I tapped my earpiece while I pushed through the chaos of the guests.
It wasn’t hard to see what Hawk was talking about. There was a woman hunched over the kitchen sink gagging but not throwing up. I helped her pull her face out the sink and got her name so I could contact someone for her and load her up into a car.
I spent a lot of the night taking care of those little incidents, the ones that arose when rich people got together and drank too much.
My parents started to make their rounds thanking people for coming and politely kicking them out around two in the morning. By two thirty, they cut the music and cleaners began plucking up the glasses that had been discarded. At three, our father looked around the room and announced that although he’d had an amazing night it was time for the stragglers to leave.
We gave the last of the guests a few minutes to head out then Hawk and I started to do rounds to make sure the house was actually empty and there was no one hiding out on our grounds. Afterwards, I held a meeting with my team to debrief and discuss anything they’d seen or heard that they thought was suspicious before calling it a night and heading home.
We had one night of celebrating Winnie and Rook left.
Then, King was apparently shifting his focus immediately to me and Asante.
I wasn’t going to argue against it. I wanted to spend my life with Asante and I knew that. If King wanted me to speed up my proposal a little, I was fine with that. Shit. I was just glad I’d be able to propose at all. I’d do it whenever and wherever he told me to.
11
ASANTE
Igrinned the second I gained consciousness. I was someone that took my sleep seriously, sure, but it was different when I knew that sleep had evaded me because Bishop was tracing me, one of his hands scratching at my scalp. I hummed in contentment. When I got home from the club around three in the morning, he hadn’t been home. I’d reached out and he’d told me that he was still getting work done at damn near four. A part of me had expected him to just go to the house he shared with Rook since they’d been together all night and I figured Rook would probably be cross faded off his ass.
Knowing he’d come back even though work had gone over for him was nice. I’d never get tired of being woken up by him. I nestled further against his chest and he leaned in and kissed my forehead.
I opened one eye and peeked at him.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” He grinned.
“What time did you get home?”
“Around five-thirty.”
“What time is it now?” I yawned.
“Seven.”
“Then, what are you doing up, Bishop?” I chuckled.
“I came home, put something in my stomach and showered. I just, I don’t know. I wanted to hear your voice before I went to sleep.”
A goofy ass smile took over my face.
I didn’t know how Bishop always happened to just miraculously say the most romantic shit while making it seem like it wasn’t a big deal, but I loved that about him. I never felt like I needed to ask for reassurance because even though he kept a lot of shit to his chest, his feelings for me were never one of them.
“Alright.” I grabbed his hand from my hair, lowered it and kissed his wrist. Then, I slid over, getting off of his body and on my side of the bed. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Why do you think I want to talk to you about something in specific?”
“I know you.”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “You do know me.” He exhaled and collapsed on bed beside me. We faced each other and Bishop swallowed. “My family knows that we’re together,” he said carefully and I felt my eyebrows jump before I could mask it.
“How’d that go?”
“Good actually.”
“Yeah?” A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth and Bishop grinned so wide I knew he wasn’t sugar coding shit to make it seem less hectic than it was. That realization made me smile even wider myself. “Fuck. They know?”
