“I’d love to come and watch.”
I felt like he was trying to push his way into our lives and I just wasn’t ready for that. I had too much going on as it was, and with the club I just didn’t want to slip up and get caught. I felt confident that once I was done with school, I would have plenty of time to maintain a relationship, but for now I just wanted to take things slow. “By the time I get done with practice, I’ve gotta get them a bite to eat and get them ready for bed.” School was out and they were spending the summer at day camp.
“Monica, I know that to be with you I get three for the price of one, and I’m okay with that. I like your girls, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think they like me too.”
I smiled. “Yes, they like you.”
“Okay then, why won’t you let me help you, because for some reason I thought I was your man?”
“You are,” I replied and our eyes locked.
He flashed a pearly white grin. “Then what kind of man would I be if I couldn’t help my woman out?”
Anthony believed since he was the breadwinner, it was my job to take care of the home and the girls. So a man who was interested in helping me was just hard for me to believe.
“I’m sure the girls would love to have you come watch them swim.”
Tremayne looked pleased. “Afterward, we’ll have pizza.”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me. I told you before, if a man can’t help you, then you don’t need him. Money ... a shoulder to lean on ... that’s what I’m here for.”
How did I get to be so lucky? Tremayne leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine and I felt like everything was right in my life. That was before I glanced over his shoulder and spotted someone staring in my direction.
Greg.
I almost jumped out of my seat. What the hell was he doing at the hospital? Don’t tell me he’s a fucking stalker. Okay, maybe I was smelling myself. He might be a coincidence. He could be at the hospital visiting a sick friend. Nevertheless, I released Tremayne and tried to finish my food as quickly as possible when I noticed Greg rise from his seat and head in my direction.
Oh shit! I quickly gathered up my utensils and folded my napkin on the tray. I still had fifteen minutes before I needed to return to the floor, but I was suddenly ready to go back to changing bedpans. “I better go. I’ve got a lot of charting to do.” I rose, and before we could get away from the table, Greg moved up beside me.
“Hello, Monica.”
I looked at him and noticed his balding head was shining. “Hey.”
“Sorry to interrupt, but can I speak to you for a moment?”
Was he for real? I couldn’t believe his audacity. “Tremayne. . . sweetie, I’ll see you later?”
“No problem,” he said with a kiss. “I’ll call you when I get home.” He then carried the trays over to the belt and I watched him walk out of the cafeteria.
“What the hell do you want?” I hissed.
Greg placed his hand at my elbow and escorted me out into the hallway. As soon as we turned the corner, I jerked away from his hold.
“I asked you a question. What do you want?”
“Beautiful and talented. And to think I thought you only took your clothes off for a living. With beauty and brains ... I think I might be in love,” he said with a stupid smirk.
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I want to see you this evening.”
Was he crazy? “I don’t work tonight.”
Greg flashed a coy smile. “I didn’t say anything at all about the club. I want you to meet me for some quality time.”
I couldn’t believe he was asking what I thought he was asking. “No way.”
“That’s too bad. I was talking to Anthony today, and he mentioned he was thinking about fighting for custody of the girls. It would be such a shame to see them go and live with their daddy and new stepmommy.” He chuckled.
I felt this sick feeling inside and I wanted so badly to tell him to go to hell, but I couldn’t lose my girls. I also needed my job until graduation, and then I could tell Greg to go to hell.
“What is it that you want?”
“Do I have to spell it out? You know what I want. Meet me at the Holiday Inn in the West End at four. Stop at the front desk and I’ll have a key waiting. Oh, and by the way ... make sure you wear the heels.” He then leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. I pushed him away and hurried off to the ladies’ room just in time to throw up my lunch.
At four, I was walking toward the elevators wearing dark shades and a long blond wig. I had already stopped at the front desk, given them my name, and prayed there wasn’t a key waiting for me, but I’d never had much luck. Ever since I had run into Greg at lunch, I’d been feeling sick to my stomach. The other nurses were going on and on about how gorgeous Tremayne was and asking if he had a brother, but I couldn’t even enjoy being the envy of the wing because all I could think about was how the hell I was going to get out of meeting this asshole. I called Reyna, and she agreed to pick up the girls from day camp. I lied and said I had a study group to meet. I thought about telling her, but I figured the fewer people who knew, the better. Besides, what choice did I have? It was either do as Greg said or run the risk of fighting for custody of the girls in court. There was no way I could afford a legal battle, and that’s exactly what Anthony would give me.
I rode the elevator to the second floor, then got off and headed down the hall. The closer I got to the room, the tighter my stomach got, not to mention beads of sweat were rolling down my forehead. As soon as I found room 208, I slid the keycard in the door and opened it. The first thing I noticed was Luther Vandross’s voice floating through the room. There were also rose petals across the floor leading over to a king-sized bed where Greg was lying on his back, naked, with his dick in his hand.
“So glad you could make it,” he said with that stupid smirk I wanted so desperately to knock off his face.
