Rapture 2: a BWWM, Alpha Male Romance

by Perri Forrest

  I debated on whether or not to mention his real name, or what me and pretty much the rest of the world, called him.

  “Alika!”

  “Okay, okay! His name is Hunter.”

  “Mmm, that sounds all kinds of sexy right there. I love that name. He sounds hot.”

  “How the hell can a name sound hot, Tracie? You’re crazy, girl.” I laughed.

  “Well, it does! It’s not like it’s a common name. I mean, maybe a last name, but for sure not a first. Unless Hunter is his last name…?”

  “Nope, it’s his first.”

  “See! Sexy!” she giggled. “The only Hunter I’ve ever even heard of is this hot ass baseball player that used to play for Chicago. A fine ass white guy at that! Bitch, are you swirlin’ out there in Cali?!”

  Oh no…Hell no!

  “What the hell do you know about baseball, Tracie?” I asked, hesitantly.

  “When I dated Omar’s married ass, he was all into sports, so I had to learn some stuff too. It actually wasn’t that bad though. Personally, I like basketball because it has way more action, but his favorite was baseball. Shit, it’s still the most boring sport of all of them, but those dudes wear the hell out of a uniform! Like a second skin hugging in all the right places.”

  “You gonna be alright? Sound like you need some alone time or somethin’!” I joked.

  “Whatever, girl!” she guffawed. “You got me all sidetracked bringing up that name. Wait…that’s not him, is it?”

  My hand immediately went to cover my mouth in shock. I felt silly, but I couldn’t help it. Once Tracie got all excited about uniforms and actually knowing who Rush was, I felt jealousy attacking me from all angles. And now I regretted brining up his name at all. But it was way past too late, now.

  “Alika…!”

  “Yesss, you pest! It is him.”

  “You have got to be kidding me! You’re with Hunter Cambridge? Rush Cambridge?”

  Just as I was about to confirm that my gleeful friend was indeed correct, the other line beeped in my ear signaling another phone call. I pulled the phone away from my ear to look at the caller ID.

  “Trace, hold on, I have another call.”

  “Ugh!” she growled. “Hurry up!”

  I laughed as I clicked into the incoming call. “Hello?”

  “Hi Alika, it’s Jamie.”

  “Hi Jamie. I’m sorry, but Rush isn’t here,” I said, in an attempt to rush her from the line.

  “That’s fine. I wanted to talk to you, actually.”

  I squinted my eyes in confusion, wondering why I would be the one that Jamie wanted to speak with. But I didn’t question it. “Okay, Jamie. Let me clear my other line,” I told her going back to Tracie.

  After promising Tracie that I’d call her back, I was back in conversation with Jamie and waiting to hear what she wanted.

  “Thanks for taking the time, Alika. I really appreciate it. Happy belated birthday.”

  “Thank you, Jamie. It was a great one. What’s going on?”

  She sat on her response for several long seconds. I leaned back into the sofa and pulled my feet atop the cushion and sat right along with her until she was ready to speak.

  “So…” she started. “Has my brother said anything to you about what’s going on with the family?”

  I nodded my head in the affirmative, but the words wouldn’t come out. I didn’t want to say too much about what I knew. My fear was that if I did insinuate myself, I’d say exactly what was on my mind. I’d already chosen sides.

  “Your silence tells me that he has,” Jamie concluded. “I’m not trying to get you to take sides or anything like that—”

  “That’s good, Jamie because my side will always be Rush’s.”

  “Okay. And I’m very happy that he has that in you, Alika. At this point, I’m just hoping that you can convince him to speak to me. I miss my brother, and more than anything, I really want to be able to tell him how sorry I am. But he won’t answer any of my calls, my text messages, or emails.”

  “Can you blame him, Jamie?”

  I was tired of playing nice. There was no part of me that understood how anything Jamie or her father had done was logical.

  “I can’t blame him,” she admitted.

