Ameer (The Brothers Ali Book 5)

by Celeste Granger

  Siobhan lifted her hands to Ameer’s hips, encouraging them to move in sync with hers. They fell into an easy sway, their collective bodies moving to and fro, perfectly aligned, perfectly in sync. He asked to be taught. She would do that for him in a language she understood clearly. Ameer pulled Siobhan to him, his fingers of one hand lifting, raising her hand with his until they were in proper dance position. He guided Siobhan with gentle authority, stepping toward her as she stepped back, the cores of their bodies inextricably linked, sultrily touching, enticingly teasing. She willingly followed Ameer’s lead even though she was the teacher and he the student.

  A protective hand pressed Siobhan closer to him, as though that were even possible, they were so close already. Ameer leaned in, pressing his head against her naturally coifed curls, inhaling Siobhan’s feminine scent as she leaned in, pressing her head against the mass of his chest, inhaling his masculine scent, and feeling the pound of his beating heart. Ameer’s hand fell to the rise of her ass as he leaned forward, bending her to his will, her back arching effortlessly in reply. The mess of curls of her crown spilled over her shoulders as Siobhan gazed upwards, a hint of dim light passing through the slice of space between them. The magnetic pull of attraction drew them more than physically close as the thin thread woven between them, connecting them, thickened as he held Siobhan in suspended animation. She allowed her head to fall back, trusting that the strength of his arms would hold her. Ameer’s eyes fell to the lengthy elegance of her neck, centering his focus on the space where her heartbeat echoed. The music intensified as did their movements, not in speed but in pulse, in undulations, in sexual tension, in touch and feel and anticipation of the next touch; their bodily pulsations heightening as the scintillating energy coursed between them.

  Panting breaths coquettishly breathed.

  Temperatures escalating tempestuously.

  Desires magnified bewitchingly.

  Control challenged licentiously.

  Siobhan’s whole being seemed to be filled with waiting as he lifted her to him, their eyes interlocked in a spellbinding entanglement that rendered them both speechless. Yet their touch, their eyes shared a language they both understood. He lowered himself and lifted her, their mouths a mere whisper apart. For Ameer, the prolonged anticipation was indescribable, nearly unbearable, almost painful as her nearness made his senses spin. The smile in his eyes held a sensuous flame as slowly and sensuously his gaze moved down to Siobhan’s full lips. Then, Ameer kissed her. The touch of his lips was a delicious sensation, shattering her sensibilities and sending unexpected spirals of ecstasy coursing through her core, penetrating her soul. Ameer pulled away with a tearing reluctance as the touch of her lips against his, the taste of his mouth to his palette ignited a sensuous flame in his soul that could not easily be doused. But he didn’t want to move too fast. He didn’t want his desire to be seen as only a response in the physical because it was so much more than that. Ameer knew already. So, he eased his lips away from her even though the beast inside him, the Alpha inside him, would easily ravish her. He quelled that response, despite the difficulty, despite his rising desire.

  It was kismet personified when they looked into each other’s eyes after the power of the kiss they shared. Siobhan was completely unaware of the captivating picture she made when her smile reached her eyes. Ameer smiled, more than appreciative of the picture she created that would no less leave a lasting impression and the kiss that was more than memorable. His voice echoed the smile on his lips.

  “Is it too soon to kiss you again?”

  The smile Siobhan offered in response to Ameer’s inquiry was all the answer he needed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Siobhan’s question bothered Tyrese more than he cared to acknowledge. It was the same question, the same challenge from her, and the same lack of responsiveness from him. It wasn’t really a lack of responsiveness. Tyrese always gave Siobhan an answer, but it never seemed to be good enough for her. It never seemed to satisfy her no matter how truthful his answer was. He could never please her enough so that she’d never challenge him in that way again, so she would never ask him why again.

