I didn’t spare my old friend a second glance as I turned and went to face the woman that looked like she was going to kick my ass or crawl into a hole and die. “Baby…” She evaded my hand when I reached for her and walked away from me. “Uh-uh babygirl, we don’t do that come here to me.” I stood my ground and waited for her to obey me.
She folded her arms and kept her back turned. I needed this shit today. “Look at me.” Still nothing, when the hell did she get to be this damn stubborn?
“Jessica I said look at me.” Maybe I shoulda left that shit alone because the look on her face when she did obey me was just evil. “There’re things going on here that you don’t understand. I told you before that you don’t have anything to worry about where other women are concerned…”
She took her ring off and threw it across the room. I have to say, I’ve been in some situations before in my life, but nothing and I mean nothing had ever surprised me as much as what she just did. I looked from the ring to her and back a couple times before the pressure in my head came down a little.
“Pick that shit up are you nuts?”
“No, I wanna go home I don’t want to stay here.” How the fuck can you be crying and breathing fire at the same damn time? I knew that the anger that hopped up inside me just then was misguided, but I’d be fucked if she were ever going to get away with shit like this. Total fucking disrespect, fuck no. I moved over to her and grabbed her this time when she tried to walk away.
Without uttering another word I walked her over to where the diamond was glistening up at me from the corner. I held her by the back of the neck and bent her over. “Pick it up.” She got the good fucking sense not to rebel this time and did as I said.
I was suddenly pissed the fuck off at everyone and everything. This isn’t how the fuck I saw this day going, not four days after I’d taken her for the first time. We were supposed to be happy as fuck that we were finally together, but instead it seems like everyone was conspiring to fuck with us, and she wasn’t making shit any easier with her hardheaded stubborn ass.
I marched her through to my office just in case someone entered the club just then; I needed privacy for this shit. I started stripping her out of her clothes as soon as the door closed.
“Stop it Justice, I don’t want you to touch me.” She’s never called me anything but Creed and I didn’t know quite how to take the switch, but the last part of that statement was a big fucking red flag. I pulled her up so I could look into her eyes while I told her some home truths.
“I understand you’re mad, but you don’t ever fucking say those words to me again, and take that fucking tone down a notch.” I never thought in a million years I would be this close to spanking her ass, not so soon anyway.
“I said there was some shit here that you don’t understand. Deidre was the wife of a friend nothing more nothing less. I can’t just cast her off like I did Sonia, I made a promise.”
None of that shit was getting through I realized that shit when she actually put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes, essentially shutting me out. Fuck this shit, it’s like she’d been saving all this fuckery up for me. She sure as fuck never defied anyone else.
I took a deep breath and hoped for patience, I wasn’t equipped to deal with his shit. Since she wasn’t listening and her body was tense as fuck I tried a new tactic.
After I’d stripped her down to nothing I took her over to the chair behind my desk and pulled her down in my lap. “I’m sorry she attacked you baby, I hope you know I would never let anyone harm you.”
How could I explain that I was complicit in this shit? That I had my own guilt to deal with where this situation was concerned? I didn’t even know what the fuck was going through her head because she wasn’t talking, and this was new territory for us.
“Babygirl…”
“Don’t call me that you don’t mean it, you chose her…” She started to fucking hyperventilate and scared the fuck outta me. “Baby calm down, I didn’t choose her over you, please listen to me.” I tried hugging her to me to get her to calm down.
She wasn’t having that shit; she stiffened up on me and tried to get off my lap. “Stay where you are.” I held her even tighter, my guts in shreds because I’d hurt her and I hadn’t meant to. How had I fucked this shit up so royally?
“I hate you.” I took the blow but held on, telling myself that she didn’t mean it, that it was just the hurt talking. “Jessie please don’t do this, give me your ring.” I took it out of her tightly closed fist and forced it back on her finger while she cried like her heart was broken in a million little pieces.
“Ian and I served together. When I timed out he followed me here. He was never the strongest guy but he had a good heart and was loyal to a fault. Deidre loved him, when he died she…we both took it hard.
One night not long after his death she and I…you were too young baby, I wasn’t a monk you know that. I can’t just throw her out now, she’s just a little hurt and confused.” I was saying that but I knew if she insisted I would do everything to make her happy.
“How many others?” That certainly did not sound like my little peach.
“Pardon?”
“How many other women have you slept with and are they all HERE?”
Well shit. “Babe…”
“Tell me or I’m leaving.” I’m thinking my sweet little innocent was no more. I wonder if it was her introduction to my dick that had made her lose her damn mind. Whatever it was, once again I couldn’t let her get too out of hand, that shit could prove dangerous.
“Let’s get this straight.” I grabbed her face and turned her to look at me. “You’ll never leave me, not now not fucking ever, so calm your little ass down before you go too far.”
“I won’t stay here with her or any of the other women you’ve slept with and you can’t make me. You made a promise to me too remember, but then again this wouldn’t be the first time you broke a promise to me.” I could see that she wished she could take those words back the moment they left her mouth, but it was too late.
Baby-Girl
I could hear myself saying these things to him, but could hardly believe they were coming from my mouth. I was so mad and hurt though, that in that moment I really didn’t care.
I knew he’d been with women before me and yes I hated all of them. I sure didn’t want to share space with any of them. I knew from everything he’d said to me in the past few days that he was insanely jealous at even the thought of another man near me, wasn’t it supposed to be the same for me? Wasn’t he as much mine as I was his?
I didn’t mean to be mean to him though, to throw it in his face that he’d left me with that horrible woman all those years and had no idea what my life was really like. But seeing him hugging that girl who’d attacked me was the last straw. It was the last betrayal I was willing to take.
It was as if every horrible thing that had happened to me in my life had bubbled up to the surface. He was in shock at my words I could tell, that’s why it took him a while to answer. I was a bit surprised myself and was wishing them back two seconds after they were said, but my anger still burned bright.
“Explain yourself.” Oh he was mad, but after the last three days spent with him, I knew I had nothing to fear, that he’d never hurt me physically.
I was also almost certain because of the things he’d said while we were being intimate with each other that he would never cast me aside. He loved me, and I him, but that didn’t mean I had to be a doormat.
With my aunt I was always afraid, never feeling that I had the right to speak up for myself. In the last few days since coming here he’d freed me. He was probably going to regret that by the time this day was over, but I couldn’t turn back now.
“I’ve been in love with you, seems like from the first moment we met. I built a whole dream world around you even when there was no hope of us being together because I was so young and you, you were already a man with a life separate from the unwanted kid you’d taken on.”
“I used to live for the days when you’d show up out of nowhere, and because you never gave prior warning, everyday was a day of hope that you would. You were the only bright light in my life.”
“When you came, I was your little princess for those few days, but then as soon as you were gone, I went back to being nothing. Aunt Dee was mean to me, so mean, but when I tried to tell you that, you didn’t listen. Instead you sided with her, just like today.”
The memory of it made me mad all over again and next thing I knew I was pummeling his chest and screaming at him how much I hated him.
He did nothing for the first few minutes it seemed before springing into action. He tried his best to get me to stop, but I couldn’t pull it back in. All the anger and disappointment from the past came spewing out and I yelled some pretty horrible things at him. The truth is I was angrier about today than all the things I’d endured at my aunt’s hands all those years.
Seeing her in his arms had loosed something in me, something that I had no idea was even there.