  “Right. I doubt that there’s too much I can do to convince him to handle things any differently than he is right now. So, depending on what you’re asking, I don’t know how much I can help.”

  “I would just really appreciate if you could ask him to give me half an hour. I don’t need anything more than that.”

  Pssh, if this girl ain’t on some bullshit! You think you can fix nine years in thirty minutes? Girl, bye!

  “I can tell him, Jamie, but I can’t force him to do anything that he doesn’t want to do.”

  “That’s all I can ask. How are the two of you doing since the revelation?”

  I didn’t know how comfortable I was divulging details of our relationship with her, so I chose to keep any comments I might have, to myself.

  “I mean…” she continued. “It has to be a lot. I’m not in your shoes, but it has to be slightly awkward for you finding out that Rush fathered a child that will now very possibly be a part of your life too. Of course I haven’t talked to him, so I don’t even know if he plans to look for the child, but going off of what I know about him, something tells me that he will.”

  It might have been my imagination, but it seemed as though she was fishing. So, without confirming her suspicions, I just chose to address a portion of what she’d stated. “It doesn’t affect me one way or the other,” I fibbed.

  The truth of the matter was that it bothered me a whole lot that Jamie and her father had not only played with Rush’s life and sent him into a spiral, but they had potentially impacted mine as well. My curiosity began to itch, and I needed to scratch it.

  “Jamie…out of curiosity, what method of operation were you and your father working from when you conspired to keep Rush from his child? Did you two not think that this could someday come back to haunt everyone?”

  SEVEN

  Alika

  Jamie released a deep sigh into the phone. I didn’t know if she was expecting me to go easy on her, but if that was the case, then she was about to be extremely disappointed if the conversation proceeded forth.

  “No, Alika. If I’m being honest, I will admit that I never thought it would come back to haunt anyone. I’m devastated by all of this. My brother wants nothing to do with me,” she cried. “That is something I don’t know how to deal with. He’s the closest person to me!”

  I couldn’t provide Jamie with any consolation because to do that would be siding with her, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. There was no way. Especially because there wasn’t a single part of what they had done, that I agreed with.

  “I’m sorry for yelling, Alika. This is just a highly emotional situation for me. You go from something being all good one day to total shambles the next. That’s my life right now. I just want to know if you could please ask Rush to talk to me. He won’t text me back, and I’m sure he’s added me to a reject list because all of my calls go straight to voicemail—from home, cell, and work. I don’t want to go to the clubs because that just wouldn’t be right, but I do want to hear from him…” her sentence was cut short by muffled cries. “I just need him to understand why I went along with everything.”

  “I feel so bad that there’s a rift between you and your brother, Jamie. But I have to be honest. This was all avoidable. Maybe not when it first happened, but any of the nine years in between. You know Rush. He’s fierce about the people that he loves, and my guess is that knowing this little girl is his, has already given her a place in his heart. He’s going to take that personal for a very long time. You and your dad played God with his life.”

  “Is that what he said, Alika?” she queried, through sniffles.

  “No, he hasn’t said that. But I can assure you that right now fixing things with you two are not a
priority for him.”

  I wanted to tell her that at the top of Rush’s list was finding his child, but I wasn’t about to let her in at that level. It wasn’t for me to do. And who knows? They might just have the power and resources to keep them from being found. They wouldn’t be getting a heads up from me. Though if they knew Rush like I’m sure they did, confirmation didn’t need to come from me.

  “I just want the opportunity to talk to him. I was just hoping that if you can’t convince him to at least call me back, if he could check the emails that I sent him. I’ll give him all the time that he needs, I just want to know that at the end of that time he might find his way to forgive me. I thought that what I was doing was best for him. It sounds stupid, but—”

  “You’re right, Jamie. It does sound stupid.”

  “Excuse me,” she spat, caught off guard.

  “I was agreeing with you. It does sound stupid.”

  “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t asking for you to cosign on any level.”

  “No, you weren’t. You only asked me to try getting Rush to talk to you—something I’m afraid I can’t do.”

