Secret grabbed his hand. “Can I go with you?”
Lucky looked at her with squinted eyes. “What? You serious?”
“I just want to be where you are right now. That’s all,” she told him. “I need you, Lucky. I want things to be right with us again no matter how long it takes. I just hope you’re willing to wait.”
After staring at Secret for a moment, Lucky nodded and pulled Secret into the bathroom with him. While Lucky showered, Secret sat outside the shower talking to Lucky, catching up.
He pressed his luck when he stuck his head out of the shower and asked, “Will you wash my back for me?”
Secret smiled mischievously but obliged. While Lucky finished up in the bathroom, Secret went downstairs and fixed them each a slice of pie with whipped cream. When Lucky exited the bathroom she was coming up the steps with dessert in hand.
“For me?” Lucky asked.
“All for you,” Secret replied, then nodded for him to go to her bedroom.
Lucky sat down on Secret’s bed. She sat next to him and placed their dessert on her nightstand table. Taking a forkful of pie, she placed it at Lucky’s mouth.
“Open wide,” Secret ordered him.
Lucky eyeballed Secret in a playful suspicious way. He did as he was told and opened wide. He inhaled the dessert. “Mmmmm.”
“Is it good to you?” Secret asked seductively.
Lucky bust out laughing. He covered his mouth so that he wouldn’t spit out his food.
“What is so funny?” Secret didn’t know whether to be offended. She wasn’t sure if Lucky was laughing at her trying to be seductive.
“You are what’s funny,” Lucky replied. “I mean, why you teasing a brother? What’s really going on?”
“I didn’t mean to tease you. I wanted it just as much as you did. But, Lucky, I’m not about to get pregnant again. It’s hard enough to take care of Dina. I can’t imagine trying to take care of two kids.” Secret looked down sadly.
Lucky began to feel sorry for Secret and her struggle. He knew so many mothers trying to raise their children alone. He saw some of the ends they would go to in order to feed their children. He was no stranger to that. He thought back to the Secret he’d met that day at the clinic. She was so sweet and special, and different. He hated to see her now a statistic. But it happened to the best of them.
“I told you that if ever you need anything—” Lucky started until Secret cut him off.
Secret placed her index finger on Lucky’s lips to silence him. “Shhh. I don’t want to talk about all that now.” She set the pie down then looked into Lucky’s eyes. She leaned in and began kissing him.
At first Lucky just allowed her to kiss him, then he participated in the kiss. The next thing he knew, Secret’s hand was cupping his manhood.
“Oh no.” He’d pulled out of the kiss and pushed her hand off of him. “You ain’t about to get me all worked up again. I done already had to jack off once.” Lucky went to get up.
Secret quickly jumped in front of him and pushed him back down. “Oh, you won’t have to jack off.”
The next thing Lucky knew, it wasn’t just Secret’s hand stroking his penis, but her mouth was wrapped around it.
“Damn, girl,” he moaned as he fell back on the bed and allowed her to please him orally.
Secret sucked, stroked, licked, played with his balls; she did everything she could think of to make him feel good and to get him to hurry up and come. Since he’d already come once, she knew it was going to take him longer to come a second time. But she had to do what she had to do. She did not want Lucky leaving her home unsatisfied with an excuse not to return. She couldn’t risk him thinking she was just playing games with him and decide not to come around anymore. It wasn’t a chance she was trying to take. She didn’t know how serious Detective Davis was about throwing her back in jail and putting Dina into the system if she didn’t fulfill her end of the bargain. She’d taken risks with her own life in the past. But she refused to take risks when it came to her daughter’s. So if this is what she had to do, then so be it.
“Mmmm,” Secret moaned as her mouth bobbed up and down on Lucky’s manhood while she massaged his balls. The faster she did it, the louder he moaned.
“I’m ’bout to come. I’m ’bout to . . .” Lucky arched up and began to climax.
