenger’s seat beside me, I leaned forward for my purse and pulled out a bottle of water.
The one-dose package in my hand brought back distant memories of a summer that felt decades ago.
This time, I didn’t bother reading the side effects of the emergency pill.
Instead, I uncapped my water and in one fell swoop, I got rid of any possibility of giving birth to Rashad’s mistake.