Her skin felt prickly. Her body temperature rose. Her explosion was coming and it was going to be powerful, electric, intense.
She bit down on her lip again.
Arched her back.
“Oooh.”
Griffin’s pace increased. His door was opening too. He dug his fingers into her waistline. Said, “Shit! Shit!”
“Ohh. Right there!”
“Goddamn!”
“That’s it, papi. Jodame.”
“Shit! Can’t hold . . . going to . . .”
“Give it to me, baby. Damelo.”
“Love that Spanish shit,” Griffin said. He dug his fingers deeper and let out a growl. “Shiiit!”
He bucked powerfully.
Made the walls of Aida’s dam crumble into pieces.
Aida came and smiled as she did. “Aye, Griffin! Shit! Cono!”
Griffin bucked a few more times before he fell back against the seat.
Aida let out a long exhale and sat up and stared at him. Sweat ran in rivulets down from the top of his head. The air inside of the Escalade was musty and reeked of salt and sex.
The windows were nearly illegally tinted, so in the darkness no one had seen what had just occurred. But the SUV wasn’t soundproof and if anyone had walked by, they would certainly have been witness to every stroke, just from the sounds alone.
“Should we give our exes a call now?” Griffin asked with a sly smirk.
Aida laughed and slid him out of her and sat beside him. She raised her sports top back over her breasts, and put her thong and shorts back on. “We should have called them five minutes ago.”
Griffin peeled off the condom he was wearing, opened his passenger door, and threw it outside. “That,” he said, closing the door, and then pulling his boxers and sweats up from around his ankles, “would have been hilarious.”
“Next time,” Aida said.
Griffin nodded. “Definitely next time.”
“Maybe we can let them watch.”
“Or participate.”
Aida smiled. “Even better.”
Griffin had a sneaky glint in his eyes. She didn’t know why, but it gave Aida the chills. “So . . . are you still up for that drink?” Griffin asked.
Aida closed her eyes a bit. “Sure you’re still up for taking me? I mean, you did just get the cake.”
Griffin smiled. “I’m a hungry man. One bite is definitely not enough.”
Aida laughed. “OK. But I need to go home and shower first.”
“I need to do the same.” Griffin reached into his pocket and grabbed his cell phone. “What’s your cell number? I’ll call you in about an hour.”
Aida shook her head. “Had drama in the past. I don’t give out my cell.”
Griffin clenched his jaw. “OK. Well, here . . .” He removed a card from his wallet and handed it to her. “My cell number is on there. Call me when you’re ready.”
Aida took it and put it in her pocket. “OK.” She put her hand around the latch and opened the passenger door. “Oh, my number is going to come up blocked, so make sure you answer it.”
Griffin clenched his jaw again, and then said, “Will do.”
Aida leaned toward him and planted a kiss against his cheek. “Mmmm . . . salty.”
She left Griffin smiling and stepped out of the Escalade. With a wave, she turned and headed to her car. A few seconds later, Griffin’s Escalade started and then, with a quick honk of the horn, passed by her.
Aida smiled as the SUV disappeared. Griffin Steele was a good fuck. She looked forward to round two and possibly a round three.
More importantly, she looked forward to collecting the other half of her money.
26
“So how are things going?”
I wiped sweat away from my forehead. I’d just finished running a few of the gym’s employees through a hard kickboxing workout. I don’t usually run the class for the employees, but the regular instructor–a Billy Blanks wannabe with half the size and double the amount of hair–had been robbed and broke his ankle in the process. The manager called me, since I was the only other kickboxing instructor the gym had, and begged me to run the class. I had nothing going on for the evening, so I agreed to do it.
I push the gym members hard during every one of my classes. They were there to get results and I took my job of helping to produce those results very seriously. I pushed the employees ten times harder because it was all about setting the example. As far as I was concerned, you shouldn’t work at the gym if you weren’t in shape or weren’t determined to be.
I wiped away sweat again and stepped outside. It was nighttime. Approaching nine o’clock. For the first time in four days, the humidity wasn’t suffocating. It was still warm though at about eighty degrees.
Walking to my Mercedes-Benz E-Class coupe, I said, “Things are going fine.”
I was going to call Shante Hunt with my update when I got home, but changed my mind and called as I left. Home was for a hot shower, some Pinot Noir, and Pink Martini on repeat. Home was about pleasure.
Shante said, “I guess you’ve made contact with the son-of-a-bitch?”
I thought about the nights out with Ryan. The nights of sex.
Contact.
Yes. There had been plenty.
I said, “Yes.”
“He’s an arrogant asshole, isn’t he?” Shante asked, her tone biting, laced with disgust.
I paused as a car slowly turned in front of me and headed down an aisle to the right of where I was parked. A woman was driving the car. Didn’t know why, but it almost seemed as though she’d been staring at me.
“Thinks he’s God’s gift to women,” Shante added.
I nodded as I approached my Benz. “He is sure of himself,” I said.
“I can’t wait for this to happen. I can’t wait for him to get his.”