  “And why is that, exactly?”

  “I just don’t think it’s as easy as that, Jamie. You guys really hurt him. I’m sitting here listening to you go on and on about how you want to talk to him and how you need your relationship back. This isn’t about you.”

  “I never said it was about me.”

  “But you act like it is, though.”

  “I absolutely do not.”

  “You absolutely do.”

  “So, then can I deduce that you’re reluctant to help because you want to be able to have my brother all to yourself?”

  Oh, she really tried it, didn’t she?!

  “Don’t go there, Jamie,” I firmly stated. “You’re reaching. And you’re reaching because you can’t have your way. That might work with your daddy, but it doesn’t work with me. My concern is Rush and guarding his feelings and being there the best way that I can be for him. So excuse me if right now I don’t see bringing him together as one, with one-half of the duo who shattered his world, a priority.”

  “You’re real cocky for someone who’s pretty brand new in his life, Alika.”

  “Oh, the claws are coming out, I see. And so soon after you asked for my help.” I chuckled.

  “Whatever. I thought you’d humble yourself just a little more. I thought you’d be interested in trying to establish a place in the family.”

  I knew enough to know that Jamie was throwing out harsh words because she was desperate. She wanted her brother’s attention and she thought I would be a catalyst for making that happen. Now that she’d seen that I wasn’t, she had slowly migrated to attack mode.

  “I’ve never been cocky about anything. I’m just telling you how I feel, from the heart, Jamie. And the way that I feel about this whole situation is that you and your father fucked up royally when you robbed that little girl of a wonderful father. Just the same, you kept an entire piece of your brother’s life from him and expect forgiveness like it was something as small as stealing his last piece of gum. That to me is a false sense of entitlement. It’s the kind of entitlement that spoiled folks carry around. No matter how dirty the deed, your concern is being forgiven without stopping to consider how the hurting party is feeling.”

  “You have no right—”

  “Jamie, I’m not going to argue with you. I’m just not. I didn’t even intend for this to turn in that direction. My plan was to respect what you had to say and then get off the phone, but then all the other words were spoken. There’s really nothing left for me to say about this subject. I genuinely hope that you and your brother and your father can mend the trampled fences, but I think it’s gonna be on Rush’s time and nobody else’s.”

  “So, you’re not going to even at least give him my message?” she asked.

  “He has enough of your messages, Jamie. You said you emailed and texted, right?”

  I could sense her fuming behind the phone line when she didn’t respond right away. And that was fine because I was only going to follow it up with something that once again, spoke to her giving him time.

  “Have a great evening, Alika,” she spat, before releasing her end of the phone call.

  EIGHT

  Saturday, November 8, 2014

  Temptation Nightclub

  It was a Saturday night, and Temptation was in full swing. It was filled with men who wanted a pretty young thing to take home for the night, and women who had hopes of landing a baller or an entrepreneur at the top of his game, to claim as their own. And in the midst of it all, there was Rush Cambridge, the man of the hour, and the club’s owner. Yes, yes, and hell yes, the woman thought as she stared at him from her booth seat. She smiled when she realized that it was indeed him. No strategy was needed, she already knew what her plan of action would be. Every so often, she’d look away to scroll through her Facebook timeline, or her Instagram page. She was buying time, allowing the thirsty groupies in his midst to scatter. And if they didn’t she didn’t care. She would get her turn. She’d see to it. Get your time girls, I’m next in line, she told herself, while quietly singing along to the lyrics of Beyoncé’s 2005 hit, Naughty Girl:

  ♫

  Baby the minute I feel your energy … Your vibe's just taken over me … Start feelin’ so crazy babe… Lately, I feel the funk coming over me … I don’t know what’s gotten into me … The rhythm’s got me feelin’ so crazy babe … Tonight I’ll be your naughty girl … I'm callin’ all my girls—

  ♫

  “Hmph,” she sighed. Naughty, huh? That’s some ironic shit, considering how I’m feeling. And how fitting that a song about being naughty would be playing while she was looking at a person she had crushed on as a teenager. Fuck. Right there in the flesh. She never thought she’d see him again after their last encounter.

