20
“…so I finally pull myself together and decide to leave for lunch, and as soon as I step out of my office, Janine is standing there by the door with this weird look on her face. And I got all paranoid, wondering how long she’d been standing there, but then I thought you would’ve told me when you left.”
I rubbed her bare shoulder. “Nah, she wasn’t out there when I left. Did she say anything?”
She shook her head against my chest. “Nope, just gave me that crazy look. Didn’t even reply when I told her I was going to lunch. And some of the other staff were looking at me crazy, too.”
I chuckled. “I’m sorry, Doc. Didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I really didn’t think you’d yell like that.”
“Don’t I always yell when we have sex, Zo?”
“Yeah, but then you should’ve stopped me.”
“I told you I can’t control myself around you.”
I laughed. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”
She lifted herself from my chest, and a second or so later, she was straddling me. She leaned forward to kiss me, and asked, “I know you said you don’t have a girlfriend, but are you seeing anyone else at all, Zo?”
With knitted brows, I replied, “When would I have time, Doc?”
She shrugged. “When I’m at work, or when I distanced myself from you.”
“No, baby. I’m not. Are you?”
She shook her head as she sat up straight. “No. So we’re exclusive then?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
I laid there for a second, watching the wheels turn in her head before I asked, “Your husband cheated on you?”
She sighed quietly. “Several times.”
I placed my hands on her hips. “I’m sorry. That’s why you left him?”
“I left him after he cheated for a third time, or at least I know of three times. Anyway, I left after his woman dropped their baby off for me to babysit for her. I was blindsided, didn’t know about her or the baby. That was it.”
That little ugly-ass nigga really was a moron. “Damn, Doc. I don’t know what to say. He has to be the stupidest fool in Creation to do that to you. But I guess for some men, even the best isn’t good enough.”
“The best, huh?” she asked, biting her bottom lip, making that dimple appear.
“Hell, yeah. The absolute best.”
“Better than Sofia Vergara?”
“Who? I ain’t never been with her.”
“Your little date at the benefit.”
I lifted a brow. “Are you jealous of Veda?”
She pursed her lips. “That’s her name, huh? Veda…”
“Yeah, you jealous of her, Doc?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t be. We had an arrangement, kind of a mutual understan—”
“What, like regular booty calls or something?”
“Yeah, but after I met, smelled, and tasted you, I cut her off. She’s still pissed about it.”
“Hmm.”
“You know you got me on hard sitting on me like this, right?”
She smiled. “Mm-hmm. I was hoping that would happen.”
“You gonna do something about it, then?”
She reached between us and grabbed me. “What you want me to do?”
I stared at her. “Ride that motherfucker, Doc.”
*****
“Why’d you become a nurse?” I questioned, as I stood at my stove making her breakfast the next morning.
“Are we playing the question game again?”
“We can.”
“Okay, well…I like taking care of people. I became a midwife, because I love being a part of one of God’s greatest miracles. When everything goes right during a birth, it’s pure magic.”
I glanced at her sitting at my kitchen table in turquoise scrubs. “It really is.”
“Why’d you become a drug dealer?”
Damn, she was hitting hard this morning. “Uh, well…I needed money, and plus, it was what I’d grown up seeing. My father was a drug dealer. Got killed on the streets when I was like ten. I really think it was my twisted way of honoring him. He was my idol.”
“Do you regret it now? Being a drug dealer?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t a good decision, worried my poor mother to death. Looking back on it, I know it was the wrong thing to get mixed up in.”
“Were you good at it?”
“At selling drugs? Yeah. Made a lot of money.” I hesitated, and then added, “I actually used drug money to buy this house, my cars, my mama’s house, made some investments with it. Book money helps maintain things, but drug money built my empire.”
“So you lied about being able to afford this place from writing?”
“Maybe…a little. Where do you live? You know my address, but I don’t know yours.”
“I live with my mother in the Lancelot subdivision.”
“Hmm, I was right about you growing up with money.”
“I guess you were. Why’d you stop selling drugs?”
“Because I got tired of it. Got tired of worrying my mom, got tired of watching people I knew die…” I placed her plate before her and then started making my own. “You come from a big family, Doc?”
“Not really. I have two sisters, Angela, and the baby, Nicole. I’m the oldest. Angie and her husband are big-time YouTube celebrities. Nicky just retired from being a professional student and works in student recruitment at Romey University. Were you ever arrested?”
“A few times, but nothing ever stuck.” I sat across from her with my plate. “See, I was dumb to get into that life, but I was a smart businessman. I started trapping when I was sixteen. By the time I was twenty, I was basically running my own empire in my ‘hood in Chicago.”
“Chicago?”
“Yeah, my mom moved us up there after my father died. She had folks up there and wanted to be close to them. Anyway, I rarely got my hands dirty, had other people for that, so the police could never get anything to stick. Plus, a bunch of them were on my payroll or paying customers, anyway. Shit, I even had a few judges on my payroll. Money can get you out of a lot of things. Are you going to give me your address?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Are you dangerous?”
“Do you think I am, Doc? Do I feel dangerous to you?”
“You feel dangerously addictive to me, but I mean, are you violent?”
I shrugged. “I can be. But you don’t have to worry about that. I’d never hurt you.”
“You’ve killed?”
“If I did kill someone, it would’ve been in self-defense.”
“So you have killed someone?”
“Technically, no.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I have never directly killed anyone.”
“But you have ordered someone be killed?”
“Give me your address, and I’ll answer that question.”
“Am I safe with you? Is anyone looking for you?”
I almost dropped my fork. “Doc, I will rip a motherfucker’s beating heart out their chest if they even look at you the wrong way. And what I don’t finish, Rell will.”
“Do you own a gun?”
“More than one.”
“Will you hurt me?”
“What? No! I wouldn’t put my hands on you!”
“I mean my heart.”
I leaned back in my chair. “You think I’d do what your ugly-ass husband did to you?”
She frowned. “How’d you know he’s ugly? Did I tell you that?”
Shit. I shook my head. “I just figured he was. Now answer my question.”
She dropped her eyes to her plate. “I don’t know, Zo. I just know nothing really frightens me about you, not your past profession or any potential danger attached to it. Not the fact that you’ve probably caused a few deaths. I know those things should scare me, but they don’t. What petrifies me is having my heart broken again. I cannot go through that again. Being betrayed, disrespected, lied to? I just cannot do it.”
“Doc, I need you to look at me.”
She lifted her eyes to meet mine.
“You see this fine nigga you’re looking at?”
She laughed a light little laugh. “You really are fine.”
“I know, shit. And I’m rich and sexy. Can I get violent? Yeah, I can, but I don’t like to and I’m old enough to know how to exercise some self-control now. But look, one thing I can’t control, don’t want to control, is how I feel about you. I’m crazy about you. I wanna be with you, protect you, take care of you. I want to hurt the people who hurt you. I want you to heal, but I’m so damn selfish, I want you to heal for me, so we can have a future together. I’m asking you to believe in me, Doc. Believe in me and what I’m saying. Believe in us. I’m a smart man, unlike that fool you married. I know when I have something good, something worth holding on to. All that shit your ex did? Been there, done that. I’m ready for something real…with you.”
She leveled a stare at me, opened her mouth, and said, “My address is 116 Du-Lac Circle, Romey, Tennessee, 37027.”