“Have you and your sister spoken yet?”
Shante sighed. “No. She still won’t talk to me.”
“The plan is for you to take her out and then bring her home so that she can walk in on Ryan and me correct?”
“Yes.”
“Well if she’s not talking to you, how are you going to make that happen?”
“My sister is just being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn. Trust me, all I have to do is show up at her house. She won’t say no to going out.”
“OK.”
“Has . . . has he come on to you?” Shante asked, her tone indicating that she didn’t want to know the answer.
I said, “Yes, he has.”
“Have you . . . have you responded?”
I was at my Benz now, opening the door. “I’ve done what’s necessary to ensure that you get what you’re paying for.”
Shante scoffed. “What I’m paying for. I still can’t believe I’ve had to resort to this just to open my sister’s eyes.”
“Sometimes people need to be forced to accept reality.”
“Yes, they do,” Shante said.
“Are you sure this is something you want to go through with?”
“I’m very sure,” Shante replied. “I wish I were home to make it happen now. I hate having to wait. Piece of shit. Pathetic joke, pathetic excuse for a man.” Shante paused and exhaled heavily into the phone. “Sorry,” she said, her voice softer, but the edge still there. “I . . . I tend to lose it when it comes to him. He just gets under my skin. Have you ever dealt with someone like that? Someone who just makes you lose your center, lose your control?”
I thought about Kyra for a moment. Thought about the control I’d lost. Thought about the way she’d gotten under my skin. The way she’d almost won before I found my center again.
I said, “No.”
“Guess you choose the right people to deal with.”
I wiped my forehead again. Update given, it was time to end the call. “OK, the day after this is finished we’ll meet at Starbucks. Make sure you have the check for the other half with you. You won’t hear from me again after that.
And I don’t expect to hear from you.”
“OK.”
I ended the call before she could say anything else.
I got why she was irritated and pissed off about Ryan, but something about her and her outburst bothered me. As much as Ryan’s attitude and dick intrigued me, I was looking forward to not having to deal with Shante Hunt anymore.
I threw my gym bag onto the passenger seat and was about to get in when I sensed someone behind me. I spun around, my hands balled into tight fists, the muscles in my legs taut and ready to swing out at whoever was there.
But I froze.
Standing in front of me was a ghost. A devil. A figment of my imagination, which must have certainly gone fucking wild.
I stared.
Didn’t want to believe what I was seeing. Couldn’t believe it. Refused to believe it.
I stared.
Blinked. Barely breathed. My heart beat heavily. Thudded beneath my chest. Echoed in the caverns of my ears. Nothing around me moved. Sounds disappeared.
I stared.
Felt myself teeter off center.
Standing in front of me was a person I never expected to see again. A person who had ceased to exist a lifetime ago.
My mother.
I stared at her.
Her hair was still long and curly, brown, though peppered with slender streaks of gray. Her eyes were still almond shaped, still sad, with crow’s-feet at the corners. Her mouth hadn’t changed. Her lips were still full, still succulent, despite the deep frown she wore. She wasn’t overweight, but she’d put on size with age. Her waistline and hips were wider. Her legs and arms thicker. She’d probably put on a good twenty-five to thirty pounds.
My mother.
Still attractive after all these years.
Years.
All of them.
I said, “What are you doing here?”
“I . . .” she paused, fidgeted with the bottom of a yellow top she had on. Yellow had always been her favorite color. I didn’t own any yellow clothing. She opened her mouth. Struggled to find her words again, before letting out a sigh and saying, “Hello, Lisette. It good to see you again.”
I closed my fists tighter. Wished she was an assailant that I could hit. I said again, “What are you doing here?” My throat was raw, dry.
“It’s been so long, Lisette.”
“Goddamn it. What the hell are you doing here?”
My mother opened her mouth to say something else, but then frowned and reached into her purse, hanging over her shoulder. She removed a white piece of paper and what looked like a newspaper clipping. She extended the papers toward me. “I received these in the mail two days ago.”
I looked at her skeptically with a raised eyebrow for a long moment, before taking the papers from her.
I looked at the newspaper clipping first.
“What the . . .”
What I was holding didn’t make sense to me. I looked at it for a long, tense couple of seconds. I said again, “What the . . .”
Kyra Rogers. In black and white with a smile spread across her face. She stared up at me. Above her head a caption in black letters read:
WOMAN MISSING. WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN.
Below her picture, handwritten sloppily in red marker diagonally across the words of the article, was:
Your daughter knows what happened to her.
I went from the clipping to the folded piece of paper. I unfolded it. On it, in the same red ink, written in the same unkempt handwriting, was my home address, along with the address for the gym with the date and time of the kickboxing class I’d just finished instructing. I looked at the piece of paper for a lingering second, then looked back to the clipping.
Kyra.
Fucking Kyra.
I looked over my mother’s shoulder, then turned my head left and right, and then looked behind me. I ran my eyes over every fucking car, every fucking shadow, before focusing back on my mother. “Who sent you this?”
