His eyes locked on mine and I knew he was making sure I wasn’t lying before he nodded once.
“Yeah, alright.”
Bishop grabbed his phone back up, shoved four mouth fulls of food into his mouth and drank some coffee to wash it down while rapidly texting. I watched as he ate in super speed, his mouth too full for any conversation to be going on. Then, he hopped to his feet, walked around the table and kissed the side of my head.
“We’ll reconvene tonight,” he repeated.
“Yep,” I nodded once and grabbed the plate in his hand. “Leave it. Just go.” I nudged my head toward the door. “I’ve got it.”
“Thank you.” He kissed the side of my head again. “If you need me, text me. I’ll answer.” He recited the same exact thing he said every morning as he walked to the bowl that held our keys, snatched his up and made a beeline for the door.
I watched him go, finished eating my bar then climbed up for my morning water and to clean the kitchen. Then, I went for my daily run through the neighborhood, took a warm shower, got ready for the day, had some breakfast and headed out to the club.
I’d barely set my things down when someone knocked on my office door.
“What’s up?”
“Liquor is here,” Layla sang.
“Alright. Let’s do it.” I hopped up and headed out behind her so we could receive the cases in and update our inventory.
I cut the check for what we’d received then headed back to my office to update the club’s finances and sighed.
Shit wasn’t going well. I knew that.
The club was eating up more money than it was making and while I had the money to back it, investing was starting to feel more like throwing money down the drain out of pride.
I rubbed my temples while I stared at the numbers.
Something had to change.
My employees deserved a living wage but fuck, there came a point where I needed to cut my losses and with the way shit was going with me and Bishop right now, I didn’t need the added stress especially considering I couldn’t talk to anyone about the fact that my business was bubbling under.
My business degree having sister would run everything if given the chance and with her toddler, the last thing she needed was her little brother throwing his problems at her feet.
The same thing applied to Bishop. If he knew for a second that my business was having problems he’d throw money at the issue which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but he was a fixer through and through and if I was having issues thinking about his marriage, I couldn’t even think about how that shit was eating away at him.
No.
I couldn’t let the people that I loved the most take on my burdens. I’d have to figure this out on my own. I had no other choice.
8
BISHOP
Iexhaled and pushed the door to King’s office open. Rook was still seated in the room by himself, a sheet of paper in front of him that I could probably recite from memory.
I mean that made sense considering the words on that paper were liable to ruin my entire fucking life. Rook and I had less than a year until we had to get married and I wasn’t looking forward to it. I’d never necessarily looked forward to it, but now that I was in a relationship, a happy one with a man that supported and encouraged me, I was less prepared to bite the bullet than I’d been even a year ago.
King had reached out to the both of us to get our surveys for marriage filled out so he could start narrowing down our potential matches and the knowledge that he was already doing that made me feel nauseous. The impending doom of the relationship I was in with Asante was a large black cloud over even the happiest of days we spent together. I sighed but squared my shoulders as I closed in on my brother and Rook didn’t look back at my entrance even as I walked over to where he was.
“You still in here doing that?” I asked as I collapsed in the seat beside him.
“Man, I don’t know how you flew through that shit the way you did,” he said.
“I mean, my survey doesn’t really matter.” I admitted but shrugged to play off how bad those words burned in my throat.
Rook looked over at me and sighed. He tossed his pen down and leaned back in his seat, looking at me carefully and I felt my mask slip into place, unmoving and unreadable while he tried to pull my soul out through my eyes. I turned to look forward and ignored the way Rook remained staring at me.