  Tyrese sat in his living room on the couch, in the house he lived in with the love of his life, drinking cognac. He wasn’t intoxicated, but he hoped to be soon. He did the same thing most nights, not because he enjoyed the taste of alcohol, not because he liked feeling drunk or having his senses dulled. Tyrese drank because it was the only thing that made the pain go away, if only temporarily. And he’d been in the same pain, the same hell for six years. Six long years…

  Intellectually, Tyrese knew that the moment he sobered up, the moment the drink no longer dulled his senses or his memory, the horrifying pain would return.

  He chuckled to himself as he refilled the glass.

  “Must be a glutton for punishment,” he mumbled as he sat the bottle down and lifted his glass, taking a long sip without breathing while the brown liquor burned the back of his throat and hit sour in his empty belly. As if the debilitating memory wasn’t enough, Tyrese added insult to his own injury. The memory was subconscious, something he would never access or relive intentionally. Seeing Messiah was different. It was equally as painful, and he exposed himself to that pain consciously, intentionally, repeatedly. But he couldn’t help it. As harrowing as it was to see Messiah, a living reminder of his wife, Tyrese couldn’t stop himself from doing it, even if it were just a momentary glimpse. And Tyrese felt incredibly guilty every time he didn’t speak, every time he didn’t reach out and touch his son, introduce himself, do something directly to get to know Messiah personally. Paying child support didn’t assuage Tyrese’s guilt. He would live in poverty to make sure his son was taken care of. Having a college fund already established for Messiah didn’t make Tyrese feel like he was doing his part. Having a trust fund for his son that Messiah would receive when he turned eighteen didn’t make Tyrese feel any better. It was the least he could do. It all hurt, though.

  So, Tyrese sat in the living room on the couch in the house he lived in with the love of his life and drank cognac until the lines between being awake and asleep blurred. The glass in his hand slipped as his eyes closed, his head dropping to the back of the couch uncontrollably.

  And when the phone rang, Tyrese answered it on the second ring, like he always did. Something about answering on the first ring gave the caller the impression that he was eager to speak with them. Answering on the third ring gave the caller the impression he didn’t care. Answering on the second ring was a happy medium between the two that Tyrese practiced whether he thought about it cognitively or not.

  “Hello?” Tyrese spoke into the phone.

  That’s when the pain in his chest started, hearing what the person on the other end of the line had to say. It was almost six years ago when the phone rang, and he waited until the second ring, answered it, and heard the person on the other end of the line say that he needed to go to Grady Hospital because there was an emergency with his wife. Anything the caller said after that was a blur. Hanging up the phone, leaving the house, going to the hospital, was all a blur. Even in remembrance, Tyrese’s subconscious refused to clean up the details, like if the memory was clear, his heart couldn’t take it, and it would kill him. So, the memory of those details remained shrouded in hazy blurriness.

  But somehow, he ended up there, at the hospital in the emergency room, racing towards the nurses’ station to see what was going on.

  “Where’s my wife,” he asked, breathing breathily because his heart was pounding out of his chest.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the nurse replied, turning her attention to him. “What’s your wife’s name?”

  “Safiya Rogers,” Tyrese managed.

  “Give me one second,” the nurse answered. “Let me check for you.”

  “I don’t have one minute,” Tyrese insisted. “They called me and said I needed to get down here because something happened to my wife. Where’s my wife??”

&n
bsp; The nurse was good. She didn’t lose patience with Tyrese; instead, sitting down in front of the computer screen to see if she could help. She heard the man’s fingers tapping against the counter impatiently. In her periphery, she saw him shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Still, she didn’t take it personally; instead, focusing on helping him.

  “Mr. Rogers, your wife is currently in triage. The doctor is with her. As soon as we know her status, we’ll update you.”

  Tyrese heard what she said, but it made no sense. If they called, then they should have known what was going on. He felt helpless. There was nothing more the nurse could tell him no matter how much he demanded.