My mother shook her head. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“Don’t bullshit me!” I snapped. I was trying to remain calm, trying to keep my composure, but it was hard. Damn near impossible. Someone said I knew what had happened to Kyra. Who?
There were only three people besides myself who knew what had happened to her: Three thugs, all paid more than enough to keep their mouths closed. I didn’t worry about them talking about Kyra’s last night of existence. A night in which I’d given her my regards before she’d taken her last breath.
“Who sent this to you?” I demanded again.
“I don’t know,” my mother insisted again. “What does it mean? Who is that woman?”
I crumbled the papers in my hand and looked around the brightly illuminated parking lot again. Various people walked from the gym to their cars, or went in the opposite direction to get their workouts in.
I looked from one person to the next. Wondered if any of them had sent the papers. I studied them with a scrutinizing eye. Tried to X-ray vision my way through car windows and windshields, tinted or not.
Someone knew and they knew about my mother. Knew how to get in touch with her. Had told her how to get in touch with me.
“Lisette, what’s going on?”
I turned and looked at my mother. She’d abandoned me. Left me with my pervert of a father. Left me to fend for myself. She stood in front of me, saying my name and asking me questions as if she had a fucking right to.
“When did you say this came?”
“Two days ago. Lisette–”
“And you don’t know who sent it?”
“No. Please, Lisette, what’s going on?”
I closed my hand tighter around the papers. Looked around the parking lot again.
Who?
I shook my head.
My mother called my name again. “Lisette . . . are you in some kind of trouble? Who is that woman? What does the message mean?”
I clenched my jaw. Her voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Shut . . . the . . . fuck up,” I said my voice tight with anger.
My mother frowned as her eyes welled with tears. “You’re angry, and you have every right to be. I know I owe you an explanation for what I did, the way I left.”
“I don’t want to hear this bullshit,” I said.
“Please, Lisette. Just let me explain. I’ve missed you. I’ve–”
“Missed me? Bitch, you abandoned me.”
“I know. I swear to you, I regret that decision. I was young. And you were so . . .so . . . manipulative.”
“I was a fucking child.”
“I know. I just didn’t know how to deal with you. I made a bad decision.”
“A bad . . .” I closed my mouth and shook my head again. I didn’t need this shit.
Someone knew.
They knew my address.
They knew I’d be instructing the class that night, which meant the other instructor’s robbery hadn’t been random.
I looked around again. At people. At cars. At darkness, and shadows in the light.
Someone knew and they’d sent my mother. The woman who didn’t mean shit to me.
I looked back at her. Closed my eyes to slits, and in a voice as tight as a wire on the verge of snapping, said, “Thank you for bringing these to me. Now stay the fuck out of my life.”
Without another word, I climbed into my car, slammed the door shut, started the engine, and pulled away.
I never looked in my rearview mirror.
My sights were focused intensely straight ahead.
The white piece of paper with my home address and the newspaper clipping were still crumbled in my hand.
Kyra Rogers.
Someone had brought her back from the grave.
I had to find out who.
27
I’m laughing.
I can barely contain myself. She looks like a fucking bobblehead doll the way she keeps looking all around her.
Feeling paranoid, bitch? Are you racking you
r brain trying to figure out what the fuck is going on? Are you trying to figure out why the hell your mother is there? Well, I did some investigating. I spoke to some of the people from your past. People you went to school with. Surprise, surprise, you weren’t very well liked. It didn’t take much money to get just enough information of your background from them to use to my advantage. I found out all about your screwed, up family life. The people I spoke to all called your father a pervert. The females all claimed that he looked at them in inappropriate ways. Some said he tried to touch them once or twice. I bet he did some nasty things to you. I tried to reach him, but he’s been dead for five years. Heard you didn’t go to his funeral.
And then there’s your mother. Heard she left one morning and just never came back. Some said there were rumors of physical abuse from dear old Daddy. Others said you drove her away just so you could have your father to yourself. Sick, bitch. Really sick. She was easy to find. She lives literally three hours away. Remarried now with two twin daughters, three years younger than you.
Keep looking.
“Nah nah nah nah nah.”
You’ll never find me, you cunt. But I found you. And I’m under your skin, eating away at you slowly.
I’m laughing so hard my sides hurt. Good thing I parked far enough away so that she can’t hear me. I wish I didn’t have to though. I wish I could have pulled right into the parking spot beside her car instead of passing by slowly.
Better yet, “I should have run your ass over, you whore. I should have put an end to you. But I would have been cheating myself, and after all of the plotting, preparation, and execution I’ve done to snuff out your pathetic life right now, it just wouldn’t have been fair to me, and it wouldn’t have been fair to Kyra. Kyra,” I say.
Shit.
I’m fucking crying now. I shouldn’t have said her name. It’s hard enough hearing her voice and seeing her in my dreams and thoughts every fucking day. I haven’t spoken her name in months. Saying it is just a painful reminder that, for as long as I live, saying her name out loud would forever go unanswered.
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