“Thanks. Have a good evening.”
I nodded again and jumped a little when my phone began to buzz. My heart was speeding out of control as I grabbed it and checked the screen. Seeing that it wasn’t Leland but some unknown number, I closed my eyes and slumped back in my chair as I answered it. “Hello?”
“Hey, Kim?”
I frowned, took the phone from my ear, and checked the number again, then activated the speakerphone, and said, “Yes. Who am I speaking with?”
“Hey! This is Kendra, Polo’s girlfriend!”
“Oh, hi, Kendra.” I tried to sound enthusiastic but wasn’t very convincing.
“Hi! So, I was wondering if you’re free for lunch tomorrow. I’d love to meet you somewhere. I really enjoyed having you and Leland over the other week, and if you’re like me, you’re probably going crazy missing him like I’m missing my guy.”
I swallowed and blinked back tears. “Yeah, I am.”
“So, lunch? My treat. There’s a Thai place I’ve been wanting to try.”
I didn’t feel like having lunch with her or even climbing out of bed in the morning, for that matter, but nevertheless, I said, “Sure. That’d be nice.”
I hit the button to ignore Kim’s call and went back to my baked fish and my conversation with Polo. We were in Indiana for a game the next day, had been on the road for two weeks, and although we had an excellent record, I was tired as hell and missed the fuck out of Kim. But as much as I missed that woman, I couldn’t deal with the incognito shit that went along with being with her. I was tired of hiding and ducking and dodging. I wasn’t scared of her son, not at all. Shit, wasn’t nothing he could do to hurt me short of killing me, and I was sure things wouldn’t go that far. So no, I wasn’t afraid of his silly, childish ass, but if and whenever this shit got back to him, I was going to look like a damn wuss. I wasn’t trying to go out like that, plus, this shit was stupid. I was grown, she was grown, and hell, so was he. This wasn’t a two or three-year-old kid we were talking about. It wasn’t like us being together really affected him. He might not like it, but he’d get over it. He’d have to if she put her foot down, but she wasn’t going to do that. She was always going to worry about how he felt about it. It seemed to me that she was more concerned about his feelings when it came to our relationship than she was mine, and to me, that was extremely fucked up.
I tried to tell myself that maybe it was me, maybe I was the wrong one in all this. After all, the closest thing to a father I’d ever been was my connection to the kids I’d mentored over the years, but that had nothing on Kim’s bond with her son. She was a young, single mother, had sacrificed and struggled a lot to get him to a place of success. Maybe all that struggle and motherly love trumped the love I’d been trying to give to her. Maybe no matter what, she would always choose him over everyone else, including me. And maybe that was right, but that didn’t mean I had to settle for it. See, maybe what was right for her was wrong for me.
Maybe we just weren’t meant to be.
I missed and loved that woman like a motherfucker, but maybe loving her meant letting her go so that she could deal with whatever she needed to handle with her life and her son on her own terms and in her own time. Maybe to love her, I had to sacrifice being with her, and I loved her enough to do that although it hurt the hell out of me.
“Man, are you listening?” Polo asked, pulling me back into that restaurant with him.
I nodded without looking up from my plate. “Yeah, shorty you met in Denver last week is tripping. I heard you.”
“You ain’t got no advice for a nigga?”
I looked up at my friend who specialized in fucking his relationship with a good woman up and said something I should’ve said to him years earlier. “Yeah, stop fucking all these other chicks before you lose your woman.”
He actually looked shocked. “Damn, really?”
I nodded. “Yeah, really.”
Picking up his fork and pushing his food around on his plate, he said, “Humph, you act like you ain’t out here getting all the ass you can, too.”
“I’m not. Not since I got with Kim.”
“But ain’t y’all broke up? You been ignoring her calls for weeks now.”
I shrugged. “She still got my heart, though. Ain’t nobody else gonna come close to her until I get over her.”
“So you’re telling me you ain’t messed with nobody else since you two got together?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I love her. Don’t want nobody else.”
“Shit, man…I love Kendra, but I still got needs.”
I shook my head. “Whatever, man. All I know is, your ass would die if she did this shit to you.”
“That would never happen,” he said smugly.
“A’ight, if you say so.”
“I know so. Shit, she tell me her every move when I talk to her, and I talk to her every day when we on the road. You know she had lunch with Kim the other day.”
I dropped my eyes to my plate again. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, said she seemed kinda sad. I told her y’all been into it and shit. She said Kim didn’t mention it but that she said she missed you.”
Grabbing my napkin, I wiped my hands and stood from the table. “I’ma head on up to my room. I’ll holla at you later, man.”
“A’ight, man.”
I’d barely made it into my room when she sent another text message to add to the collection of the ones she’d sent over the past couple of weeks.
Little Kim: I miss you and I love you. Please call me.
I fell into the bed, placed the phone on my chest, closed my eyes, and in no time, had fallen asleep.
*****
“You sure you don’t wanna come with us, man? They say that club is always lit. It’s new and one of the hottest spots here in Detroit. We won! We need to celebrate, man, and shit…I’m tryna see what I can get into, you know what I mean?” Polo said, as he elbowed me and did that little snicker he did when he thought he was being clever. Polo was my boy, had been for a long time, but he was stupid as hell.
