“What the hell?” He jumped out of the bed and switched on the light. A blonde white woman and a black woman were in the king-size bed with him and Karen, and they were both nude.
They looked familiar, but he couldn’t place them at all.
Karen sat up rubbing her eyes and looking about as perplexed as he felt. She stared at the two naked women, and her eyes suddenly popped wide open.
The two women were lounging on his bed.
Karen jumped out of the bed, pulling the comforter with her and wrapping it around her. She shot him an accusing look, and he felt as if someone had taken a knife to his soul.
“Hey, D-Roc, when you invited us to join you and your little plaything, we didn’t know you would get started without us, sugar.” The blonde crawled out of the bed and over to him. She inched up his leg, and he shook her off.
“So, we decided we’d just join in. Thanks for the keys. We let ourselves in just like you told us. And we even remembered the alarm code this time, although you didn’t have it on.” The black woman stretched out on the bed and spread her legs.
“I didn’t give you keys to my place! I don’t even know who the hell you are. But I know one thing. You’re going to get the hell out of here. Now! Get the hell out!” Darius didn’t know if he should call the cops, drag them out himself or what.
Karen was glaring at him. “They’re your fans from the restaurant the other night, Darius! Don’t you remember giving them your autograph and taking a picture with them?” Her voice sounded eerily calm, too damn calm.
He had a feeling he was losing her before he ever really had her. He couldn’t go out like that. He just couldn’t.
“See there, sugar, your plaything remembers us even though you’re playing hard to get.” The blonde started inching up his leg again, and he shook her off once more.
He walked over to Karen.
The black one gave him a taunting look. “He wasn’t playing hard to get when he gave us his phone number with his autograph. He wasn’t playing hard to get when we had a threesome that very night. Oh, he played a little hard to get in the club the next night.” She stared Karen in the eye. “But he didn’t seem to be playing hard to get when he invited us over for a foursome with his plaything.”
Karen’s mouth fell open, and she backed away from him, shaking her head. “I trusted you.” Her lip quivered, and his heart broke in two. Her eyes narrowed, and she lifted her chin slightly. He could tell that she was physically shoring up her defenses.
Was this someone’s idea of a joke? If so, it wasn’t funny to him. Someone was screwing with his life, and he didn’t find anything funny about it.
The hurt in Karen’s voice and in her eyes felt like a thousand tiny cuts on his most vital organs. It felt like someone had ripped his soul from his body and burned it.
Karen was gritting her teeth together so tightly that she was almost afraid they would crack under the strain. It was all she could do not to break down crying right there, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. Those hoochie mamas weren’t worth the tears, but Darius… Darius was supposed to be her soul mate. How could she have gotten it so wrong? And how could she have let him get her so open that she forgot to guard her heart?
She felt a lump growing in her chest, and soon she could feel it in her gut and throat. The only reason Darius was able to get her to open up to him so quickly and so completely was because he was the other half of her. She knew that, and she didn’t doubt that. Unfortunately, that knowledge made his betrayal all the more heartbreaking. He was the only man who had the power to hurt her like this, and he was the one man who was never supposed to…
She took another deep breath, trying to calm herself and beat back the pain. It wasn’t working, and she was really scared that she might lose it in front of them. She couldn’t do that. She had to keep it together. She looked at Darius, even though it hurt to do so. He seemed like he was shocked. But she reminded herself that he was an actor. He could probably act shocked as easily as he could act like he was a good guy.
“Karen, these tramps are lying. I would never do that to you. I would never disrespect you like that.” He reached for her, and she moved out of his grasp.
She couldn’t let him touch her—not yet, not until she figured out what was really going on. She wanted to believe that he wouldn’t play her like this. But these were the same women from the restaurant, the same women she saw in the club the other night. She wanted to believe Darius, but could she really?
“Oh, now we’re lying, huh, sugar? You weren’t calling us liars Tuesday night.” The blonde stood up, shaking her big teased-out hair.
“No. Tuesday night he wanted to spank it, didn’t you, daddy?” The black one got up and stood by the blonde, who bent over and shook her behind. The black one slapped the blonde on the behind.
“Ooooo, it’s yours, daddy.” Both women started giggling.
A sharp pain darted through Karen’s heart. The memory of the playful spanking Darius gave her earlier flashed in her mind. Karen took a calming breath and then another. She turned from the women and glared at Darius. Clearly the man liked to get his spank on with all kinds of women. She shook her head and took another breath. It hurt. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to stand there and feel anything at all. She had to get out of there. Whether she did it with dignity or not was another question altogether. She cut Darius what she hoped was an evil look. She had to get out of there. When she realized that they had disrobed in the living room and not the bedroom, she pulled herself together and left the room.
It was hard to walk and hold on to the comforter at the same time, but she managed until she heard Darius behind her. Why didn’t he just stay back there with the floozies? She sped up her walk and then took off into a run. She just didn’t want to be around him anymore. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to hold it all in.
