by B. M. Hardin
Asshole.
I could tell that Drake wanted to get intimate, and not just have sex, but make love.
But I wasn’t exactly sure if that was possible unless both people were truly, and unconditionally, in love with each other.
And I was convinced that Drake’s love was split up in between two women, and that just wouldn’t do.
“You have to choose Dray,” I said.
“I know. I choose you,” he said and kissed me again.
Yeah, I’ve heard that before.
~***~
“I know you see me watching you,” Kane smiled.
Boy was I watching him too.
He looked so good to me, but I had to keep my cool.
But the truth was I don’t think that I’d ever been so intrigued or in awe of anyone before in my entire life.
Not even Drake.
“Whatever. Go on somewhere before you get yourself in trouble.”
“I like trouble. Especially when it looks and walks like you. I’m going to get you, watch,” he said.
I smiled.
He was definitely flirting, which he had been doing a lot of lately.
I playfully waved him off.
“You’re beautiful you know that right. Just in case no one told you that today,” Kane said.
I shook my head and turned around, but just as I did, I thought of a question.
“By the way, I have been meaning to ask you, how old are you anyway? Twenty-one?”
“No. Twenty-five.”
Damn, he was older than I thought he was.
But not old enough.
“Well, you should keep your eyes to yourself. You wouldn’t know what to do with a grown woman,” I laughed.
“Oh trust me, I would,” Kane commented and walked out of the building and I headed for the elevator.
We’d talked occasionally, a few times.
Once we’d chatted for an hour or so, just to become a little more acquainted.
There was definitely a vibe there, but I often tried to ignore it because I loved Dray; and not to mention Kane’s age and that I’d previously screwed his brother.
He’d told me more about Mario and how everyone in his family had been scared to death of him.
He’d said that he’d disrespected their mother and terrorized him because he wasn’t tough enough, at least not to his standards anyway.
He’d also said that he had set their own father up to be caught by the FEDS and had him sent away and locked up on drug and dirty weapons charges for life.
Who would do something like that to their own father?
Kane definitely showed resentment towards Mario, if for nothing else, strictly because he’d taken his father away from him.
Kane admitted that though the family didn’t want to see Mario dead, they were much better off without him.
Mario had his safe at his mother’s house, and Kane explained that it had more than enough money in it to take care of their family for a very long time, but even so, they’d decided to invest.
His family now had their own restaurant, which he ran full-time, and he was the actual face of it and known as its owner.
He actually offered me a job, after I’d expressed to him how hard it was for me to find one considering my past record, but how crazy would it have been to accept it?
Just because he didn’t seem to have any hard feelings towards me, he had no idea what the rest of his family felt and I was more than sure that they wouldn’t want to do any favors for the woman accused of murdering their loved one.
But Kane definitely seemed to have a good head on his shoulders, and I admired his level of professionalism at his age.
The family’s restaurant was very successful, and I could tell that he had been pushed to grow up before his time.
He talked like a boss.
He looked like a boss.
Even the way he walked was like a boss, and he definitely had my attention.
I knew I couldn’t cross any lines with him, but there was nothing wrong with looking.
I couldn’t help but watch him, and he was definitely always watching me.
We grew friendlier and more comfortable with each other every day, but I kept my distance.
At least I tried to.
I already had enough going on and adding to my problems wasn’t such a good idea.
Drake, as far as I knew, was still married and I was all out of patience.
Despite his little discovery of the baby not being his and all, he was still with her, so all that crap that he had said meant nothing.
And therefore, I was still sticking to my plans.
I had been looking for a job non-stop these days.
I figured if I made some kind of money, I would feel more independent, and who knows, I just might actually grow some balls and leave Drake’s ass alone.
And with Kane’s good-looking ass all in my view, and in my ear, Drake had better start paying attention.
That’s all I’m saying.
I changed my mind about heading up to the condo and turned around and headed back out the door instead.
It was cool, and the breeze seemed to breathe life into me.
It felt so good.
And for once, I felt good.
Despite some of my issues, I really felt good inside.
“Ay,” a voice said.
Kane was looking out the window of his town car as the driver prepared to drive off.
“Come with me. Let me take you shopping or to the spa or something. Let me put a smile on your face. Let me brighten up your day. You’re the type of woman that I want to have you by my side just to show you off,” he said.
I shook my head and smiled.
“Okay. Maybe next time beautiful. I’m going to make you mine, watch and see. George, let’s go,” Kane said and his driver pulled off from the curb.
That guy was always saying something flattering.
My feelings were conflicted.