So I said, “Naw, man, I’m good, and your ass needs to listen to me and not be tryna get into shit but your room—alone.”
As we approached the door to my room, he waved his hand up and down. “There you go with that shit again, and I ain’t even planning nothing like that. I’m just tryna get some drinks and vibe a little, that’s all.”
“For your sake, I hope so. Catch you later, man.”
“A’ight, man. See you in the AM.”
The first thing I noticed when I opened my door was the music, the second thing was the scent—a familiar mixture of pears and cocoa butter. Kim’s body wash and lotion. Then I saw her—tall, dark-brown skin, long, thick legs and thighs, nice little waist, wide hips, full breasts. There she stood in the middle of my suite wearing nothing but turquoise waist beads, her soft skin illuminated by what had to be a thousand candles.
Got. Damn.
It had been close to three weeks since I’d seen her and…shit!
I couldn’t move or talk or even blink. All I could do was stare and feel confused and excited and aroused and angry and happy all at the same time. I was a fucking lunatic in her presence, but I was glad to see her. And my body? Shit, it was ecstatic.
She tilted her head to the side and smiled, widening her stance and placing her hands on her hips. She’d changed her hair, had it re-braided into a swirling cornrow pattern with braids that hung past her shoulders. If she didn’t look like a damn queen…
“Hi,” she said softly.
“Hi. What are you doing here?” I heard myself say as I let my eyes tour her body from head to toe and back. Then I swallowed, licked my lips, and fixed my eyes on her face.
“I missed you and you wouldn’t talk to me.”
“I didn’t think there was anything we needed to talk about.”
“Well, there is. We need to talk and I really wanted to see you, so here I am.”
&nbs
p; “How’d you know where to find me?”
“Kendra told me.”
“How’d you get in here?”
“Polo helped with that.”
I shook my head. So he was in on this, huh?
“So you see me. Now what?” I asked. I was trying to play hard, but my damn dick was hard as steel, and my mouth was watering just from the sight of her. Shit, she was fine!
She lost the smile, giving me a serious look. “Now, I apologize and beg for your forgiveness. Now, I tell you I love you and wait for you to tell me you love me, too.”
“And what if I don’t tell you that?”
She dropped her gaze to the floor and shook her head. “Then…I don’t know what I’ll do if you’ve stopped loving me.” Looking up at me again, she added, “Have you stopped loving me?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“So you still love me, then?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Then let me apologize.”
I watched as she stepped closer to me and fell to her knees. In what seemed like seconds, my jogging pants were down to my ankles, her warm mouth was around me, and all my damn common sense had disappeared.
24
“Dre was my third real boyfriend besides Armand’s father and another guy I dated,” she said, as I lay next to her in the room still illuminated by the candles. She stared at the ceiling as she continued to speak, “He was older, had a good job with a liquor distributor, and he was really nice to me and Armand at first. We dated almost a year before he moved into my place. About a month after that, he hit me for the first time during an argument but promised not to ever lay a hand on me again. By then, I knew the cycle, had already dealt with it twice before and watched my mom endure the same treatment when I was a kid, but I still forgave him because I thought I loved and needed him.
“It was a few months later that he hit me again. A few months after that, he evolved from punching me to choking me. I fought back. I always fought back.”
She rolled over and looked me in the eye. “I think one of the reasons I let it go on for so long is that he was helping me pay bills, and hell, I was tired of struggling. Social work doesn’t pay much, and neither did my second job at a department store.” She sighed and shook her head. “Anyway, anything would set him off. Like, if the light bill was higher than he thought it should be or I started my period a day earlier than usual or we ran out of toothpaste. Anything would make him pounce on me, but the crazy thing is, he never hit me when Armand was home. We might’ve argued after he went to bed, but he never put his hands on me when my son was home, until…
“I don’t even remember what he was mad about that day, but I do remember us arguing and I guess I said something that really pissed him off, because things quickly escalated from us cursing each other out to him pinning me to a wall while squeezing my neck. I had started blacking out when Armand burst through the front door, home early from basketball practice, and literally pulled Dre off me and beat his ass. He…he saved my life, Leland. And later that night, he told me he’d heard Dre talking crazy to me some nights, had even seen him hit me once when I thought he wasn’t home. He talked about remembering his father and my other boyfriend hitting me, and from that point on, our roles became blurred. He was still my son, but he also became my protector. I was his mother, but always felt like I owed a debt to him for what I put him through because of my bad decisions. I promised myself I’d put him first from that point on, and that’s what I did, what I still do. And then I became dependent on him. For a long time, I really believed he was all I had. When he left for college is when the insomnia started. I couldn’t sleep in my apartment alone. I guess I felt like I needed him there.
“Then there’s the issue of his anger. Because of the abuse he witnessed, he’s full of anger, rage, and has control issues, especially when it comes to me. I made him what he is today. It’s my fault he’s how he is.”
