Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
Lux made sure I saw her checking the time on her watch when I finally arrived for coffee.
“You look a mess,” she informed as I took my seat directly across from her in a quiet Brickell Village Starbucks.
Lux, if nothing else, was always honest. And she could be especially harsh about it when her patience wore thin.
She reached across to grab her venti raspberry iced tea, taking a long sip before she asked, “Did you already take the pill?”
Wordlessly, I nodded, dipping the teabag in my mug casually.
Although Luxana was my best friend, lately, there were things about myself that I kept hidden from her.
She had no idea that I had already been pregnant once before.
She didn’t know about my miscarriage. And while she did know that I had taken Plan B this morning, she didn’t know what Rashad had done.
“If you and Shad had a baby, it would be so cute, though.” It didn’t escape my notice that although she’d been the one to encourage me to ‘do what I had to do’, Luxana sounded almost disappointed now.
I thought about the reality of getting pregnant by a man who pinned me under the weight of his body and took me by force.
I thought about whether or not I would ever be able to separate the encounter from the identity of said child.
No.
Probably not.
Instead, I cracked a smile and replied, “Maybe when I’m ready.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, leaning into the whitewashed wood table between us. “With your father running for governor and all, I bet it would’ve been a nasty scandal.”
I frowned, reminded that even though my father had long left his high profile job as Miami-Dade County’s state attorney, the time he’d taken off had only been spent preparing to take on an even more public position.
Governor of the great state of Florida.
Last year, after Kain Montgomery had humiliated my father in a court scene that would go on to ruin his career, Dad found himself known by just about everyone in the country.
His courtroom antics had gone viral. A picture of his shouting face had even been a popular meme on Black Twitter for at least three months.
His days as a lawyer were thrown to the dogs in a blink of an eye, and all he had to show for nearly twenty-five years of hard work was a legacy of infamy and humiliation.
Naturally, with no law career prospects and nationwide fame, my father decided to go into the only field where all publicity would be seen as good publicity.
Politics.
Credibility for sure played a part in American politics. However, the political golden goose would always be in one thing—name recognition. After the courtroom debacle with Kain last year, my father had more name recognition than the other gubernatorial candidates combined.
When people don’t know who to vote for, they always pick the name they recognize.
This fact was plainly displayed in the way my father lead in the polls by double digits since announcing his run for governor five months ago.
He ran with issues that bordered on progressive and conservative, attracting the interest of both sides of the political spectrum.
Dad promised to be tough on crime, soft on students, and raise teacher wages.
Name recognition surely pulled people in, but his stances were what kept them in his corner.
My father’s campaign was looking very good. He was realistically on track to becoming the first African-American governor of Florida, so naturally, he did everything he could to keep me out of the limelight.
To anyone who hadn’t done their research, it would almost seem like my father only had one daughter.
Rarely was I ever mentioned by name in his press releases.
Common sense told me that this was because one would only have to Google me in order to find dozens of juicy blog posts from yesteryear’s past, highlighting my relationship with the son of Miami’s notorious crime boss.
Dad hoped to allow people to forget that I was ever wrapped up in the world of the Montgomery crime family.
So, for this, he pushed Morgan to the forefront of his campaign—his beautiful, aspiring lawyer daughter, who pledged the right sorority, wore the right hairstyles, and hadn’t dated anyone named Kain Montgomery.
My only job was to be invisible, to not draw negative attention to the family… again.
So my parents encouraged me to date my boyfriend from “the right family”, go to class and get good grades, and conveniently be “sick” every time Dad had a campaign event.
Getting pregnant by said boyfriend, no matter how “right” his family was, certainly was not on the short list of things my parents wanted me to do.
I sipped at my tea quietly, choosing to say nothing even as my best friend raised her eyebrows with expectation. I only stared back, silent within the orchestra of coffeeshop sounds that surrounded us. As if to keep me on my toes, the universe decided to harass me then.
“He lied so beautifully, and I fell, fell stupidly…”
I scoffed at the opening lyrics of the song I used to love.
