Love on the Run

by Zuri Day

  “Is everything okay?” a worried Shayna asked as soon as Michael returned.

  “Everything’s fine. We called a truce.”

  “Oh, good.” Shayna was visibly relieved, so much so that when Jarrell offered glasses of champagne all around, she participated in the rare indulgence. That her childhood friend and the love of her life were going to try and live in harmony was a cause for celebration. As the days passed and they welcomed in the New Year, Shayna only hoped that the peacefulness would last.

  45

  The atmosphere in Madison Square Garden was electric. It was the U.S. Open Track and Field event, the first meet of the new year. A sold-out crowd packed the stands, and the grounds were filled with athletes decked out in their team colors, ready to set the bar for what was to come, and move themselves one step closer to being a participant in the 2016 Olympics, happening in Brazil. Still a long time away, those who hoped to make their name there had been preparing for their event since the day after the 2012 Olympics were over. Members of the California Angels were no exception. Shayna, Brittney, and Talisha were hyped about the coming year and had eagerly embraced their new fourth 4 x 100 running mate, Chantelle, for what they felt would be a record-breaking season. A former standout at the University of Texas, Chantelle had replaced Kim, who was now expecting her first child.

  “Come on, Shayna!” Talisha yelled, as Shayna made her way to the starting blocks for the 200-meter race.

  “Let’s do this!” Brittney added, clapping her hands and nodding her agreement that Shayna could win.

  Michael stood near Coach John, an unflappable demeanor belying the nerves that churned inside. For all of his finesse as a businessman, he knew that the success of these partnerships depended largely on the success of the athlete. As long as your star was shining brightly and the accolades continued, folks in the office were happy and the money flowed. But most who enjoyed success in sports were only a scandal or injury away from downfall. It was a fine balancing act, one that Michael had honed to perfection. Not only Shayna’s, but also his name was on the line. The Triple S sports line was doing well, but its continued success depended on Shayna having a winning season. Nothing to it but to do it, he thought as the women knelt into their starting blocks. Let the games begin.

  Once again, Shayna was finding it hard to pull her focus into the singular act of making it around the track in record time. This time it wasn’t Michael; it was the message Jarrell had left on her phone shortly before she’d left the hotel. Her mother had cramped throughout the night and was going to the hospital. For all of the talk Shayna had done about having a brother younger by two decades plus, she wanted her mother to have a healthy baby and she wanted Beverly to be healthy as well. Having never known her father and already lost her grandmother, if Shayna lost her last connection with true family, she didn’t know what she’d do.

  Less than a minute later, Shayna still didn’t know the state of her mother’s health, but she knew that she’d won her heat and was headed for the final race two days later. Earlier, she’d qualified in the 100 meter. Now it was just up to her and her girls to secure their spot in the 4 x 100, and she was also pulling for Chantelle in the hurdle event. The Angels were on a roll, and if this week’s times were any indication, it was getting ready to be a stellar year.

  Shayna ended the day having dinner with her team and after returning to her hotel room to change, joined Michael on Broadway for a hot new play about the mother of a superstar R & B artist who determines to go after the dream she’d put aside when her only child gets killed. Everyone had been talking about how Patti LaBelle performed with standing O precision. Talks of Tony Awards had led to sold-out shows, but as always, Michael had a connection. They enjoyed the show from front-row seats and afterward, Michael took Shayna’s hand and they walked a short distance to a hotel bar overlooking the bundled and bustling Times Square crowd. Shayna sipped hot chocolate while Michael enjoyed the subtleties and nuances of a hundred-year-old Scotch. About halfway through their casual chatter, when after a flirty remark Shayna gave Michael a coy look and shy smile as she had dozens of times, the atmosphere changed. Michael’s eyes darkened with desire. He finished his drink and placed it on the table. “Come on, there’s one more place I want to take you.” He tossed money on the table and took her hand.

  “Wait, Michael . . . where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.” They stepped out into the crowd, reached another signature hotel, and entered its upscale lobby. They approached a lounge area spotted with comfortable chairs.