Secret had quickly removed her mouth and cupped her hands around Lucky’s jerking penis. She stroked his entire vessel with both hands, allowing him to shoot off in her hands. She cupped his fluids in her hand, and once he’d rested his body back down on her bed, she knew he was finished coming. She stood up and went into the bathroom and washed her hands. She turned the water off and before drying them, she looked at herself in the mirror.
She threw her hand over her mouth, suffocating the cry she really wanted to let out. She looked down into the sink as the last drop of water scurried down the drain. This became a symbolic moment for Secret. The last drop of water had flowed and was gone, as it should be when it came to her tears. It was time for her to grow up, to stop crying like a baby and do whatever the fuck she had to do in order to protect her baby. It was time to take off the diaper and put on the big girl panties. Period, point blank. There wasn’t going to be too much more of this dick sucking and carrying on. And she wasn’t going to feel bad about the fact that she’d just done it.
“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
Those had been Shawndiece’s words. Well now they were Secret’s and at the moment she vowed she would take them to heart.
This time there was no shame there. No guilt. It was like she wasn’t even looking at herself anymore. This was a different girl from the helpless single mom caught up in a situation she’d wished she’d never gotten herself into. This was a single mom willing to do whatever she had to do to survive and fix the situations she’d gotten herself into. She’d made a lot of bad choices for all the wrong reasons. And deep in her soul she knew she was still making bad choices. But this time it was for all the right reasons.
She finished drying her hands off and then made her way back into her bedroom. Lucky was lying in her bed sound asleep. Secret shook her head and watched him sleep for a moment. Then finally she went and climbed in bed and lay down next to him. She watched his chest rise up and down thinking, we really could have had something had you never shown me who you really were. Had you never thrown me away just like everybody else. Secret lay down on her back with her arms folded looking up at the ceiling. Lucky snoring turned her attention back to him.
He’d started off as her prey and now here he was her prey again.
He’d been fed, he’d bust a nut, he’d gotten a back wash, dessert, a blow job, and now he was lying there snoring on her bed.
Secret turned her body to face Lucky and then cuddled up under his arm. She felt him tuck her even closer by putting his arm around her and then pulling her in. She had him right where she wanted him. The real games were about to begin.
Chapter 22
“Aww, baby, please don’t leave,” Secret purred in a whiney voice as Lucky got dressed. She lay in her bed naked with nothing covering her but a sheet.
“Girl, I’ve been up under you all week,” Lucky said, buttoning up his shirt, and that was no lie. Ever since their dinner date Lucky and Secret had been inseparable, just like before when they’d first gotten together. Lucky used to turn his cell phone off and everything when he was up under Secret. Today she’d called off work, but still took Dina to Miss Good’s anyway just so she and Lucky could be alone.
“Don’t you like being up under me?” Secret asked.
“Yeah, girl, you know I do. But I got business to handle.”
Secret climbed up out of the bed and stood behind Lucky. She wrapped her arms around him. “Then let me go with you.”
Lucky shook his head and wagged a finger. “Oh, no, especially not after the last time you was with me when I had to put in a little work.”
“Yeah, but I get
everything now. I know what’s going on.”
Lucky turned around to face her. “Oh, you do? And just what is going on?”
“You are one of the biggest hustlers in the state of Michigan, that’s what,” Secret said in a know-it-all tone.
“You telling me or are you asking me?” Lucky said.
Secret shrugged. “I don’t know. Kind of both.” Secret got serious and went and flopped back down on the bed. “Before, I can honestly say I didn’t ask too many questions about what you did for a living because I didn’t care. I loved you and I didn’t want anything changing how I felt about you. I also didn’t want to know because I didn’t want to be a part of anything that wasn’t on the up and up. But as we both know, I learned things the hard way. Things might have been different if I had been clued in on some things, you know.”
Lucky sat on the bed next to Secret. “I didn’t want to drag you into my situation.”
“You didn’t have to. The police did a fine job of that.”
