by Edwina Fort
He chuckled as he took another step toward me. I tightened my hand on the kettle.
“You know, she’ll be dead soon. Everything I have can be yours.”
“How can you say that about her? She’s going to beat the cancer. You should be supporting her!”
“Oh Angel, you’ve always been such the optimist. However, I’m a doctor, I see these things all the time. She has stage four bone cancer; she will not survive the year.” He didn’t sound sad in the least that his wife was so deathly ill.
The sad part about his words is that they were true, Diana was dying. Many times before her cancer had spread like it has, I’d offered to make teas for her that would strengthen her bones and help to alkalize her body, but she refused my help…she was married to a doctor and thought my faith in herbs was hocus-pocus, whatever the world that meant.
But I knew the real reason she refused my teas. For some sick twisted purpose, she was jealous of me. Instead of her helping me when her husband tortured me, her hate caused her to turn a blind eye and pretend nothing was happening.
“Just let me put my face between—” Stan began, but mercifully, a group of students walked through the door causing the creep to slink out like the snake he is. I didn’t release my grip on that tea kettle until I saw his BMW pull away from the curb.
He is the bane of my existence and for the most part, Westly had protected me from the worst. I don’t know where I would have been without him…
The second and main reason I felt like I had to look after my brother is because I blame myself for his drug addiction. It was my mother who’d introduced him to heroin. When I was fifteen, I begged him to take me to visit her. During that visit, she’d flirted with Westly shamelessly. For a little while, even though I warned him against it, they dated. When she broke his heart, she left him penniless and addicted to heroin.
If only I’d faced the facts about her sooner instead of holding on to the childhood fantasy of being reunited with my mom, I would not have been so dead set on going to visit her that day. It was all my fault this happened to him. The least I could do was be supportive of him…
Hitta will never understand that. I could see it in his face when he told his men to throw Westly’s stuff away. It served as a reminder of just how ruthless he is…Something I already knew from the beginning.
Anyway, two hours later, my apartment was empty, and that portion of my life forcibly closed. When I got downstairs with my purse and my favorite pillow in my hand, I was surprised to see a moving truck sitting there.
“U-Haul is right around the corner, didn’t take much to rent a truck,” he grumbled as he held the passenger door of the Hummer open for me.
“Yeah, I know…I guess I’m just surprised to see it.”
I was, although I didn't know why. It just seemed as if this was all well-organized instead of a last-minute thing. When he'd kicked in my door a couple of hours ago, he'd done it with the idea that he was going to find Westly.
At the last minute, he decided to take me instead… Two hours later, here I stood with all of my stuff neatly packed into boxes, loaded into a U-Haul and my keys back into my landlord’s hand, who surprisingly let me out of my lease with no problem…
It probably didn’t hurt that Hitta had paid him a healthy sum of money for the broken door.
Anyway, all of this happened in a matter of two hours…
“Don’t stress over it, Teacup.” He opened the passenger door of the Hummer. “Hop in, let’s roll.”
I squeaked when he suddenly dipped, lifting me up in his arms. My startled gaze went to his…
“What are you doing?”
“Helping you in, you’re a little short.”
I grinned. “You can’t call people short anymore…it’s politically incorrect. You have to say vertically challenged.”
This caused him to laugh as he gently placed me on the seat. It was true, it was a big step up into his truck. It didn’t help that he had huge meaty tires on it that lifted it up a few more feet into the air.
He stood for a minute next to my seat as he thought about my words. There was a quiver deep in my belly at having him stand so close.
“I had a retarded guy tell me that the other day…” he said as he reached over me to grab my seatbelt and put it on.
My mouth opened in shock. “You can’t say retarded anymore!”
“Why not?” he asked with a grin on his face. Again, he was looking at me as if he knew a secret and was getting ready to effortlessly control me with it.
“Because it’s politically—”
“Incorrect…Yeah, I know. The thing is, the definition of retarded is one that is less advanced in mental, physical, or social development than is usual for one's age. The guy I was talking to was forty…and that retarded mutha f**** was trying to wax my truck with dishwashing liquid."
Oh my God! Laughter exploded from between my lips…And before I could stop it, I was snorting like crazy.
Tears came to my eyes as I tried to control my laughter, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop. Just imagining an angry Hitta chasing some little guy around his truck for trying to use dishwashing liquid for wax was too much.
He stood and watched me laugh and snort with a pleased look on his face… I tried to cover it up, but it wouldn’t stop. See what I mean? Effortlessly.
When my laughter finally died down, he did something that surprised the heck out of me…he leaned in and gently placed a kiss on my lips.
Y’all know what?
It was surprisingly pleasant. Because of Stan and the many times he’d forced his nasty lips on me, the thought of kissing has always terrified me, which was why I’d managed to avoid it with all the guys I’d ever dated…which weren’t many.
Hitta’s kiss although a quick gentle caress, was nice…I’ll even venture to say that I actually liked it and wouldn’t mind doing it again.
“Now, wouldn’t you call his retarded a** retarded?”