It felt good to hear all of the right things, but they were coming from the wrong person.
And other than that considering who he was, I didn’t know if I could take him serious.
But he always said the right things.
It was nice to hear him say that he wanted to take me out and be seen with me.
Those words meant more to me then he would ever know.
I walked on and headed towards the parking lot, which then I walked by my parked car and just decided to take a stroll.
Life can have so many things coming at you, all at once, that you forget to enjoy the simple things.
I remembered being in prison and all I wanted to do was take a walk.
All I wanted was to walk until I got tired, enjoying nature or breathing in the fresh air, without someone telling me what to do and how far I could go.
You definitely learn to appreciate freedom.
But since I’d been home, I have felt so bound.
And it was all because of Drake.
I figured that it was about time that I start enjoying my life and I knew just what I had to do first.
It was time to cut Drake off.
I thought about Dray and the abortion I’d had years ago.
We’d known that things could go bad with the whole plan of killing Mario, and we knew that if I took the fall, that our baby would be left without a mother.
I knew that the baby was Drake’s because I’d never been with Mario without protection.
I’d wanted the baby so bad, but I had to choose.
If I stayed pregnant, there was no way that I could have taken the rap for Dray, and Mario surely would have followed through with his plans to have him robbed and killed.
So as always, I chose Dray.
But he’d vowed to me that day as he held my hand as I laid there and let them suck the life out of me, literally, he’d promised me that once it was all over with, that he was going to give me as many babies as I wanted.
He’d held me all
night that night and even went over baby names with me as though he was serious about what would be in our future.
But nothing he’d ever told me had come true and enough was enough.
I walked for a while longer and then I turned around.
It was getting late in the evening and I was sure that Drake was planning to stop by after he left the office.
Maybe I should keep walking and keep him waiting.
Maybe I should stay gone until I was sure that he had to head home to his wife.
Suddenly, a car pulled up beside of me.
I didn’t recognize the car, and once she rolled down the window, hell I barely even recognized her.
It was one of my sisters.
Legacy…but we all called her Lee Lee.
I hadn’t seen her in person, not even once, in over six years.
She’d abandoned me just like all of the others had which surprised me because she and I had actually been the closest.
But I guess she’d forgotten that.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her until that very moment.
I missed everything about her. She was the life of the party and the type of person that everybody wanted to be around. She could always make you smile and she was one heck of a good listener.
We used to share everything too.
She was the first person I told about Drake.
She’d known only minutes after I’d lost my virginity to him.
She was the first one that I’d told when I figured out that I was madly in love with him.
She knew everything.
Every one of my secrets.
And I knew hers too.
“I called you.”
“No you didn’t. You must have the wrong number. And I didn’t have yours and no one would give it to me because they didn’t want me to tell you. I have been looking for you everywhere. I’ve been riding around all over the city for three days now, just hoping to spot you or Drake for that matter. I knew that if anyone knew where you were, he would. I hadn’t seen him in years, so maybe I saw him and didn’t know it was him. But I need to tell you something. Mama died.”
What?
When?
How?
I had just seen her not too long ago.
She’d looked just fine to me.
The news hit me like a tidal wave and I struggled to keep my balance.
Whether she had turned her back on me or not, she was still my Mama.
She was the only one that I had been given.
And now she was gone.
And I hadn’t been able to say goodbye.
My childhood was absolutely fabulous.
We didn’t want for anything and the most important things that we needed, were right there inside of our home.
Our parents had been married for years, both educated, and both dedicated to making sure that we saw the value in education, learned responsibility and overall had good, solid morals.
I was once their pride and joy, but I’d turned into their biggest disappointment.
I was smart.
I was ambitious.
And they were all counting on me, rooting for me to make it.
And I’d let them down.
At first, they hadn’t had a problem with Drake.
We’d known him since we were younger and my parents had been fond of his.
He hadn’t always been trouble.
He was a high school graduate, and initially started college with me, but I guess he figured that it wasn’t “cool” enough for him and dropped out after the first semester.
He started hanging with the wrong crowd, and everything just went downhill from there.
When he first started to get into trouble, my mother sat with me for hours, just to talk to me and see where my head was.
She knew that I loved him, but she was confident that the things that she’d taught me would overpower my love for him.
But they didn’t.
I loved him.
And I would do whatever I had to do to be with him.
If that meant taking bill money to get him out of jail, or giving him my last and then borrowing from my parents, I did it.
If it meant turning my back on everyone I loved just to have his, I did it.
I just always did it.