  “Wait here,” Michael said. Shayna watched as he walked over to the concierge. Minutes later, a nattily dressed gentleman joined them at the counter. He shook Michael’s hand and listened as Michael explained something of which Shayna could not imagine. She yawned, suddenly realizing how long the day had been and that she’d run three top-caliber races. The team was flying out first thing in the morning and Shayna would be on that plane. Michael was due to stay in the city on business a couple extra days. The well-dressed man, obviously a hotel exec, walked over behind the lobby counter where people were checking in, went into an office, and came out with what looked like a room key that he handed Michael.

  Shayna’s look was sarcastic as he walked back toward her. “I told you that I’m not sleeping with you,” she admonished just before he kissed her on the mouth. “Our flight leaves at seven a.m. and I’ve got to work. So just slow your roll, randy man.”

  Without a word, Michael reached for her hand and started for the elevator. Shayna didn’t want to make a scene so she had no choice but to follow along. “What, did you get a room for a couple hours? Why didn’t we just go back to your hotel?”

  The elevator door closed and Michael backed her up against the mahogany wood. “You’ll see,” he whispered before crushing his lips against hers. He swallowed her gasp of surprise and thrust his tongue inside her mouth. The kiss was hot, urgent. He lifted her up and pinned her against the wall, searching for and finding the rapidly moistening folds just inside her thong panties. He’d just begun an exploration with his middle finger when the elevator stopped.

  “Michael!”

  He eased her back and managed a couple of inches of space between them when the doors opened. “Good evening,” he said to the well-dressed couple who got on.

  “Good evening,” they replied in unison.

  The couple got out four floors from the top. When they did, Michael slid the card into a slot and pushed a button. Shayna watched in silence, wondering what he was up to. She didn’t have long to wait.

  “Let’s go,” Michael said when the doors opened.

  “Where are we?” Shayna asked once they’d stepped outside the elevator. It looked like a large storage space, with what appeared to be electrical boxes, wiring, and other machinations lining the wall. “What are we doing here?” she hissed.

  “I came here once as a teenager,” Michael explained as they neared a door with the word EMERGENCY EXIT emboldened in red. “Heard about stories of what sometimes took place up here. Always wanted to see if what I’d heard could happen.”

  He opened the door and a blast of cold air wrapped around Shayna’s face and slipped inside her coat. “Whoa! It’s freezing up here!”

  “I know, baby, but come on. It’s one hell of a view, probably the best you can get outside of a helicopter or the Empire State Building. But this one is magic because it’s right in the middle of all that is happening.”

  “I don’t know, Michael . . .” Shayna wasn’t particularly fond of heights, especially on a cold dark night on the roof of a building and especially when said roof was more than forty stories high. Another blast of wind hit her. “It’s so cold!”

  Michael led them over to a corner where the city of Manhattan lay out before them, a dazzling array of blinking lights and blaring horns. He placed Shayna against the brick and, opening his coat, he covered her with his body before snuggling them inside the leathery warmth. “Isn’t this beaut
iful, babe?” He nuzzled her neck, pressed himself up against her. “They say that this used to be a place where dares were made. Brothahs had to bring their dates up here and sex them, and then come down with their panties as proof.”

  Shayna turned, making sure to keep herself within the warm confines of his knee-length leather coat. “No way.”

  “Yes.” There were those eyes again, smoldering, twinkling like gems of pristine black onyx.

  “You don’t want to . . .”

  He pressed himself against her, the thought of her naked butt in the cold air above the most dazzling city in the world already turning him on. “Yes, I do.” He unzipped his pants and unleashed the hardened beast, proving his point.

  “Babe!”

  “Warm it up, baby.” He pressed himself against her thigh. “It’s cold.” He pulled them back against a chain-link enclosure around a large, metal boxlike device. Shayna instantly felt a blast of hot air around her feet, to go with the hot piece of fleshy steel against her thigh. Michael seared her with another hot, wet kiss, grinding himself against her, reaching around her to cup her cheeks and press them even closer together.

  “This is crazy,” she murmured against his lips.

  “Crazy is good,” he replied, and then, “Take off your panties.”

  “No!”