I grinned as I reached out and wiped my lip gloss off his lips…an action that felt so natural. I didn’t realize what I was doing until I was actually touching his soft lips with my thumb. His gaze darkened.
“Although what he did was a bit stupid, you still can’t use the word retard. Like the word short to describe vertically challenged people…it has been buried for kinder words.” He stared at me for a moment, trying to determine if my words were in fact true.
Then he grinned. “Bullsh*t…”
“I’m serious,” I told him around my laughter.
“Yeah okay…political incorrectness my a**. You short and Jerry’s retarded a** is retarded. Case closed.”
And then he kissed me again, just a quick gentle brushing of his lips against mine. Just like the first time he did it, that little caress caused an answering quiver to happen deep inside my belly.
I touched my lips amazed as he shut my door and strolled around to the driver’s side of the truck. What did it mean that I liked his kisses?
I thought about him giving me the definition of the word retard and something else about this mystery man’s character became clear to me. Although he completely slaughtered the English language when he spoke…He was very intelligent.
Heck, I couldn’t even give such a thorough definition of the word retard and I prided myself on being something of a word guru. I am the undefeated champion of Scrabble after all.
Now, on a serious note…I guess that age-old saying is true, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover and I’d mistakenly judged Hitta as an uneducated, uncaring, coldhearted brute, that had nothing to offer the world but his rage and his fists…
And yet, here in a matter of hours, he's managed to surprise me, arouse me…and make me laugh harder than I’d laughed in years, reminding me that I had that embarrassing snorting habit.
“Are you hungry?” he asked as he adjusted the heat settings making the inside of the luxury vehicle nice and toasty.
I shook my head, now suddenly feeli
ng shy for some reason. It was different when I thought I was dealing with an intellectually inferior human being. But now that I knew I wasn’t and that he was probably smarter than me, I felt intimidated in a way that his physical strength could never make me feel.
The feeling I got when talking to him that made me feel as if he was somehow effortlessly controlling me didn’t seem so farfetched now.
“What did you eat?”
“Ummm…” I thought about it. The last thing I ate was a half of a muffin with a cup of tea around lunch time, I haven’t had much of an appetite with all the stressful things going on in my life at the moment.
“Yeah, you thinking too long. We’re going to grab something to eat on the way in.”
I didn’t respond, his mind was already made up, plus my stomach was a bundle of nerves. Now that we were headed toward my new home for the next six months, I tried to imagine what to expect.
I stole a glance at the powerful man sitting beside me…What would his home be like?
Would it be like his truck?
My gaze took in the tan leather seats that looked nice and conditioned. The shining wood framed dashboard that looked like something that belonged in a spaceship. In fact, the truck was so nice on the inside it felt like I was gliding in a luxury plane. It smelled expensive…
Would his place be like that? Luxurious, expensive, and cold… I exhaled. Whatever it was like, I only had to put up with it for six months, most of that time I would be at my shop anyway. My real home…
We drove for a good while. I was surprised when we drove into the Oak Park area…and even more surprised when he brought his truck to a stop in front of my favorite Indian restaurant. They stayed open till two because there was a little neighborhood bar attached to it as well, but they had the best curry lamb to be found in the Oak Park area.
“I love this place,” I told him as he helped me out of the truck.
He smiled. “I know…” was all he said, still holding my hand and leading me inside.
How does he know? Was it true then that he’d been following me? When he showed up at the carnival and gave Jessie those tickets, I’d convinced myself that it had been a coincidence, even though I knew the truth.
“I own a tea shop that’s not too far from here,” I told him after we placed our order.
This was a test…I wanted to see if he was going to pretend like he didn’t know that, but right then something else came to mind. He’s been calling me Teacup all this time.
“I know…” His smooth deep voice cut into my thoughts.
Once again, he was giving me that look that said he was going to effortlessly control me. It was like he knew what I was going to do next and he was ready for it.
“How do you know?”
He turned to face me fully then, seeming to block out the rest of the restaurant. When he looked down at me with that intense dark gaze of his, he made everything else disappear…it was just him and me in the whole world.
“You intrigue me, Angel. And when something intrigues me, I have to know everything about it…” He paused for just a moment as he took a step closer, effortlessly pulling me deeper into the web he was casting around me.
“It becomes an obsession.”
I inhaled when he wrapped one of his strong arms around my waist pulling me close. My hands, as if they had a will of their own, gently clutched his hard biceps before they traveled farther up his arms and came to rest on his big pecks. And I realized that I’d straight up just felt him up, something I’d secretly wanted to do since the first time I saw him standing in his gym in that tank top.
Goodness, he felt amazing…
This man’s body was just that…simply amazing. However, he was so tall I had to hold my head back to look up into his eyes.
“Are you obsessed with me, Hitta?” My words were barely over a whisper.
He nodded… “I am.”
“Why? I’m nothing like the kind of girl you’re supposed to want.”
He grinned. “And what kind of girl is that, shawty?”
I bit my lip as I thought about it. “You know, the kind that can handle a man like you.”
