“Listen, Rush. I was only going off of what I thought to be the truth. The moment that your father’s words sank in, my only option and my only interest was to be that little girl’s mother. Nothing else mattered. And you wanna know something else? The more your father talked that day, the happier I was.”
“Happy? About what?” I asked, angrily, reclaiming my seat.
“I knew that once he finished stating his case that he would never be a person I would even consider introducing my baby to. Hell fuckin’ no,” she spat. “I was glad he revealed his true colors to me. There’s no way I could ever expose Michaela to a person like that. Unfortunately, she’ll deal with enough of it as she grows. It sure as fuck doesn’t need to be within her own so-called family.”
Before I knew it I spat, “But you could take his money though? How the fuck is what you did, any better than what he did? Tell me that!”
“For your information, I’ve only ever, in nine years bought a single item with that money—my house. There’s still plenty of it left!” she huffed. “But I figured it was the least y’all could pay for robbing my daughter of knowing her father…her family! Her tainted ass family! My baby doesn’t fit with shit like that, and she deserved to be loved by a good family of muthafuckas. Not ones hiding behind who the fuck they really are!”
“Yeah, that shit is unacceptable. I already took steps to distance myself from the bullshit and the deceit. I could dwell on his ass for years to come, but at this moment, in this time, I just want the opportunity to know my daughter. I’m not interested in hearing about what Lance said anymore. I’m really not. The fact of the matter is I’m attracted to who I’m attracted to—black, white, brown or whatever. You heard me call your mother, Mom, because I saw her like the mother I didn’t have. I don’t need to keep throwing out examples for you! You get the point, right? I’m not one of these motherfuckers around here saying dumb shit like, ‘One of my best friends is black’. That’s not the life I live.”
She nodded slowly, in agreement, while trying to reclaim her previous calm composure.
“Right! So clearly, I’m not a fucking bigot! Never been a bigot. I am not my father! So, I should’ve never had to suffer for his ignorance. Period.”
We sat in eerie silence for the next few minutes, neither knowing what to say. Finally, Janae spoke.
“I’m sorry, Rush. I’m genuinely sorry. I can’t begin to know how you feel. All I can do is apologize for my part in all of this, and do what I can on my end to make it better. I know I can’t ask for your forgiveness just yet, but I’m hoping for redemption, at the very least.”
Hearing her apologize helped to release some of the anger I was holding on to. And the fact that she was entertaining the idea of allowing me in my daughter’s life filled me with a joy I couldn’t explain. That was really all I wanted out of this situation. I could listen to what Lance and Jamie had done until the end of time, but it wasn’t my focus. That situation had been easy enough to deal with, so it was pretty irrelevant at this point. I knew that there was work that needed to be done, and the sooner I could begin the better.
Janae rose from her seat and went to grab her purse. On the way back to the sofa, she retrieved her cell phone, and sat back down. After swiping her finger across the screen a few times, she patted the spot next to her and told me to, “Come sit here real quick. I brought something for you.”
I did as she said and made my way to where she sat. She smiled wide, and extended her arm. Once I had the device in my hand, I softened as much as I ever had in my entire life. My heart rate sped up, and my hand began to tremble. Before long, sweat had formed in my palm as I held the phone. I was nervous! I inhaled a deep breath and then blew it out before finally looking down at the screen. I actually gasped when I was met with the most stunning little golden-faced child I had ever seen. It’s her, I said, dying inside of both sadness and joy. Oh my God. Without smiling at all, and merely looking toward the lens, she was breathtaking. And not just because she was mine. Wow, mine. Can I even say that? She was…just...wow. I felt an immediate connection to her. I couldn’t break my stare. I wasn’t even sure that I blinked in the moments I held my gaze. I know that there were at least two times where the screen attempted to darken and I had to tap the edge to keep from losing sight.
“Wow…Janae.” were the only words I could manage aloud.
She had the smoothest skin I had ever seen. Its hue almost reminded me of the color of honey. She had my nose, her mother’s green, round eyes, and pouty lips. This is amazing. I created a whole life. I kept looking at her. I couldn’t help it. The hair held a deeper wave than mine, but a few shades lighter. “She’s beautiful, Janae.”
Janae released an uncomfortable chuckle. “Thank you. I think we made a stunning little girl.”
“We did,” I cosigned, slowly raising my gaze to Janae. “Exactly how old is she?”
“She was born November 1, 2005. She just turned nine.”
My first mind was to share with Janae that Alika shared the exact same birthday, but I kept that part to myself. I did, however, find it ironic though that the two girls in my life were born on the same day.
I got up and walked around the room sliding the screen to see the other images of her that were on her mother’s Instagram page. I got up because I didn’t want Janae to see that I had moisture inside my eyes. I was having a proud father moment. I was having a moment of regret for not seeing her being birthed into the world. She came into the world and didn’t see me. She’s had moments of fear and didn’t see me. She’s probably had questions and I wasn’t there to answer them. No more. I needed to be present from this day forward.
“So what’s next?” I asked slowly, in an effort to mask the tremble in my voice.