  “You’re going to leave me hard like this? It might freeze and break off, baby.”

  Shayna laughed in spite of herself. This is what he had in mind, Shayna thought as she lifted up the ankle-length dress made of soft beige mohair. Michael had given it to her earlier, said he’d seen it in a shop with her name written on it. It had been a perfect fit, looked great with the suede chocolate boots she’d brought on the trip.

  Shayna lifted her dress. Goose bumps popped out on her naked skin, quickly replaced by the feel of Michael’s hot hands massaging her butt. He slid a hand around and down and soon a determined middle finger was massaging her jewel, creating a delicious friction between the cold on her legs and the heat in between them. He kissed her, hard, long, his tongue swirling in the same way his fingers were. His hardened flesh slapped determinedly against her bare stomach even as a gust of heat from the generator wrapped itself around them. Michael allowed his pants to drop to his feet as he lifted Shayna off the ground, balanced her butt in his hands and placed her against the chain-linked enclosure. Then, with one swift thrust, he was inside her.

  The contrasts were delicious: the cold air, his hot shaft, the feel of the hard chain-link against her coat, Michael’s hands kneading her booty while he sucked her tongue into his mouth. He stroked her slowly, circling his hips in a lazy fashion, running a finger along the crease of her thick rear and then slipping it inside. Shayna reached back, wound her fingers around the cold metal of the fence. She felt deliciously impaled and explicitly trapped, and felt that Michael was reaching for her very core with his love, felt him growing even longer as her inner walls clenched him tighter, pulling him deeper still. Through the haze of love Shayna realized that this was the first time she’d felt him this way, skin to skin, the first time there had been no barrier between them. It felt right and good and as it should be. His log exploded into her heat, causing the furnace of their love to block out the chill of the night, and send up a fire that rivaled the skyline of the New York lights.

  “Damn, that was good!” Michael breathed, as he pulled up his pants and Shayna pulled down her dress.

  “That was crazy,” Shayna corrected.

  “But you liked it.”

  “Yes.” Shayna laughed, her eyes twinkling with devilment as she looked into Michael’s eyes. “I liked it a lot.”

  She picked up her purse from where it had fallen and she and Michael joined in the laughter as they headed back down to earth via the elevator with the special card that yet another of Michael’s contacts had provided. The girls won’t believe this! Shayna thought, her legs still wobbly from the impact of a Big Apple orgasm. They reached the elevator, began the descent. Shayna felt her phone vibrate. She’d totally forgotten to reset the volume and hadn’t given a second thought to the fact that the phone hadn’t rung all day. She pulled out the phone and was surprised to see that she had more than a dozen missed calls. She touched the screen and saw that most of the calls were from Jarrell. “Uh-oh.”

  “What is it, baby?”

  “Jay. He’s called several times.” I thought we were over this. I thought he said he’d moved on. Now here he is blowing up my phone again. Then she noticed that one of the missed calls was Larsen’s number, another was her mother’s, and a third was a Las Vegas number that she didn’t recognize. It couldn’t be her mother because when she’d called after the meet, Larsen had answered Beverly’s cell phone, told Shayna that she was asleep and that everything was fine. Shayna tapped Jarrell’s number and while the call connected, forced herself to remain calm.

  “We’ve been calling you for hours, Shayna,” was Jarrell’s hello.

  “It’s Mom.” A statement, not a question. She’d heard the stress in his voice. “What’s happened? Is she okay?”

  “No,” was Jarrell’s clipped reply. “You need to get here, Shay.”

  Shayna felt her legs about to give way. She sank against Michael. “What happened, Jay? When I talked with Larsen earlier, she was fine.”

  “She woke up bleeding. He took her to emergency. They might have to do an emergency C-section. You need to get here.”

  “Tell Mom to hang in there. I’m on my way.”