My statement made him chuckle. “And what kind of man am I?”
One that was continuing to surprise me. “You’re a hard man, a man from the streets.”
And I wasn’t. Although I’d been born in the ghetto and lived there as a little girl, most of my life, I have lived with the Bakers in their posh suburban home. I’d gone to a really good school and lived in the kind of neighborhood where one could sleep with their front door wide open should they choose and not worry that they’d be robbed or murdered in their sleep.
I was back to living in the ghetto because it was all I could afford right now with all of the people and the things that I was supporting. And quite frankly I would rather stay in a cardboard box that continue to live under Stanly’s roof.
Hitta nodded. “I am that, but it’s more to me, you know. Something about you called out to me, real strong. Now, you all I can see… I think you will be able to handle me just fine.”
His words made me feel good and that confused me… What was it about him that was changing me, causing me to like things that I thought I wouldn’t and probably shouldn’t? The man had just told me that he was obsessed with me and instead of running for my life, I wanted to be closer to him.
How could a ghetto superstar like him become obsessed with a little nobody like me? I’ve been invisible my whole life, only seen by someone that I’d thought was a figment of my imagination most of said life.
“What’s happening?” I whispered, still drowning in his gaze.
He grinned down at me. “I don’t know, Teacup, but whatever it is, I like it.”
My gaze fell to his soft lips as his head began to lower. He was going to kiss me again, but this time, it would not be a quick peck. As if it had a will of its own, my head tilted back bringing my lips closer to his. And right when our lips were getting ready to touch, the man behind the register called our number.
I blinked rapidly, looking around me when suddenly the sounds and sights of the restaurant all at once came back into focus.
What the world?!
Hitta had the power to make everything else around me disappear. I’ve never experienced that before. The few guys that I’ve dated were alright, but nothing spectacular. They had all been artsy like me, the kind of guys that I always thought I wanted to be with. And yet…
Not a one of them had ever made me drown in their gaze until the sights and sounds around me disappeared into blackness…
No, it was the brute who caused this… The thug that I’d prejudged and was now being made to feel like a giant a** for doing so.
I was so troubled with my thoughts that I didn’t notice he’d brought the truck to a stop a short distance after leaving the restaurant until he killed the engine. We were still in Oak Park. He’d pulled into a long driveway and came to a stop behind the U-Haul truck that sat in front of a big beautiful home that was lit up nicely against the night sky, a few of the guys that had helped me pack were carrying my things inside.
My mouth dropped as I sat up in my seat staring out the window.
This was the kind of house I’d always dreamed of having but knew I never would. It looked like it had been featured in the Home and Garden magazine, the kind of house Martha Stewart held her cooking shows in.
I loved Oak Park. Before I’d opened my shop here, I’d come here to escape my home life for a few hours. All of the houses and the stores in this town had an old-world charm about them that made me feel warm on the inside.
I swore that when I bought my first house, it would be here. But this house…
This was one of the better homes in Oak Park… The fact that it sat on about five acres of land testified to that. I had yet to see inside but I was already in love with it because of the huge wrap-around porch that was lit so beautifully.
A WRAP-AROUND PORCH!
&nbs
p; “Oh my, God! Is this your home?” I said, not able to take my eyes away from it. It was simply amazing.
“It’s our home.” His quiet words caused me to look at him. He sat back in his seat looking like the street king he was, relaxed, watching my reaction.
Suddenly, I was very sad that I was only going to be here for six months. I would have loved it if his words were true. I would have loved for this place to really be mine. But just like everything in my life, it was only temporary.
I smiled… “Your home is beautiful.”
He studied me in that way that he does for a moment before he jerked his head toward the door.
“Let’s go in and take a look around.”
I didn’t wait for him to come around to my door, I was so excited I opened it and hopped down out of the truck.
He chuckled. “Going to have to get a step put in over there.”
Since it sounded like he was talking more to himself than to me, I didn’t respond. Instead, I let my gaze take in as much of the beautiful yard I could see in the dark. There was a big tree off to the side of the house, I wondered what kind it was. Because it was winter, there were no identifying leaves on it.
“Do you know what kind of tree that is?” I asked as we walked up the three steps to the porch of my dreams.
“Yeah, I think the realtor said it is an apple tree.”
I looked at him startled. “You don’t know?”
He shrugged. “I just moved in last week.”
“What?!” I asked, but right then we walked into the front door and all my thoughts faded.
Although it was empty except for the few pieces of furniture I’d brought, it felt like I’d just walked into a bigger version of the Tea Shop. The floors were a beautiful hardwood like the ones at the shop, but far better, they looked brand new and were so shiny I could see my reflection in them.
The walls were made of various shades of brown cobblestone, but where the stones on the shop walls were clearly a budget buy kind of thing, no expense had been spared on these. To the right of the foyer were a grand set of stairs, I wanted to go up them and see what was up there, but I needed to finish my tour downstairs first. I felt like a kid in a candy store, there was so much awesomeness to see.