Darius ran after her because he knew what she was thinking, especially after the way they had just made love. He’d gotten a little freaky and tapped her bottom during their lovemaking. He knew that was probably the nail in the coffin for her, the ultimate proof.
She was trying to run with the comforter wrapped around her, and he was afraid she might hurt herself. She was already hurting enough. She was doing a great job of holding it in and keeping her poise, but he could feel her hurt in his soul. She didn’t need to add physical injuries to the mix.
He felt like his entire world was falling down around him. He barely remembered signing autographs for those women, and he darn sure never had a threesome with them. He never gave them keys to his place or his security code either.
Only two other people had keys to his place and the code to his security system: his aunt and his grandmother. He knew that neither of them would give these tramps the time of day, let alone his security code and the keys to his place. So how the hell did they get in there? And how did they make it past the doorman? Heads were going to roll once he figured everything out. That was for sure.
He caught up to Karen just as her feet got tangled in the comforter and she started to fall. All he could see was the pointed corner of his chrome dining table in front of her as he reached out and grabbed her. He pulled her to him and held her tight.
He didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if she had hit her head on the corner of that table. It could have killed her!
He was getting rid of the damn thing as soon as possible.
“Let go of me, Darius. Let go of me!” She pushed him away as hard as she could. But he continued to hold her tight.
She pounded on him with her fists until she was spent. But he refused to let her go. He just couldn’t let her go.
She dropped her head onto his chest, and he could feel her holding everything in. It broke his heart. If he were stronger, he’d just let her go. But he couldn’t.
The two tramps had gotten dressed and walked out of the bedroom.
“I guess the party is really over, huh, sugar? Oh, well…you w
in some, you lose some.” The blonde winked at him.
“You just lost one!” The black one said with a sneer. “See ya, sucker.” She threw what looked like a copy of his keys at him. “Oh, and if you really don’t want us coming back around you should change the security code you gave us and let Sam the doorman know.” She smirked.
He felt Karen’s body jolt in his arms, and she took a deep breath. He continued to hold her tight.
“You two skanks better hope and pray I never see you again. Because I swear…” If he wasn’t literally trying to hold on to Karen, he didn’t trust what he would have done to those women.
His grandmother raised him not to hit women, and he would never dream of doing so. But those lying tramps brought out harsh feelings in him.
“Whatever, sucker!” the black one shouted.
“Toodles, sugar.” The blonde smiled and winked again. And they left, slamming the door behind them.
“Those women were lying, Karen. You’ve gotta believe me.” He rubbed her back.
She looked up at him and stared at him for several minutes. He hoped like hell she was trying to decide if she could believe him. He watched her struggle. He felt like he could feel her inner turmoil. When the resigned expression covered her face and she blinked back the wetness that started to pool in her eyes, he knew she had made her decision.
“Let me go, Darius. I need to get dressed and get out of here. I can’t do this now. I can’t.”
He let her go. Their clothes were all over the loft from the door to the leather sectional. He got dressed and she got dressed. He dreaded where he knew things were going.
How did he find his soul mate, fall in love and lose her in less than a week? That had to be some all-time record.
Once she was fully dressed, she went to the door. He ran after her and grabbed her arm. “I’ll take you home, Karen. It’s late. Please…just let me take you home.” He needed more time with her. He needed to be able to convince her that this was all a setup.
“I don’t want to be around you right now, Darius.” She wouldn’t even look at him.
It wasn’t right.
“I just need to be sure you make it home safe. It would kill me if something happened to you.”
She glared at him then.
He didn’t see hatred in her eyes. No, hatred he probably could have dealt with. What he saw was such a complete and total lack of trust and overwhelming disappointment. It shattered him just to know what little faith she had in him.
“Fine. You want to take me home? Fine. The sooner I get away from you the better.”
He followed her out and prayed for some kind of divine intervention. He had to find a way to prove to her that he’d been set up. Because he just could not lose her.
She looked out the window the entire ride from his place to hers and didn’t say a word. He begged and pleaded and tried his best to convince her that he didn’t do the things those women said. But she refused to respond.
As soon as they pulled up to her building, she opened the door. Before she got out, she turned to him. Her stare was ice-cold, and the chill in her voice froze him out so thoroughly and completely that he felt it all around his heart. “If you have any decency in you at all, which I highly doubt you do, you would not come around my center or me ever again. Just please stay away from me, Darius. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
She calmly closed the car door and walked away. He thought about following her but decided that she needed time. He needed to go and see one of the two people who had spare keys to his place and knew his security codes. Only his grandmother and his aunt had access to that information for emergency purposes. And he knew his grandmother didn’t have a thing to do with what just went down. That meant Janice had a lot of explaining to do.
Karen trudged the stairs to her apartment as if she were a zombie. So many thoughts were fighting for time in her head. Everything was scrambled as she tried to process all that had happened to her since getting the journal three weeks ago and meeting Darius this week.
It must have all been some kind of sick joke. But how? And why? Why would someone purposely make her believe she’d found her soul mate only to have him turn out to be her absolute worst nightmare?