Lucky put his hand on top of Secret’s.
“I just think I would have respected you more if everything had come from you and not the police.”
“So the police talked to you about me?” Lucky asked.
“Yeah, a little bit.”
“What did they say?”
Secret looked into Lucky’s eyes. “Does it matter what they said? Do you trust everything the police say?”
“Hell no.”
“Exactly. They just wanted to make an arrest and I was scared to death. Those bastards were probably just telling me anything, which is why I half believed the half I did hear. I didn’t want them telling me things about you. I felt anything about you I deserved to hear it from you. Don’t you agree?” Secret asked. “Don’t you think that I at least deserved that? Deserve that now? The last thing I want to do is get caught up in some bullshit. I have Dina here in my house—”
“You can stop right there.” Lucky put his hand up. “I ain’t never and ain’t gon’ ever bring that shit to your place.”
“Just my car?” Secret said, shooting Lucky in the heart.
He sucked his teeth and went to get up.
Secret pulled him back down. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. But things did go down the way they did. I did time and have a record. I work for you as far as they are concerned anyway, so I was thinking . . .” Secret’s words trailed off.
“You were thinking what?”
“If they already thinking it anyway, why make liars out of them?”
Lucky shook his head and held up his hand like he didn’t even want to hear it.
“Seriously,” Secret continued. “You know, if we’re going to be together, then we’re going to be together. I don’t want to be in the dark again when it comes to you.” Secret began rubbing Lucky’s neck. “You know I have your back. I’ve proved that. But if a bitch is going to be going down for some shit, don’t you think I should get a little bit more out of it than just a nice handbag here and there?”
Lucky looked at Secret and stared at her for a moment. “So what are you trying to say?”
“I want in. Just like Shawndiece.”
Lucky burst out laughing. After a moment he realized that he was the only one laughing. Secret sat with a straight face.
Lucky’s face got serious as well. “You dead shit serious, ain’t you?”
“Why not? I’m living here in this shithole apartment on government assistance working at a grocery store. I have another mouth to feed now. Back then it was just me so I didn’t care as much, but I have a baby girl to look after now. I didn’t make it out of this town, but, Lucky, I have to make sure she does.” Secret’s eyes began to water.
“I hear you, ma, and I feel you. But you’re talking out of emotions now. You have no idea how life is on these streets.”
Secret got up on her knees anxiously. “Then teach me.”
Lucky read her face. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” Secret’s eyes watered. “Baby girl, come here.” Lucky pulled Secret onto his lap. “I got you. I’m going to take care of you. As quiet as it’s kept, I’m indebted to you. You kept my black ass out of jail. You took one for the team, so as soft as you are”—he touched her cheek—“I know you’ll go hard. And I trust you more than any other broad I’ve ever fucked with.”
“That all sounds good, so why do I hear a ‘but’ coming?” Secret asked. “You said it yourself: I took one for the team. Is it fair that I took one for a team I’m not even officially a part of?”
Secret was making hella sense. “You’re right in everything you are saying,” Lucky said.
“Here comes that ‘but.’” Secret sighed.
“All I’ve ever wanted to do was protect you from the streets, not put you in the streets.”
“You’re not putting me in the streets. This is my choice.” Secret climbed off of Lucky’s lap and sat on the bed with her knees against her chest. “I’ve been thinking about all this for a minute now. And to keep it real with you, it was something I was going to do with or without you. But I’d much rather do it with you.”
“Trust me, ma, you wasn’t gon’ do it without me.” Lucky chuckled. “Ya boy got the city on lock. So whoever you thought you were gonna get put on by, trust me, nine times out of ten, they work for me anyhow.”
“Maybe so. It’s some dude Kat was telling me could put me on. Some dude named Pain, or something like that.” Secret pretended as though she was trying to recall the name of Lucky’s best friend. But she knew exactly what his name was. She just had to play her hand right.