  The phone must have rung for Siobhan, too, or maybe it rung for her parents; Tyrese wasn’t sure. They just showed up, and he wasn’t the one who called them. They had that same worried look on their faces he knew was on his. Tyrese couldn’t even focus on their beautiful son that laid sleeping in Catherine’s arms; he was so consumed with worry. And there was a hollow feeling in his gut. Men weren’t known for having a sixth sense. But Tyrese couldn’t shake the empty feeling he felt in his soul. Safiya’s parents questioned him like he questioned the nurse, seeking answers he didn’t have. They were equally dissatisfied with his response, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Tyrese tried to remember what Safiya had going on that day. For the life of him, he couldn’t put it together. His focus was off. When he asked Siobhan, she reminded Tyrese that the only thing that was out of the ordinary was that Safiya had a follow-up appointment with the gynecologist. But that wasn’t uncommon or out of the ordinary given she’d had a baby not two months before.

  “Mr. Rogers?”

  He heard his name called out. Tyrese jumped up from his seat and turned in response. He hurried towards the man that called him.

  “Is there anyone else here with you?”

  “Yeah,” Tyrese replied. “How’s Safiya?”

  “Mr. Rogers, I will answer all your questions, I promise,” the doctor replied. “First, I need to know if there is anyone else here with you?”

  “Yes, her family is here.”

  “If it’s okay with you, I would like to speak to you all collectively,” the doctor suggested.

  But it was more than a suggestion.

  The family gathered. They were taken to a small room. The room felt crowded even though it was only a few of them there. The tension and angst in the room was high, chokingly high. The doctor spoke.

  “I am so sorry,” he began.

  He said a lot of things after that, explaining that something happened to Safiya after she gave birth. A blood clot dislodged and stopped her heart, and she didn’t recover despite how hard they tried to save her.

  Safiya was dead.

  Tyrese was a widow.

  He had a son… their son… her son.

  Safiya never had a medical condition that would cause her blood to clot the way it did. Safiya died because she had a baby, because she had a dream of having a family with a husband, a house with a white picket fence, and 2.5 children. It only took one birth, one child to end her life.

  Tyrese was numb. His face was blank. He was too shocked to even cry. But his numbness didn’t stop Tyrese from hearing the panged screams of Safiya’s mother, the anguished death wail from Siobhan, and the cries from Messiah, their son.

  No matter how many times the nightmare returned, Tyrese woke up from it the same way every time, in a cold sweat, his eyes bulged out of his head, short of breath, on the verge of tears, and devastated.

  “Oh, it's been such a long, long time, looks like I'd get you off of my mind.

  But I can't. Just the thought of you, just the thought of you, turns my whole world misty blue, misty blue.”

  Cheri sang loudly as she solo slow danced in her living room, singing the refrain louder than she did the verse. Dorothy Moore’s 1976 hit song, Misty Blue, played on the stereo on repeat, and Cheri’s Misty Blue crouched in the corner afraid to meow. Spinning out of the hold she had on herself, Cheri reached for the bottle of tequila on the cocktail table. She didn’t bother with a glass. Behind the day she had, Cheri took her shot straight to the head, no chaser, no motherfuckin glass required. The burn she felt at the back of her throat was a stinging reminder of just how fucked up everything was. It hadn’t always been that way. When Cheri had Ameer to herself, things were lovely. All was right with the motherfuckin’ world. But this Shannon bitch was a problem. Cheri didn’t like problems.

  “Oh honey, just the mention of your name, just your name, Ameer, turns the flicker to a flame. Listen to me, good, baby. I think of the things we used to do, and my whole world turns misty blue, misty blue.

  Oh, oh, ohhhhhh, Ameeeeerrrrrr, oh I can’t, oh I can’t forget you,” she sang, “my whole world turns misty blue.”

  Geneva was never a problem.