“I understand that, I really do…but I can’t do this secret shit anymore, baby. I don’t care how angry he is. I don’t care how he reacts. Whatever debt you think you owe him, you paid it and then some. You lived for him. Now you gotta move on, let him live his life the best way he can while you do the same thing. If you saw your mom get hit, that’s what you knew, and that’s why the same thing happened to you. It’s a cycle, yeah, but what your son chooses to do, how he chooses to act as an adult ain’t on you. It’s on him. You can’t change the past, but you can damn sure live a better life now. But look, if you’re not ready to let all this go, to put the past behind you and put your son in his place, ain’t nothing I can do about it. I guess maybe I moved too fast with you, so I’m sorry for that. I love you, but I can’t do what you want me to do anymore, Kim.”
“But—all I want you to do is love me.”
“While hiding it? I can’t. Not anymore. That shit is stressful, and to be honest, it’s crazy as hell. I think what I like best about dating older women is the fact that they do what they want and couldn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about it. Me and you? We don’t have that. I can’t be with you when I don’t have control over how I can be with you. That just ain’t gonna work for me. I don’t like feeling helpless and shit, and that’s how this thing with you makes me feel, helpless like a motherfucker.”
“But I…I don’t want us to hide or keep this a secret anymore. I wanna be with you freely. I don’t wanna lose you. My life has been a mess these few weeks without you. I’ve been so miserable.”
I stared at her for a moment, then said, “You saying you’re gonna tell your son about us?”
“I’m saying I love my son, but I’ve made some mistakes as a mother. I’m saying he does not respect me because I have never demanded it of him, and yes, I’ve sacrificed a lot for him and you’re right, it’s time for me to let him live his life and for me to live mine…with you.”
“But?”
“I’m not ready to tell him. I’m not going to pretend I am. I just…let’s just be together the way you want us to and whatever happens, happens.”
“So when he finds out, what? We’re over?”
“No, when he finds out, I’ll deal with it. I’ll let him know this is what I want.”
I rolled over on my back and took my shift staring at the ceiling. “You not telling him, just letting him find out? That still ain’t right, baby. It’s-it’s—”
“The coward’s way out,” she interrupted me. “I know it is, but it’s as far as I can go right now. Please tell me you’re okay with this. Please don’t give up on me. I promise things will be different. I’ll go wherever you want me to go, do whatever you want me to do. I just…I need you, Leland. I really, really need you.”
I rolled back over, reached for her, pulled her to me, and after I had kissed her, I squeezed her in my arms, and said, “Okay, baby. Okay.”
“Okay, everyone, it looks like that’s all I had on my list for today. Darren and Trisha, I want to congratulate you on organizing Trunk or Treat. The kids really enjoyed it and the costume contest.”
They both smiled and thanked me.
“Oh, and those of you working with the kids in the after-school program, be sure to give those forms out for the Thanksgiving food baskets.”
I watched as they grabbed stacks of the forms from the center of the table in the small conference room, and just as I was preparing to formally dismiss my staff from our weekly meeting, a soft knock came at the door.
With a slight frown, I said, “Come in!”
Leland peeked in the door with a sheepish look on his face. “Your secretary said I could find you here.”
I stared at him for a second, shifted my eyes back to the people sitting around the table, and seeing that their eyes were collectively on my man, told Leland, “Just a second,” and then officially adjourned the meeting.
Leland stepped into the room as my staff, including a bewildered-looking Elrich, filed out.
As soon as the window-less space cleared and the doo
r closed, Leland moved closer to me and gave me a soft kiss on my lips. “Hey,” he said, smiling down at me.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
“I came to take you to lunch.”
There it was. He was testing what I’d told him in Detroit. It’d been a couple of weeks since then, and he’d been so busy on the road and practicing that he hadn’t made me make good on my “no more secrecy” promise. Now he was seeing if I’d follow through.
“Okay,” I said, turning to grab my notebook and other paperwork. “Let me take this stuff back to my office real quick.”
“A’ight, can I walk with you?”
I held my papers to my chest and nodded. “Yes, of course you can.”
We were halfway down the hall to my office when his cell rang. “This is Derek Hill. I’ma head outside and take this. I’ll wait for you out there.”
“Okay. Be out there in a second.”
I’d managed to set my papers down, grab my purse, and was about to leave my office when the door opened and in walked Elrich. He quickly closed the door behind him, and asked, “What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused, ready to go to lunch, and wishing I could take the rest of the day off so I could climb Leland like the tree he was.
“Why is Leland McClain here? Something going on with one of our kids again? Shemar Townsend?”
I blinked a few times before realizing what he was talking about. It’d been a while since the whole Shemar Townsend thing popped off, not that I could fully forget about it. “Oh,” I said. “No, nothing’s wrong. Leland and I are just having lunch together.”
“Leland? Not Mr. McClain?” he inquired, with both his eyebrows and the octave of his voice raised.
“Yes? Is something wrong with me addressing him by his first name?”
Elrich stood there staring at me and blocking the door, mute.
Let Me Hold You (McClain Brothers Book 2) Page 18