She’d been really quiet since she got out of her super secret meeting, and he wasn’t too proud to say he was curious as fuck about why. What the fuck had happened in that meeting that had her looking so spooked?
She looked up at him, and he could tell he pulled her from a deep thought. Cashmere offered him a small smile, but he could still see something bothered her behind the sweet grin.
“Yeah. I think I’m just going to lay down for a bit.” She hesitated for a moment before she said, “Hey, do you think you can talk to Cell about bulking up Ivoree’s security? It’s not that Twizz isn’t doing a good job. I just want extra eyes on her.”
Savio’s brows furrowed, and he immediately went on alert. Gently, he reached out and smoothed her hair away from her face as he asked, “The fuck happened in that meeting?”
Cashmere averted her eyes and shook her head. “Nothing. It would just give me peace of mind.”
He knew she was lying, but he would let her live . . . for now. “Just answer me this. Is there a threat I need to know about?”
Cashmere shifted uncomfortably before she shrugged and looked him dead in the eye. “Honestly? I’m not sure.”
That was the truth. He could feel it. Savio nodded and leaned down to kiss her cheek. He wanted to sample her lips again, but he refrained. She didn’t seem like she was in the headspace to receive the kind of passion he had for her. In the back of his mind, he knew he still needed to tread lightly with her, even though she had reciprocated his kiss. Cashmere was the type to run at the drop of a dime, and that was the last thing he wanted. From the moment he met her, there was something that told him he needed to keep her around for as long as possible.
“Get some rest. Anything you need me to do in the meantime?”
She shook her head. “You can take the rest of the day off if you want. I’m not going anywhere else today.”
That was different. Cashmere filled her days with shit with no days off. To him, it seemed like she busied herself as a distraction or maybe out of habit. The fact that she wanted to take the day to rest made him even more curious about what went on in that meeting.
“Aight. Hit me if you need anything. I’m just about to link with Twizz and hit Cell up. I’ll check in with you later.”
“Thanks,” she murmured before she turned and headed for the stairs.
Savio watched her until she disappeared before he did an about face and headed back out the door. With his phone in his hand, he dialed Twizz as he got into his truck.
“Yo?” Twizz answered the phone just as Savio started up his truck.
“Where you at?” Savio asked.
“Library with Vee.”
“Which one?”
“On campus. You good?”
“I’m about to pull up.”
“Bet,” Twizz said before they ended the call.
Savio’s mind drifted to his relationship with Twizz. Back when he took the lil nigga in, they had both been lost. Savio hustled relentlessly to make a name for himself and took Twizz on the journey with him. He taught Twizz everything he knew, and now he wondered if that had been the wrong move. Before prison, Savio had been focused on the come up and that was it. He ran through women, partied, and flaunted his riches. Twizz followed suit. The problem was, Twizz didn’t have a downfall like Savio did. Prison had a way of either angering a nigga or humbling a nigga. His time on lockdown humbled him. While Twizz had held him down, he didn’t have to feel the stress of confinement, so Savio feared he didn’t understand the importance of staying clean and getting out of the streets. How could he when Savio preached the benefits of running the streets since before the nigga even hit puberty?
When he pulled up to the library on the campus, he parked and got out of the car. It had been a long ass time since he stepped foot into a proper library. They had a sad room in the prison that he did his bid in that they called a library, but the smell of all the books in this space gave him a sense of nostalgia. He didn’t know why. He didn’t particularly spend a lot of time in the library when he was young, but he guessed libraries just held that kind of magic.
It didn’t take him long to spot Ivoree at a table with her laptop in front of her and books spread all around. Shorty looked so much like her sister, it made him miss Cashmere. A flash ofher soft lips pressed against his had him adjusting himself in his black jeans before he made his way to Ivoree.
“What’s good, Vee? Where’s Twizz?” he asked as he slid into a chair across from her.
Ivoree looked up, and her eyes widened when she saw Savio. She smiled and said, “He just went to get me a coffee.”
Savio’s brows pulled in. “Does he do that often?”
“Get me coffee?”
“Leave you unattended,” Savio clarified.
Ivoree shifted in her seat and averted her gaze. “I mean, I guess. I ask him to do something, and he does it.”
