My brain scrambled to catch up with the facts. He was in my bedroom. Inmy bedroom. Upstairs. Past gates, cameras, alarms I’d paid very good money for. Oh, and my very noisy dog.
I didn’t let my voice shake. “How did you get in my house?”
He gave a small, humorless smile. “This house ain’t the fortress you think it is. Your system watching for the wrong kind of trouble,” he murmured.
I thought about the way my security company rep had smiled at me, promised I was covered from “all conventional threats.” Lying ass. I guess he didn’t say anything about unconventional threats, though.
“You broke into my home,with my child in it,” I hissed.
He frowned at me. “You hid my child in it, some shit you will never be able to do again. I don’t care what kind of fucking alarm system you get, Ky. I don’t care if you run again. I will come for you. And I will cage you even better than you’ve caged yourself about mine.”
His words terrified me, but I refused to show it. We stared at each other across the room, Aziza sleeping peacefully between us.
“If I scream, my nanny is coming in here with her black belt and her Glock. And I’ll call the sheriff. You really want that?”
“You scream, I’m gone before they make it in here,” he said quietly. “And the next time I come, you won’t know until you wake up far away from here.”
There was no bragging in his voice, just straight up truth.
Fear shivered through me.I don’t know you, I’d said. That was truer than I had known. Where had he been and what had he done for the last ten years?
“You think this makes me feel safe about you being around her?”
“No. I think it makes one thing real clear. Your money can’t keep me out of my daughter’s life. Not physically. Not legally. Not socially. You can throw lawyers and land and attitude at me all day. I ain’t going nowhere, Ky.”
“Don’t call me that,” I said, the retort weak.
He smiled at me. “Why? Unless you’ve changed, I’ve known you more intimately than most people. Put a baby in you. And I can’t use a nickname? That don’t work for me, shorty.”
He stepped closer to the bed, not close enough to touch either of us. His eyes landed on Aziza’s face again, his gaze soft, affectionate.
“She’s beautiful. I can’t wait to know her,” he said quietly.
He exhaled slow, like he was trying to keep it together. “Look,” he said. “You don’t want Zahara’s war? Cool. I don’t really want it either. I’on want all the mess. I’on wanna drag my little mama through that. Hell, I’on even wanna drag yo’ mean ass through that. But I will do it if I have to. I’ll let her drag yo’ name through every courtroom between here and Baton Rouge if that’s what it takes to get rights to my child.”
He leaned forward a little, eyes locked on mine.
“It ain’t gotta be that way, though, Ky. I got another plan. We ain’t gotta burn everything down first.”
I folded my arms over my chest, refusing to let him see my hands were still shaking. “You in my bedroom at three a.m. after bypassing a six-figure security system. This feel pretty burned down already,” I muttered.
A half smile curved his lips, and I hated myself for noticing how fine he was.
“What do you want?” I asked, keeping my voice low so it wouldn’t carry down the hall.
He glanced toward the window, his gaze intense, like he could see down the hill and into the heart of the little town that caused me so many mixed emotions. Finally, he looked back at me.
“Option A is what Zahara told you,” he said. “Court dates, legal filings, DNA.”
He paused, shifted his weight, stared at me. I waited, my hands balled into fists, like holding them tight would hold in the fear his words caused me.
“But there’s an Option B, Kyleigh. You and I can sit down like adults and write out some shit we both can live with. We can figure out custody, time, holidays, all that. We can even let the lawyers look at it after, make it official without getting nasty.”
“That’s your terms?”
My voice was soft, small. Anxiety seemed to swirl from my stomach into my throat where it threatened to choke me. He wanted her on some holidays. There could be Thanksgivings or school breaks where I didn’t have my baby. It sounded horrible. It was too much.
“It’s part of it. The rest… You might not like,” he admitted.