TEN
Alika
When I felt the wet kiss to the back of my neck, then smelled the Jack & Coke on his breath, I knew my baby was home.
“Hey baby,” he whispered in my ear, while planting a series of kisses along my neck and shoulders.
I had called myself trying to stay awake until he got home, but the night had gotten in the way of that. After talking to Jamie, I really had to regroup before calling Tracie back. And then once I got on the phone with her, her energy level was already through the roof after finding out that Rush was who he was. She was excited—a little bit too excited, in my opinion. But it didn’t stop me from inviting her out for a visit soon. I actually missed her and thought it would be nice for her to come to the Bay Area and hang out with me and Gigi at the club and maybe even do some spa days.
“Hey you,” I said, turning to face him and smiling. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” he responded, lying down in front of me. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m so good. Better now that you’re here,” I responded, caressing the side of his face, and down along his beard. “How was the club?”
“It was good. A good crowd. I wish you could’ve been there with me.”
“Me too. But not to worry, I’ll be brand new in another day or two. I’m at about eighty percent right now. But, you could get me to a hundred real quick though, and I know I don’t have to tell you how,” I said, reaching for the prize tucked snuggly behind his zipper.
I brought my lips to his and softly suckled on his bottom lip before prying his mouth open with my tongue. I could taste faint traces of the last drink he’d had, but that was the least of my concern, as I continued to caress him to an erection. When his member was where I wanted it, I broke from our kiss. “See ya in a bit,” I informed him, as I prepared to slide down for some meat time. However, just as I was about to make my journey, Rush stopped everything.
“Oooh, baby. Damn…” he managed through quickened breaths. “I can’t even believe I’m interrupting this!” he groaned. “As baaad as I want to be in your mouth right now, can we please talk for just a minute?”
“Uh-oh,” I grimaced, laying back onto my pillow and looking up at the ceiling. “
What’s happened?”
I had no idea what was to come, but wanting to talk at three in the morning, told me that it was something big. I knew when Rush grabbed the remote for the light dimmer that he really needed to talk. After he had adjusted the lighting, he removed all his restrictions and crawled beneath the sheets with me.
“Hey,” he said, using his forefinger to turn my cheek toward him. However, I was insistent on keeping my face positioned exactly as it was. “Come on, babe. Look at me.”
“I don’t know, Rush. What are you about to say? I’m kinda nervous.”
For as long as I had been with this man, interrupting sex, particularly a blow job, was not something that ever happened. It seemed like lately our life was being populated with large, disruptive moments. I couldn’t think of a single thing that could have stopped what I had planned, but I was about to find out.
“You don’t need to be nervous. I just want to tell you something. Rather I need to tell you something.”
“Rush, you haven’t slept with somebody else, have you?” I reluctantly asked. “Just tell me.”
“Is that what you think? Hell no, baby,” he reassured. “You’re all I need—in every way. I just want to make sure that there’s never anything that we keep from each other. That’s all. I promise. You gonna turn and look at me now?”
I obliged, turning toward him and comfortably situating myself on my left side. “Okay, go. I’m ready.”
“Janae showed up at Temptation tonight.”
Boom!
Boom!
That’s what it sounded like when the words left his mouth. Like there were bombs dropping. I knew the day would come, but why did it have to be during a time I wasn’t there?
“We talked for a few hours.”
Boom!
Boom!
Now I was shaking on the inside. Shaking in fear of what it all meant for us.
Shit!
“I got to see pictures of Hunter…I mean, Michaela,” he corrected, with a smile. “Janae said that’s what she likes to go by. Man, Alika,” he sighed. “She’s beautiful. I mean, really beautiful,” he repeated. “I can’t wait to meet her. I can’t wait to look into her eyes and study her mannerisms and all that.”
“That’s great, Rush. I’m very happy for you, baby. I know it’s been weighing heavily on your heart. When do you get to meet her?”
“Janae’s gonna bring her by on Monday. Depending on how well that goes, she’ll be around for the rest of the week as well.”
Oh, how badly I wanted to ask if that meant that her mother would be sticking around too, but I already knew the answer to that question. Any good mother would accompany her child to a first-time meeting with anybody. So, I just needed to brace myself. Because if it worked out like Rush said, she would more than likely be here for the week as well.
Oh boy…
“So, they live locally?”
“No, they actually moved to Southern California about five years ago. She flew out after she talked to Jacob. Apparently, she came by Temptation while we were out of town and then came back last night. She said she wanted to talk and get a feel for things before she brought Michaela out.”
“I think that was best,” was really all I could say. I was trying to allow the shock to wear off. I knew it would hit full on when the time came to actually see the baby…and her mother, I just didn’t know how I would feel when it did.
“Yeah, me too. I’m anxious to see just how curvy the road ahead is. I mean, it’s a lot of years, you know?” he pondered.
“Yeah, baby. But you shouldn’t worry too much. That little girl has a wonderful daddy. I think she’ll take to you in no time at all.”
Rush was glowing. I could see it even in the dimness of the light. He was ecstatic, and he had every right to be. I just needed to catch up to how he was feeling, and I definitely knew that I would. I just had to see where I would fit into the grand scheme of things.