But taking the murder rap for him pushed Mama’s last button.
Mama knew without a shout of a doubt that I was innocent, and that I was covering for Drake.
She’d tried to tell the police but they wouldn’t listen because they had my confession.
But Mama made sure that I knew that if I did it, she was washing her hands with me.
And that’s exactly what she did.
And she’d convinced everyone else to be done with me too.
My daddy, my siblings, my grandparents and every other close relative I had wrote me off and never spoke to me again after Mama told them what I was doing.
Talk about tough love.
“Come on, get it. The funeral is starting any minute now,” my sister Lee Lee said.
No one wanted to tell me that my own Mama had died?
Did they really hate me that much?
Not even Daddy felt the need to reach out to me and tell me. Sure, he did anything Mama told him to do; including disowning me. But with her dead, he could have at least called to tell me.
I knew that he knew the number to reach me.
But he hadn’t even tried.
“How did she die?”
“A heart attack. This was her second one. Her first was the day after you had been sent to prison.”
Hearing those made me feel even worse.
I felt like a ton of bricks had just fallen from the sky and crushed my body and my soul.
“Thank you Lee Lee. Thank you.”
I backed away from her car and turned away from her.
I headed back towards the condos, and after a while, Lee Lee sped past me.
I wasn’t going to a funeral where I wasn’t wanted; but oh how I wanted to.
Oh Mama.
I cried and cried, and my vision became blurred.
The last time I’d seen her face, I’d saw nothing but hate in her eyes, but no matter what, I loved my Mama.
And though she’d pissed me off the last time that I saw her and I’d said that I was through, in my heart I’d wanted to mend our broken relationship one day, but now I wouldn’t get the chance to.
I became hot and I walked faster trying to get to the building as fast as I could.
My mind was racing, my head was spinning and my heart was beating faster than ever before.
In some way, was I part of the cause of her heart troubles?
Was I really that big of a heartache or disappointment?
She’d had one the day after I’d gone to prison, so apparently I was.
I’d given my Mama a heart attack and who was to say that her thoughts or disappointment of me wasn’t the cause of the one that had killed her.
Just as I reached for the main entrance door and grabbed the handle, my body gave up on me and I started to collapse, but someone caught me.
Drake.
“Baby I got you.”
Yeah…that’s what he always said.
********************************
Chapter SIX
“Please stay,” I begged Dray, although I already knew that he had to go.
I still didn’t understand why he was still with his wife after finding out that the baby wasn’t his, but I was done asking questions.
Maybe that’s why she hadn’t made too much of a fuss on the day that I’d confronted Drake at their house; although she had been snappy at the hospital and had flipped out when she’d found out that Dray had me living at her house and he was still seeing me.
Still, she didn’t seem as mad as she probably should have been. She wasn’t nowhere near as mad as I would have been if the show was on the other foot.
She’d known that she had
her own secrets too.
But something still didn’t seem right.
There was no telling what those two really had going on or what they were really up to.
“It won’t be long. I promise.”
Drake got dressed and headed out the door.
He’d been staying with me all day for the past week or so since I’d found out the news about Mama.
He hadn’t been to work or anything.
He’d stayed right there by my side.
But when night came, he still had to go home to his wife.
I’ll admit that Drake was one hell of a good friend.
He always had been.
But when it came to him being a good man…well, that was a different story.
Since Mama died, I had been feeling all kinds of ways.
For the first time, though she’d said it to me plenty, I actually did feel like the disappointment that she’d said that I was.
I felt like a complete failure.
I cried constantly and it was as though the heartache from it all had made me realize just how important it was to change my life and my situation; even if that meant losing or cutting off the one person that I still somewhat had in my corner.
Drake.
I didn’t blame him for the fact that my whole family hated me.
I blamed myself.
To follow him, to stand by him, and to do what I had done for him was my choice.
I had made those decisions.
But the decisions that I had made for him should have earned me nothing but his love, loyalty and his respect.
Until his dying day.
And if he couldn’t give me that then I didn’t want anything else.
I had been thinking about it constantly and I was going to give him an ultimatum, soon.
If he didn’t fix it, he was going to lose me.
I loved him too much to continue to let him use me.
I just couldn’t do it anymore.
Drake sent me a text once he was home, letting me know that he was there, but I pretended to be asleep and didn’t respond.
There was a reason why he was still with her.
I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was a reason behind Drake taking his time with getting a divorce.
And the baby wasn’t his?
Oh hell yeah, something else was up, but I knew that he would never tell me.
Maybe it wasn’t just about a financial reason.