  “He wouldn’t want her old ass no way,” Cheri spat as she lifted the bottle to her mouth again, taking a big swig. Geneva was safe. She was like a surrogate mother to Ameer, no threat whatsoever to the bond between Cheri and the love of her life. But that young bitch? That cute bitch? The one that wore clothes completely inappropriate for a professional environment bitch? Yeah, she was the problem.

  Cheri twirled around, dizzying herself, slamming hard in her reclining chair. She didn’t care that she spilled some of the tequila from the bottle. Cheri didn’t care that the spoiled milk and now soggy cereal she spilled earlier in the day was still on her kitchen floor. Cheri could give less than a damn that the dishes from three nights ago and every night after that were still in the sink or that the takeout boxes and bags littered the living room and her bedroom and the kitchen table. She gave a whole fuck not that she didn’t make her bed, vacuum the floors, dust, clean out the refrigerator, clean the bathroom, mop the floors, hang up her clothes or any of the million and one things her petulantly perfect mother made her do constantly while growing up. Cheri didn’t care about any of it. The way she lived her life was a living protest to her perfectionist mother, who would not be named.

  “Bitch,” Cheri mumbled under her breath.

  Cheri despised her mother, but that wasn’t always the case. There was a time when she loved her a lot. But when Cheri searched her memory, it was hard to remember the time when she loved her, hell, when she even liked her mother. What stood out so painfully in Cheri’s mind was her mother’s constant berating, constant correcting, constant dissatisfaction with everything Cheri did.

  The home Cheri grew up in was spotless. The grass was manicured to perfection, not a single blade out of place. The shrubbery that lined the porch was even and never seemed not to be that way. Pristine is how she would describe the way they lived, and her insolent mother wouldn’t have it any other way. She demanded that her house remain absolutely spotless. Her mother didn’t even make her perfectionist tendencies contingent upon God, some scripture she grew up on. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” God didn’t do it. Her mother didn’t quote scripture. She just demanded that her daughter, her space, her house, and everything around her be clean because that’s what the hell she wanted. What child can maintain that kind of cleanliness?

  “Everything has a place, and there’s a place for everything,” her mother always said. That included Cheri’s toys. She could play with them one at a time. Her mother didn’t deprive her of toys. But she couldn’t play with a second toy until the first one had been returned to its respective place.

  “How do you have a fuckin tea party with one doll?” Cheri huffed, thinking back on her torturous upbringing.

  That wasn’t the worst of it, or rather, should she say, that wasn’t all of it. Mother’s perfectionist tendencies didn’t end with materialistic things. It spilled over into the physical, Cheri’s hair, her clothes, her body, just everything. Nitpicky is how some would describe it. What Cheri remembered was her mother constantly fixing her clothes, smoothing down her hair, fussing if she mistakenly got dirty, keeping her from playing
like the other children because it was too risky.

  “You could get dirty, Cheri Ann. Young ladies shouldn’t be dirty.”

  She took another swig from the bottle, turning the bottle up higher to take in more of the libation in a single gulp.

  Things with her mother got worse as Cheri got older. That was the part that was probably the most debilitating, or empowering, depending on how Cheri decided to look at it. The older Cheri got, the more her mother picked at her.

  “Seconds? Don’t you think you’ve had enough? A proper young lady must mind her figure.”

  “Looks like you might be putting on a little weight.”

  The words hurt, but her mother’s actions were the worst part: that little pinch at her waistline to measure just how much fat was on her body; the sideways glances from head to toe and back again with a look of disapproval that followed; the insinuations, the insults, the innuendoes that something about Cheri just wasn’t right. She didn’t measure up. Cheri didn’t meet her mother’s standards. For a while, Cheri tried, she really did try to be the perfect daughter to her perfect mother. She obsessed about everything, whether her room was clean, whether her clothes were right, whether she brushed her teeth the right number of times, whether she ate too much, didn’t eat enough, got something on her clothes accidentally. She tried so hard to maintain the picture of perfection her mother drew in Cheri’s mind.