I didn’t bother responding. Instead I just stood there waiting for him to tell me what he wanted so I could get it over with and pick the girls up from swimming lessons. Tremayne was going to be waiting.
“I was trying to figure out your taste in music. I sure hope you like Luther.” He then rose from the bed and walked over to me. His dick was standing proudly at attention. For a white man, he definitely had something to be proud about; if it had been attached to someone other than him, I might have been impressed.
“Why are you looking so tense? Relax. Let me pour you a glass of champagne.” He moved toward the ice bucket.
“Greg, cut the crap! Tell me what it is you want so I can go. I’ve got more important things to do.”
He shook his head. “You sure know how to kill the moment.” He reached for an open bottle and filled two glasses, then carried one over to me. “Here, drink this.”
I took it from his hands and thought about throwing it in his face, but on second thought I needed something to calm my nerves before we got down to business. Just looking at his soft body made me nauseated.
He took a sip from his glass, then reached over for his pants and pulled out his wallet. “So how much is it going to be—two ... three hundred?”
“What?”
“Oh, come on. I know you dancers have sex all the time for money.”
I was totally shocked. I never expected him to pay me. “Do I look like a ho to you?”
He shrugged. “I figure the least I can do is compensate you for your time because I am certain it’s going to be worth every dime.” He stared at me, licking his lips, and I felt violated all over again. I watched as he peeled off three one hundred-dollar bills and sat them on the nightstand. He then removed a wad of dollar bills and took a seat on the edge of the bed.
“All right. Go ahead and dance for me.”
I stood there frozen in disbelief that one man had so much power over me. What angered me the most was that he knew it. “I can’t do this.”
As much as I didn’t want to lose my girls, there was no way I could allow this man to blackmail me into becoming his whore. “I won’t. You can tell Anthony whatever you want.” I started for the door.
“Really?” he chuckled. “Then why don’t I call him now and invite him over.”
I turned around and watched in horror as he reached for his cellular phone and dialed. He then put the phone on speaker. I heard the receptionist at their front desk answer.
“Richmond Investments, how may I help you?”
Greg looked at me with a wide grin on his face. “Suzan, sweetie, this is Greg. Is Anthony in the office?”
“Sure, one moment, Mr. Stevens. Let me connect you.”
Oh shit! I hurried across the room, snatched the phone from his hand, and ended the call just as I heard Anthony come onto the line. Greg just sat there laughing and waving the stack of dollar bills. “You bastard,” I mumbled.
“Hey, I’ve been called a lot worse,” he said and waited for the show to begin.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes but I pushed them away. There was no way I was going to let him know I was that easily broken. Never let ’em see you sweat, my mother used to say. I reached for the top button on my blouse and unfastened it.
28
Robin
“Mama, when you coming home?”
Deena looked from me to Trey for help.
“Sweetie, I can’t come home right now. But I’ll be home soon. I promise,” she reassured him with a big smile. I hope she wasn’t making a promise she couldn’t keep. The last I checked, the sentence for murder was twenty to life.
“I miss you,” Kyle whined.
I saw her bottom lip quiver and something in me shifted. I dropped my head. The last thing I wanted was her to see any emotion.
“I miss you too, sweetie.”
She hugged him, and Trey reached over and ruffled his hair. “Don’t worry, dude. Your mama will be home soon. In the meantime, you get to hang out with me and your auntie Robin.”
I hated to see his adorable face look so sad. “That’s right. How about we go back to Chuck E. Cheese tomorrow?”
“Yeahhh!” He started jumping up and down with excitement. Trey cupped a hand over his mouth, causing him to squeal even more.
“I’m going to take him to the bathroom and meet you out front when you’re done. Dee, I’ll see you next week.”
“Thanks, Trey.” She waved good-bye to Kyle and got choked up with emotion. Despite whatever had happened to my sister over the years, I could tell she really loved her son. At least that was a relief.
“How’s he really doing?” she asked after they were gone.
I nodded. “He’s doing good ... really ... you don’t have to worry about him.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much for taking Kyle in. If you hadn’t ... I don’t know what I would have done. That boy is my whole world.”
“He’s a sweet kid.”
“I hate that the two of you met under such circumstances, but it’s not like I didn’t try to get together before this.”
Once again she was sitting there pretending to be the victim in all of this. Here I was trying to be nice for Kyle’s sake—it was because of me she had gotten transferred to a facility where we no longer had to visit across a glass wall—and she fucked it all up by bringing up the past again. “C’mon off it. You know why.”
“I’ve been trying to apologize to you for years, and I’m sorry ... but I couldn’t go back to that house. All the abuse, it was just too much! You have to understand that.”
I slumped back against the seat. “You weren’t the only one being abused. That woman beat me even more after you left.”
“But you fought back. That’s the difference. I never knew how to do that.”
“So because you were a coward, you left me? Do you know how many times I thought about running away, but I didn’t? I figured despite how many times she popped me upside my head, at least we were together. Now that made it worth the abuse.”
