9. JB
JB
Tuesday night, I pulled up to my house in Saraland and knew something was off before I even got out the truck. The whole house was dark.
Usually, JJ was posted somewhere near the front door waiting to run up on me the second I walked in. Most nights I could smell whatever Hannah had cooked before I even got the door shut. Tonight, there was no JJ running up on me, no food cooking, nothing that usually let me know my family was home.
I locked the door behind me and headed upstairs. That’s when I heard Cardi B blasting from our bedroom.
“Bae?” I called when I pushed the bedroom door open. “You in here?”
She didn’t answer, but the music was louder now. I followed it to the walk-in closet and stopped in the doorway.
“What the fuck?”
Hannah was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of my clothes with a pair of scissors in one hand and a bottle of paint beside her.
For a second, I just stood there trying to figure out what the hell I was looking at.
Then I saw one of my suits cut damn near in half.
Shirts, hoodies, jackets, all kinds of shit I had paid too much money for was either cut up or covered in black and red paint.
“What the fuck, Hannah?” I stepped into the closet. “What are you doing?” She looked up at me with tears all over her face, then went right back to cutting through one of my shirts like I wasn’t standing there.
I started toward her, but the smell of the paint hit me before I could get close. That shit was strong as hell, and she was sitting right in the middle of it pregnant.
“Man, give me that.” I reached down for the bottle. “You sitting in here breathing this shit in with my baby in your stomach.”
Hannah snatched it away from me. “Bitch nigga, please. Don’t act like you care about me or my baby.”
I looked at her.
My baby.
That’s when it hit me that I hadn’t seen or heard JJ since I walked through the door. I looked toward the bedroom, then back at Hannah. Fuck them clothes.
“Where my son at?”
Hannah didn’t answer me right away. She set the scissors down and wiped at her face, which only made me more nervous.
“Hannah, where the fuck is JJ?”
“With my mama,” she finally said.
I let out a breath and rubbed my hand over my face. “You could’ve said that shit the first time I asked.” She rolled her eyes and looked away from me.
Now that I knew my son was good, I looked around the closet again. Thousands of dollars’ worth of my shit was all over the floor, cut up and covered in paint.
“Why the fuck you do this?”
Hannah looked right at me. “Why the fuck you lie?”
“I ain’t got time for this shit.” I stepped over what used to be one of my jackets and headed out of the closet. “Come out this damn closet, turn that music off, and be woman enough to tell me what you think I did.”
I went over to the sitting area in our bedroom and sat down while Hannah stayed in the closet. A few minutes later, the music finally cut off, and she came out with something balled up in her hand.
She walked over and dropped it in my lap without saying a word. I unfolded it and saw the Fish Out of Water logo at the top, then Santa Rosa Beach underneath it. Of all the lies I could’ve told, my dumb ass had told this woman I was hauling a load to Louisiana.
Before I could even think of what to say, Hannah shoved her phone at me. “Keep scrolling.”
I looked down at the screen and saw Lee’s page. Apparently, Anika teaching her about photo dumps had created a damn problem for me. Lee still hadn’t posted her face, but she had put up a whole dump from our weekend in Santa Rosa.
I swiped through the pictures. There was the pool, the beach, some food and drinks, then my fucking Trackhawk sitting in the background of one. By the time I got to the picture from Fish Out of Water, there wasn’t shit left for me to explain away.
I stopped scrolling and looked up at her. “What you want me to say, Hannah?”
“I want you to tell me why you lied.” She stood across from me with her arms folded, eyes still wet from crying. “You told me you had a load going to Louisiana. Whole time, you at the beach playing house with her.”
“Because me and you both know how you act.” I pointed toward the closet. “Look at my fucking clothes. You think I could’ve told you I was taking Lee to Florida and you would’ve just said okay?”
“So lying was better?”
“I knew you was gonna be mad either way.”
Hannah stared at me for a few seconds before shaking her head. “So what am I supposed to do now, JB? Share you with her?”
“You knew what it was from the beginning.”
Her face changed. “It ain’t the beginning no more.”
I didn’t say anything, and Hannah kept going.
“We got a son together. I’m pregnant with your daughter.
I live in this house with you.” She wiped at her face, but more tears replaced the ones she got rid of.
“How long am I supposed to keep acting like none of that means anything just because Lee came home?”
“I never said it didn’t mean anything.”