  As Shayna hung up, there was no way for her to know the depth of Jarrell’s anguish. It was irrational, but he felt responsible for Beverly’s illness. He had once suggested that she feign sickness to get Shayna down there, alone, away from Michael. He’d thought that if he could be with her for an extended period of time, under the same roof, he could get her back. They’d somewhat put the plan in motion, dropped hints here and there, leading up to the phone call that was going to come next month, when Beverly would tell Shayna she’d been put on bed rest and needed her help. It wasn’t supposed to be true. But it was. Beverly Powell, Shayna’s only living relative, was in the University Medical Center in Las Vegas, the same hospital where rapper Tupac Shakur had taken his last breath. Unbeknownst to each other, both Shayna and Jarrell were praying that it wasn’t the place where Beverly breathed hers.

  46

  “They said it’s placenta previa.” Shayna was on the phone with Michael, having gone to the hospital as soon as she landed in Vegas. She was still wearing the mohair dress and chocolate boots, the panties she’d shed during the tryst while overlooking all of New York still in her coat pocket. Once he’d learned what had happened, Michael had chartered a jet so that Shayna could get to the hospital as quickly as possible. She’d arrived in Vegas at two in the morning. Jarrell had picked her up at the airport and whisked her to the hospital. “She’s still in danger of severe hemorrhaging; they’re considering a cesarean section, even though the baby is less than twenty-four weeks. But that will likely cause major complications for the baby, so they’re only going to use that as a last possible option.”

  “Baby, I know I told you that I had to stay here, but if you really need me—”

  “No, Michael, it’s okay. Larsen hasn’t left the hospital and Jarrell has been in and out with his girlfriend. I called Coach, told him what was going on and that I’d be back at practice next week. I just want to stay here until everything with Mom and the baby stabilizes.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “We don’t know.” Shayna looked up and saw Jarrell coming toward her. “Look, I have to go. I’ll call you later.” Her questioning eyes made words unnecessary. “She’s okay,” Jarrell said, enveloping Shayna in a tender hug. He’d done that quite often since this arrival: at the airport, when Shayna teared up after seeing her mother in the hospital (a first for this only child), after he’d accompanied Shayna to a private visit with the doctor, and now. It was an act that Shayna barely noticed; her entire focus was o
n her mom. But every nerve ending in Jarrell’s body was on full alert, aware of everything—the feel of her hair, the way she smelled, the softness of the body-hugging dress that he wanted to remove, and the way her curves fit his frame perfectly. Every time he held her he remembered how it had been for them to make love. Every time they parted he vowed that it wouldn’t be long before they made love again.

  “Shayna, have you eaten?”

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Yes, but you need to eat something, babe, to keep up your strength. Let’s go grab a little bite, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  A short time later Jarrell and Shayna sat in the booth of a popular diner. When they’d ordered, breakfast sounded good. But now Shayna pushed around the French toast on her plate while Jarrell made quick work of his steak and eggs. She watched him, and thought of Michael, thought back to their first breakfast in Cape Cod. And missed him.

  “Don’t be sad, babe,” Jarrell said, mistaking the lonely look in her eye. “Your mother is going to get better. But I want to ask you something, Shayna.”

  “What?”

  “Would you ever give consideration to moving down here, to help your mom with this new baby?”

  “Why, did Mom say something about that?”

  “Not exactly, but she talked about how different it would be raising a baby now than when she was eighteen. And that was before she got hit with this complication. I mean I know you have your life in LA and all, and Beverly said that it wouldn’t be right to ask you to move, that even if she did, you probably wouldn’t say yes.”

  “So you guys have talked about it.”

  “The subject came up. I’m just telling you what she said.”

  Shayna took a bite of French toast and pondered what Jarrell had told her. Did her mother really need for her to be around like that, and could Shayna answer the call if it came to that? For sure there were a couple months that she could do it, a couple meets that weren’t qualifiers. If she didn’t compete in every event, it wouldn’t affect her bank account, or her career. The more she thought about it, the more Shayna felt that spending time with her mother and the little sister or brother that she was carrying might be a good thing, might help them to form the type of family bond that Shayna had always wanted, the type of relationship she felt the Morgans shared. It was the first time in her life that Shayna could remember her mother possibly needing her. For some inexplicable reason, the thought felt good. “If it came to it, I probably could get some time off,” she eventually said to Jarrell.