  “Janae!” her friend yelled, bursting into her thoughts, as well as interrupting her verse. “You’re undressing that man with your eyes!”

  That man is my fine ass baby's daddy, for your information! she pondered, erotic thoughts running through her mind.

  “And…?” Janae challenged, slowly rolling her neck to face her friend’s direction.

  “And…objectifying is not nice,” she kidded, playfully wagging her forefinger.

  “Whatever, Erika. It may not be, but when the specimen is as fine as he is, ask me how many fucks I give about what’s nice and what’s not!”

  “Ooh wee, you love you some white meat, huh?!

  “Fuck you!” Janae laughed. “I run an equal opportunity playpen thank you very much!”

  “Oh, that’s right…you just have babies by ‘em!”

  “Whatever!” Janae exclaimed, sticking her tongue out at her friend. “You sound crazy!”

  “Well, all I know is you’re gonna get yourself in some trouble tonight,” Erika started, before she realized her own statement. “Oh, how soon I forget! That’s what you came for!”

  “Exactly!” Janae exclaimed, raising her glass in a cheer.

  “Well, then carry on. I’m going to mingle a bit in this club filled with mens!”

  “What the hell is mens?! Girl, you have issues!”

  After her friend took for other parts, Janae refocused her attention on the view that had caught her eye. Beautiful. She hadn’t yet settled on what she was going to do, but she had decided that it would be something spontaneous. She hadn’t done that in—well, forever. That needed to change. Problem was, she didn’t know if dashing into a scenario she had only pictured in her mind, would lead to promise or doom. But then again, it wasn’t necessarily promise that she was looking for.

  Damn, Rush…she contemplated. You still got it, boy. He had her full attention. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been the subject for plenty of her fantasizing episodes back in the day. It was just unfortunate that she’d only had the pleasure of him once. And he had it going on, just as she thought he would. No flashbacks, she told h
erself. But she couldn’t help it. That wild ass night, where he’d spent hours between her legs, fucking her until she couldn’t breathe. Her hope for tonight was a repeat performance. You summoned me, and now I’m here. What you gonna do with me? Janae was in lust mode, big time. The dark hair, the dark eyebrows. Sexy. And he had the eyes and lashes to match. Tantalizing. And the physique. Oh, but yes. Janae shifted in her seat. That man’s entire form had her attention. The arms, the thighs, and that pierce in his eyes. Yummy. The more she stared, the more her appetite intensified.

  “Miss, would you like another drink?” the cute, twenty-something server asked her, shaking her from her reverie.

  “Yes, I’ll take one more before I close off the evening. I’d like to have a Patrón pineapple cocktail. Hopefully, the bartender knows how to make it,” she smiled.

  “Oh, our bartender is the best!” the server excitedly exclaimed. “I’m sure she can whip it up perfectly for you.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll be waiting.”

  While she waited for her drink, Janae looked across the room to ensure that her mark was still firmly planted. She was sure that once her drink had been devoured, the rest of the courage she needed in order to proceed would be strictly enforced. She was planning a night to remember.

  About twenty minutes later, the server returned with her cocktail. “Hold on…” she instructed, signaling with a perfectly manicured finger. “Let me make sure it’s the way I like it.”

  “Okay, no worries.” He smiled with pride as he watched her. It was as though the accolades would be for him if she did approve of the taste.

  She brought the glass to her lips and turned it up to take a sip. She squinted, and smacked her lips together before diving in for another sip. After a slight pause, she nodded her head in approval. “It’s good. She shorted me just a little on the pineapple Vodka, but it’s tasty. Please give her my compliments.”

  “I certainly will,” the server said, before scurrying off.

  While she downed the rest of her drink, Janae took in more of the sights and the music that had now rotated to Just Lose It by Eminem.