“You don’t have to say it. You spent the whole weekend with her and lied to me about where you were.”
“And what you want me to do, Hannah? Lee just did five fucking years because of me. You think she was gonna come home and I was just gonna tell her good luck and go on about my life?”
“No, but I thought eventually you were gonna tell her the truth about us.”
I leaned back in the chair and rubbed my hand over my face. “I am.”
“When?”
I looked at her, and she gave me a bitter little laugh. “Exactly.”
“It ain’t even been a week. Give me a fucking chance.”
“A chance to do what? Get her comfortable? Buy her some more shit? Take her on another trip? Fuck the bitch enough times that when you finally tell her about me and these kids, she won’t leave?”
My jaw tightened. “Watch your mouth.”
“Why? Because I’m telling the truth?” Hannah stepped closer. “You keep talking about what you owe Lee. What the fuck do you owe me, JB?”
I stared at her because I didn’t have an answer that wasn’t going to piss her off even more.
Hannah had been there for the last five years.
She gave me JJ, was carrying my daughter now, and had built a whole life with me inside this house.
I knew what she wanted from me. I just wasn’t ready to deal with what giving it to her meant for me and Lee.
Hannah shook her head when I didn’t answer.
“See, that’s the problem. When it comes to her, you know exactly what you owe.
You owe her an apartment. You owe her a car.
You owe her trips and whatever else she wants because she went to prison for you.
But when I ask what you owe me, you sitting there looking stupid. ”
“That ain’t fair.”
“What ain’t fair about it?”
“You knew about Lee when we started fucking around.”
“And you knew I loved you.”
I looked at her while she wiped under her eyes and let out a shaky breath. “I didn’t ask you for this house. I didn’t ask you to take care of me. I wanted you. I still want you. But I’m tired of having a whole family with a man I gotta pretend ain’t mine.”
My eyes went toward her stomach before I looked back at her. “What about your business?” I asked. “You forgetting what happens when everybody finds out you got two kids by Lee’s man?”
“Fuck that business.” Hannah didn’t hesitate. “I can make money doing something else. I’d rather stay home with my kids than keep living like this.”
“Hannah-”
“No, listen to me.” She stepped closer and stood right in front of me.
“Do you know how embarrassing this shit is? I can’t post you.
I can’t wear a ring. Birthdays, Christmas, family pictures, all that shit gotta stay in this house because somebody might see it and put two and two together.
I can’t even tell people who my kids’ daddy is without worrying about what it’s gonna do to my business. ”
I didn’t say anything because none of that was new. She had complained about it before. Just never like this. Hannah looked down for a second before meeting my eyes again. “I’m tired, Jabari. I’m ready to risk all that shit.” Her voice got quieter when she added, “Because I love you.”
I sat there looking at her, knowing she meant every word.
The fucked-up part was, I loved Hannah too.
It wasn’t the same kind of love I had for Lee.
Me and Lee had damn near grown up together.
She knew me before the money, before the trucks, before I had anything worth having.
She had been part of my life since we were kids.
But Hannah had been there too. For five years, she was the woman I came home to.
She gave me my son, was carrying my daughter, and somewhere along the way, what started between us had turned into more than fucking and keeping each other company while Lee was gone.
I loved waking up with her. I loved coming home to her and JJ.
I loved the family we had made, even if I had spent all this time making sure nobody outside this house knew it existed.
“I love you too,” I finally told her.
Hannah’s face crumbled, and she covered her mouth as she started crying again. I stood up and pulled her into me. “Come here.”
She let me hold her for a minute before she pushed against my chest and looked up at me. “Then why I gotta keep being your secret?”
“You not my secret.”
“JB, yes the fuck I am. Me and your kids are your secret. I done accepted that you love Lee. I’ve been accepting that shit for years. What I’m not accepting anymore is me and your kids having to hide so she don’t get hurt.”
I rubbed my hand over my jaw, but there wasn’t really shit I could say to that. Hannah wiped her face. “Tell her about us. Tell her about JJ. Tell her about this baby. Whatever happens after that, happens, but I’m done being your secret.”
She walked out of the bedroom before I could answer her. I stayed where I was, thinking about everything she had just said.
Hannah wasn’t asking me anymore. She hadn’t given me an actual date, but I knew what the fuck she was saying. Either I told Lee, or eventually she was gonna do it for me.