Deena stared across the table and her bottom lip quivered. “He was raping me, Robin,” she cried.
“What ... what the hell are you talking about?”
“Her boyfriend ... Floyd ... he was raping me.”
I looked at her. “Why you lying?”
She brushed tears away from her eyes and continued. “I’m not lying. He used to climb in my bed at night.”
Oh my God. The one thing we had liked about staying at Ms. Ernestine’s was that after years of sharing rooms with three or four other kids, at her house we finally had rooms of our own to decorate with pictures and posters of our favorite celebrities. But now she was telling me something that I just couldn’t stomach.
“Did Ms. Ernestine know?”
Deena snorted rudely. “Oh yeah, she knew. She would knock on the door and tell him to hurry up before you heard anything.”
This was just too much. I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing. Mainly because deep down I knew what she was saying was true.
I remembered feeling weird around Floyd. I used to find him staring at me from across the room, and one time he had commented about how big my titties were getting and some man was going to love sucking on them. I thought he was giving me a compliment until one time when I was in the kitchen washing dishes, he came up behind me and I felt his dick against my butt. I remember to this day what he said to me.
“Damn, I bet that pussy’s tight.”
I had a butcher knife in my hand and swung around so fast he fell back against the kitchen table. I leaned over him with the blade pointed at his dick.
“Rub against me again and I swear I’ll kill you while you sleep.”
Floyd hurried out of the room, mumbling, “That bitch is crazy,” and never fucked with me again.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Deena gave a strangled laugh. “How would I look telling my younger sister that? Besides, Floyd promised he wouldn’t touch you as long as I gave him what he wanted ... so I did, until I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
I didn’t know what to say. All those years I spent hating my sister for leaving me when she had been running away from a rapist.
“I tried telling the social worker what was going on in the house, but when you denied any abuse ... they said I was causing trouble and to leave it alone.”
I couldn’t find words because I clearly didn’t know what to say.
“I tried, Robin ... really I did. But after a while I gave up and just sent you letters instead, letting you know where I was.”
What the hell was she talking about? “Letters? I never got any letters.”
She shook head. “Ms. Ernestine must have taken them. Any time I tried to call, she hung up the phone on me. I just kept calling hoping one time you would answer.”
We sat there for the longest time just staring at each other thinking about the childhood we had lost and could never get back. But that girl sitting on the other side of the table was my sister, and all bullshit aside, I missed her.
“So what do we do now?” she finally said.
“We get you the hell outta here so that you can get back home with Kyle. Trey moved all of your stuff outta your apartment and is storing it for you.”
“He’s a good man.”
“Mmm-hmm, he is.” I tried to sound nonchalant, but I guess I did a poor job and she saw something on my face.
She pointed an accusing finger at me. “Wait a minute. Is there some kinda love connection going on?”
I shrugged and tried to act like it was no big deal when in fact I was crazy about him. “We’ve been kickin’ it. With Kyle we have to spend a lot of time together.”
“Don’t try to blame it on my son. I can tell you’re really feeling Trey.”
“I guess I am.” I giggled, and for the first time since I was sixteen, I heard my sister’s animated laugh.
“I’m happ
y for you,” she replied, then glanced down at my wrist. “I see you still have the butterfly charm Mama gave us.”
I fingered the small piece of jewelry that dangled from a thin chain. The Christmas before her death, Mama had given us both matching jewelry sets. Over the years while being passed around, I lost the earrings, and the necklace broke during a fistfight, but I held on to the charm with everything I had because it was the only connection I had left to my mother. “Yeah, I need to replace the clasp on this bracelet before I lose it,” I said, smiling down at it with fond memories. “What about you? You still have yours?”
She shook her head, wearing a gloomy smile. “I did. But I lost my charm the night Mannie was murdered.”
29
Monica
“You are lying.”
I shook my head at Reyna, who was standing in front of the stove. “Nope. I’m not lying. Greg’s been showing up every Tuesday for a private lap dance.”
We were in my kitchen. I had invited Reyna over so she could make her famous Ro-tel cheese dip and so we could spend a few moments of girlfriend time before Tremayne arrived for movie night. Between the club and Tremayne, I knew she felt like she was losing her best friend, and I didn’t want her to feel that way. Reyna was so insecure. I guess she always had been, but I was too busy being Anthony’s wife to notice, which I found crazy because up until recently I thought she was the most confident women I’d ever known.
“I can’t believe this shit!” Reyna turned the fire off under the skillet, then came over and took a seat at the table across from me. “How come you didn’t tell me?”
How the hell was I supposed to tell my best friend that some bastard was threatening me so he could do what he wanted? Even now I was too embarrassed to tell her I’d been meeting him in a hotel for the last two weeks. “I was too ashamed to say anything.”
“Damn, Monica. Do you think he’s gonna tell Anthony?” she asked with a worried look.
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