Eden Xavier’s album was officially out, and was being played to death all over the world.
According to Billboard, EX was a love letter to the men of Eden’s past—exes, if you will.
The first single off the album had been released for months, titled, He Lies.
Before today, I’d bumped the single at least once a car ride, singing along at the top of my lungs to a man who couldn’t hear the words.
That song was so relatable.
But now all I could do was roll my eyes to the sound of Eden’s uniquely soulful voice.
“What?” Luxana was taken aback by my reaction. “I thought you loved this song.”
“Did you?” I sipped at my tea, my aura defensive. Even though nothing had been done to me, I suddenly found myself low on patience.
“Is this because Kain took her to Catfish Carol’s?”
The question hit me like a rough punch to the stomach. “Took her where?”
Luxana nodded, rolling her eyes at my response. “I knew it. You saw the magazine article about Kain and Eden Xavier.”
I repeated my question. “He took her where?”
“To the same restaurant you two had your first date at. You didn’t notice from the pictures?” The restaurant in the photo had looked vaguely familiar, but I likely blocked the possibility of him taking her there out of my mind. Of all the places…
Lux’s eyes widened at the realization that the truth was hitting me for the first time in that moment, her eyebrows dipping apologetically. Even though she didn’t say so, I was sure she was sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
I could only shake my head with a shrug, trying to seem unfazed.
Over the past year and a half, I’d regularly been seeing a therapist. Recently, I was sure Dr. Eloise was the only person in the world that knew I lied awake at night and thought about him, thought about what I missed while we were apart, thought about what I did wrong.
Lux wouldn’t see my eyes water over this.
The past year had taught me that my emotions made the people around me uncomfortable.
It was in everyone’s best interest if I simply took life’s emotional blows in stride.
And, for the most part, that’s what I did.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried in front of my friends or family.
My therapist, however…
She’d better get the tissues ready.
***
Marlon met my straight face with skepticism.
Rarely did gossip magazines ever cause a blip in my day-to-day routine, but today things were a little different. Marlon stood before me not as a friend, not as a business partner, but as a concerned older brother.
“I don’t care what it is you’re going through these last few months with your thot rotation, but my sister—”
I stopped Marlon right there. “Save your energy.”
Marlon slammed a copy of Fame Weekly onto his desk, displaying a candid shot of Eden and I at Catfish Carol’s, the night of her album listening party.
The article title was alluding to the possibility that Eden was sleeping with higher ups in exchange for music industry favor—higher ups, meaning me, in this equation.
I took a seat in the chair situated at the front of his workspace, replying, “How about you release a statement that says I grew up with Eden and she’s practically my sister?”
Which was the truth.
Marlon leaned backwards against his desk. “I plan on it.”
“Okay, so?”
“I need to hear it from you—man to man. Is Eden your latest stop in the Let’s Forget About Lauren Tour?”
I scoffed, coughing back a laugh along with a simultaneous cringe. “Shut the fuck up.”
This music exec shit was starting to make Marlon’s analogies kind of insufferable. I narrowed my eyes at my friend, unsure if I was supposed to be taking this seriously. His expression didn’t fall.
“It’s Eden…” I stressed, my delivery almost disgusted, as if the mere thought of touching her made my skin crawl. Shit… it kinda did. Marlon could only look at me, an air of mistrust clouding over in his eyes. “Are you serious right now?”
“Just answer the question.”
“I’m not fuckin’ your kid sister.”
“Are you trying to?”
Self-respect wouldn’t even let me entertain the question. “Why don’t you ask Eden why we were at that restaurant at one o’clock in the morning?”
“Bruh, I’m asking you.”
“I would’ve never taken her there.” Especially there.
Marlon’s high-rise office in the heart of Miami’s Arts & Entertainment District grew silent.
When my countenance did not falter, the older brother bravado simmered down.
Marlon was practically family, but I refused to let him even try to intimidate me.
It wasn’t in my nature to concede to anyone—not even my friends.
As far as I could remember, there had only ever been one person who could make me stand down.