I moved as close to Rush as I could and lay my head across his chest, where I could feel his heartbeat. I placed my leg across his, and snuggled against the warmth emitting from his body. My eyes held just a tad bit of water in them, but no tears dropped. It seemed as though Rush sensed something, because he wrapped his arms around me. As soon as he did, everything inside me calmed down, and I knew that no matter what kind of tango my nerves were doing, that everything would be alright.
ELEVEN
Offices of Illusion, Downtown San Francisco
Monday morning, November 10, 2014
T. McKinney had just plopped down into his office chair. If he didn’t like gossip so much, he would have long ago left his position as contributing editor for the popular sports blog. He wanted to do way bigger things with his life like move to New York or Los Angeles and meet a pretty boy like himself and sit cute by the pool all day long. He looked into the mirror affixed to the side of his large screen monitor, into blue eyes, courtesy of his optometrist, and his naturally curly sandy brown taper. He turned his head side to side to see as much of his profile on either side and smiled at his approval. I’m too pretty for this bullshit, he thought to himself. I need to be somewhere in front of the camera, hunny! Yasss! All fuckin’ 6’2” of me and my fineness! Givin’ the scoop firsthand, live and in living color!
Snap out of it, girl and get to work, he convinced himself.
While his computer loaded, T scrolled his Facebook timeline just to see what the basic people were up to. He was something of a celebrity on Facebook and Twitter. Shit, LinkedIn and Instagram too. Everybody and their mama’s wanted to be his friend because they knew he had the juice on just about every athlete from San Francisco to Florida and even abroad. They hung onto his every word. He actually had a small six-figure stash in a separate bank account for the pieces of dirt that he’d been paid to not print. That’s how in-the-know he was. So as much as he complained that he wished he was somewhere else, he’d never leave. Well, maybe to take a better offer. But not just leave. No, not with the power he held.
After he had clicked the like button on a few photos, and added a few one-liner responses, he placed his phone back onto this desktop and cranked up Pandora to his Marsha Ambrosius’ station, snapped his fingers and rolled his neck, and sang the lyrics to Late Nights &Early Mornings:
♫
Hop up out the bed … Take a shower then get dressed … Gotta go to work but I wanna lay with you instead, baby … Softly kiss you there, make you say Ooooh yeeeaahhh … I’ll be coming back to you boy you just tell me when, ooh baby …
♫
He clicked on his Microsoft Outlook icon and watched his email load, and continued happily singing.
♫
Gonna be a late night, early morning when I get you home … Gonna give you good love, give you what you want and … Gonna do it all—
♫
“Awww, shit!” he exclaimed, in the middle of his lyrics. “Helll naww!”
As soon as his screen showed up, two images appeared in the preview pane and his interest was immediately piqued. He looked at the “from” field and saw that it was from some obviously generic email address, [email protected]. T shook his head side to side. Somebody was all set to throw somebody under the bus. When will these people learn about the company they keep? he questioned himself, with a smile. He knew the scenario all too well. Friend gets mad at friend and then friend goes to tabloids under an assumed name and tells all the business. Because who the hell has an email address with some damn rinkrink-rink? Yeah, okay. But T wouldn’t ever get tired of it because for every one of these there were many who funded his lavish lifestyle in an attempt to keep their business out of the news. He double clicked the message so that it could move from preview pane and into full view. As he read through, all he could say was, “Shit just got real.”
I have some morning tea for you, and I know you’re not the one to turn down a good story. So here goes a freebie for your nosy ass!
These two images you’re looking at
are y’alls All-American boy, Hunter Michael Cambridge, more commonly known as Rush Cambridge. The image of the beautiful little girl is his illegitimate child. Her name is Hunter Michaela Lawson, and she’s what you call a best kept secret. Now, if you notice, she doesn’t bear his last name and that’s because when she was first born, Rush’s family paid top dollar to keep her a secret. His father, the great Lance Cambridge, wanted nothing to do with a black child and so the mother, Janae Lawson, sister of former NFL star Jacob Lawson…was paid a hefty sum of money to stay away.
Let’s remember that Jacob is awaiting trial. Sip on that while I tell you the rest…
Now, sources tell me that nine years later, Rush has decided that he wants to meet this daughter that he claims to have never had knowledge of. I’m still on the fence about whether or not I believe his story, but there you have it.
I know a few people who grew up with Rush and happen to know that he used to eat and sleep at the Lawson’s house and was very good friends with the entire family. So, it’s really kinda fucked up that he fucks the sister of his once best friend and then dismisses her as though she was just some random piece of ass, I just don’t know. These rich people ain’t shit if you ask me so I don’t put this shit past anybody.
So there you have it. I’m sure you can blow the lid off this piece of info. If you don’t want the story, there are plenty of others who’ll run it. I just know you have the furthest reach, and that’s my interest. The world needs to know.
T stopped at the final sentence and his mouth propped open. This was tea for real! But this person is a real piece of work! Somebody was pulling out all the stops to drag this man to the most-hated side of the racist fence with the public. Shit, him and his father! Whew! This is all bad!
Rapture 2: a BWWM, Alpha Male Romance Page 7