The tears she had taken such care at holding back when she was at Darius’s place had started to fall, and the wetness on her face angered her to no end. The fact that she was actually shedding tears over this man that she’d known barely a week disgusted her.
And her heart was broken. That was the worst of it—the worst part of it all.
She walked up to her door and found Saul sitting in the doorway on the floor.
She frowned. He was the last person she wanted to see at that moment. Hadn’t she just gone on and on earlier today about Darius being the one. And Saul had said he hoped Darius didn’t play her.
That was the thing that made her want to ball up like a baby—the fact that she knew deep in her heart that the only way Darius could have hurt her the way he did was if she had truly believed he was the other part of her soul. And that was what hurt most of all.
Saul jumped up when she approached the door. “Oh, Queen, it’s you. You startled me.”
“Well, you are in my doorway, aren’t you? What do you want, anyway?”
Saul stood up with the same big, black duffel bag he had from college on his shoulder. Oddly, she marveled how he always managed to travel so light. It was the last thing that should have been taking space in her mind, but there it was. Maybe she was going crazy after all?
“I was hoping that you’d take pity on an old friend who just got back into town and hasn’t found a place yet. You know how strained things are with my peoples. And I didn’t want to stir up hope in any of the exes. So, although I wasn’t expecting you to be all in love when I got here, I remember your sofa was really comfortable. I hope your man won’t mind if I crash at your place tonight.” He gave her a hopeful look and then concern crossed his face.
“Forgive me for saying this, but you look horrible, Queen. What the hell happened? Better yet, where the hell is he? I’ll find him and kick his ass.” He dropped his duffel bag and wrapped her in his arms.
She couldn’t hold it in any longer. She couldn’t be strong any longer. Her heart was broken, and she couldn’t keep pretending that it wasn’t. She started crying, stilted sniffles at first and then full-on sobs. Once she got started, she didn’t think she would be able to stop.
And there it was, the breakdown, the expected response for everything she had just gone through. Maybe she wasn’t crazy after all? Maybe she was just incredibly unlucky?
Saul shushed her and held her and promised to make everything better. Somehow he got her keys and managed to get the two of them into her apartment and got her settled on the couch while he made some tea.
Through it all, she sobbed and told him everything that had happened that night just before her life had gone to hell. He listened like a good friend: with the proper amount of outrage and disdain. He wasn’t her mother or Amina or any of her girlfriends, but he was there, and he wasn’t a bad substitute.
When she finally finished crying, he just held her.
Chapter 16
Darius called in the troops, and his entourage was en route, meeting him at his grandmother’s place. He didn’t think he would need them to question his aunt, but something in his gut told him he would need them before the night was over. Three of the guys were his bodyguards and had been former cops. Some of the others were on his payroll for other things. But some of the men who made a career of hanging out with him were just his ride-or-die homeboys.
If nothing else, seeing a large group of black men who clearly had his back was an intimidation factor. People seemed to talk more when they were scared something was about to jump off. If he needed them tonight once he found out more about those tramps who set him up, they’d be there.
When Darius pulled up to his grandmother’s house, he noticed a strange car in the
driveway. He pulled up just in time to see the blonde and the sister walking to the car, laughing and counting money.
His heart dropped because he didn’t want to think that his aunt Janice had been the one to play him like that. But it had to have been her. The proof was getting in the car and driving away. He called his boys, and luckily they were right around the corner. He gave them the description of the car, and they agreed to follow them and catch them. One way or the other, he was going to get answers tonight. If his aunt wouldn’t talk to him then he’d make those tramps talk and give up why his aunt had played him like that.
Once his cell phone rang and his boys told him they had the women in sight and would have them back at his grandmother’s place shortly, he got out of his car and went inside the house to confront Janice.
When he got inside, he was surprised to see his grandmother up and in the kitchen. It was close to midnight. She was hardly ever up that late, and yet there she was in the kitchen with a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and a glass. He noticed two other glasses at the table with lipstick prints on them.
Had Janice just been in there toasting to their success with those women? Had they woken his grandmother up and left this mess for her to clean up?
“Grandma, what’re you doing up at this hour of the night? Where’s Janice?”
She jumped up, clutched her chest and knocked over her chair as well as the bottle of Johnny Walker Black. “My goodness, Darius. What are you doing sneaking up on your poor old grandmother at this hour of the night? You almost gave me a heart attack.” She patted her chest, and her eyes darted around. “When did you get here?”
“I just got here a couple of seconds ago. I need to talk to aunt Janice.”
His grandmother walked over and gave him a hug. “It’s good to see you, son. Janice isn’t here, though. She’s out with some ole man she met online in some chat room or some such foolishness. I told her she shouldn’t be just meeting men God knows where. She needs to come to church. But you know how Janice is. Her head is as hard as a rock—always has been. What do you want to talk to your aunt about? Is it Frankie? You look horrible. Are you still stressing about Frankie? Lord, I told that boy to stay out of them streets. Bad people in them streets waiting to catch you slipping.” His grandmother was fluttering around and talking a mile a minute. She seemed nervous.
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