“Major Pain?” Lucky shot up off the bed. “Kat trying to hook you up with him, huh?” His nostrils began to flare.
“Yeah, she said he could hook me up. Help me earn a little extra money on the side.” Secret was lying through her pretty pouty lips, but it was okay. Lucky and Kat would never talk so he would never know Kat hadn’t said two words about hooking her up with Major Pain.
From the outside looking in, it was truly difficult to tell who was playing who, or if the game was over and this was now real life.
“Why do I feel like you’re Denzel and this is Training Day?” Secret said as she sat next to Lucky in his Escalade. She’d finally convinced him that she could handle being in the game with him. She even ran down the guilt trip of him letting her best friend make some paper but not her. Eventually Lucky’s hand was forced to give Secret a try at the game to keep her from thinking he had something going on with Shawndiece. He told her before he started giving her a little work, which meant transporting dope and making re-up runs, he would let her spend the week watching how he operated. Today was her first ride-along situation. They had just left the shooting range where for the last two hours he’d given Secret her first lesson on how to handle a gun. Now he told her they were on their way to what he would only refer to as The Spot.
“Training Day.” Lucky laughed. “You crazy.”
“Yeah, I must be.” Secret looked out the window as Lucky drove through some very suspect neighborhoods. Every other house looked to be boarded up or burnt down. There were various characters just hanging out. A porch full of young, black men wearing the same color shirts and/or bandannas. Women with half their butt hanging out of the bottom of their shorts and everything but their nipples hanging out of their tops. An old man or woman pushing a shopping cart that looked to have their entire life possessions in that basket roamed aimlessly on the streets. There were paper thin folks walking around scratching an itch or looking for a scratch for their itch.
The apartment Secret had grown up in with her mother hadn’t been in the best neighborhood, but clearly it hadn’t been in the worst.
“Never made it over to this neck of the woods before, huh?” Lucky asked Secret after watching her stare at her surroundings as if they were foreign.
She shook her head.
“This is why I never brought you around this shit. It ain’t you. Yeah, you might have been born and raised in Flint,
but you don’t know nothing about the real nitty gritty, this hood life.” Lucky looked around. “This right here is my home field.”
Once upon a time, when her and Lucky first got serious, Secret wondered if Lucky had been ashamed of her, if maybe that was why he’d never taken her to his home, taken her out to meet his friends or anything. If this was his home field, she now realized how blessed she had been that he hadn’t. She would have thought him to be anything but a baller. Secret never did understand why dudes were in the dope game claiming and appearing to have all this money, but still lived in the hood. It just didn’t make sense to her.
“The hood is where the money at,” Shawndiece had once told her. “That’s where they make that paper.”
That answer had never made much sense to Secret either. But she was confident she was about to understand sooner rather than later.
“You scared?” Lucky asked her. “Change your mind yet about wanting a piece of the action?”
“Nope,” Secret said with confidence.
“Damn, who knew?” Lucky shook his head.
“Knew what?” Secret asked.
“That underneath all that book smart, innocent girly girl stuff you were a soldier.”
Secret turned and looked back out the window. “Yeah, who knew?”
Chapter 23
“Yo, Lucky, my main man, what’s up?” said one of Lucky’s workers after he and Secret entered a warehouse.
The outside signage had read LUCKY’S GARAGE. The way Lucky had kept referring to the place as The Spot as if it was top secret confused Secret as they’d walked straight up into the place. The door wasn’t locked and there were no big dudes with guns wanting a password for them to enter or questioning who had sent them.
Secret shrugged her expectations off. Perhaps she’d watched one too many gangster movies. Secret looked around the makeshift auto repair shop. There were old beat-up cars outside in the lot as well as a couple in the shop with hoods opened, but nobody really seemed to be working on any cars.
While Lucky greeted his comrade, Secret spotted a tool shelf. All the tools looked to be new and shiny as if they’d never been touched. There was a large, shiny red toolbox that glistened. Everything looked to be kept up to par.
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