Boredom struck Savio,and that wasn’t a good thing. When he got bored, he got antsy, and then he got into some shit he wasn’t supposed to get into.
Maybe that was the reason he liked Cashmere so much. She intrigued him. He was never bored around her. With Ivoree, though, it was a different story. It was crazy how much the two looked alike, but how different they actually were. The past few days had been a blur of attending boring ass lectures at her school and long ass hours at the hospital. There was a lot of doing absolutely nothing. Savio was ready to ask Marcellus to be reassigned at this point. Otherwise, he feared he would quit this job altogether and go back to the streets. It was that serious, and it damn sure had been that boring.
He sighed as he propped his long leg up on the coffee table from his seat on the couch and flipped through the channels on the TV. He had already cycled through all the streaming servicesand hadn’t found anything. Cable wasn’t proving to be any better.
He was the only guard inside. That was pretty normal unless both Cashmere and Ivoree weren’t home. In that case, a few guards would move inside and make sure everything was good in their absence. Though he was no longer Cashmere’s head of security, he still lived there. His living arrangements had never been discussed, and he could have gone home, but he didn’t want to. So, here he was, funking up Cashmere’s house with pure boredom on a random Wednesday.
Today, there was a rare lapse in Ivoree’s schedule where she didn’t have anything to do, so he did his best to enjoy the solitude, but his mind kept drifting to Cashmere.
“Her stubborn ass,” he mumbled, though a ghost of a smile played on his lips.
It had been a few days since he spoke to her ass, mostly because he was being petty. He knew they would talk sooner rather than later. Savio just wanted her to stew in her choices and let them marinade a bit. She kept moving like she didn’t have to consider him, and that bothered him. He wasn’t a nigga that asked for much, but he would be damned if he was in a situation with a woman who didn’t care to think about him. He had enough of that with his parents. His anger management counselor in prison would have told him that this was a trigger for him—something he needed to voice to Cashmere.
Maybe I should tell her that,he mused within his mind, but even just the thought made him feel too vulnerable. He didn’t mind the thought of being vulnerable with her, but in this specific situation, Cashmere had already shown where her priorities were, so it felt unsafe.
A sound from behind him pulled him from his thoughts. He turned and laid eyes on Ivoree. She wore a silk robe that looked familiar. He recognized it as one Cashmere wore, and the onlyreason he knew it was the exact same one was because her initials,CT, rested right above Ivoree’s breast.
He quickly turned his eyes back toward the TV as he asked, “What’s good, Ivoree?”
“You can call me Vee, you know,” she said as she took a seat next to him, a little close, if you asked him. That was Ivoree though. He noticed over the past few days that she liked touching him when she didn’t need to or sitting too close. He put her in her place every time, normally, but he didn’t have the energy to entertain her that day.
“You got somewhere you need to go?” he asked, ignoring her statement.
“No. Why you in here looking all sad?” she probed.
“I don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout, shorty,” Savio said as he kept flipping through the channels, now more for something to do than to actually find something to watch.
Ivoree leaned back on the couch, her silky hair falling over the back of it.
“It has to be Cash. Y’all have a fight or somethin’?” she asked.
Savio’s thick brows dipped. “No offense, but I don’t mix business with pleasure.”
“You sure? Because you seemed to have blurred that line with my sister.”
The amount of venom in her tone caused Savio to grimace, but when he looked at her, he saw an innocent smile plastered on her face.
“That really ain’t none of yo’ business though.” Savio watched her carefully.
He’d known for a while that something was off about Ivoree. He couldn’t ever really put his finger on it. Out of respect for Cashmere, he didn’t dig too deeply in what Ivoree’s problem could be, but since she had been putting Twizz in shitty situations, Savio vowed to keep a close eye on her.
Her mouth twitched. The fake ass smile on her face faltered, but she regrouped quickly. Sweetly, she said, “If it involves my sister, it has everything to do with me. In case you didn’t notice, we’re a packaged deal.”
“I ain’t get the memo,” Savio mumbled.Fuck that.He understood how much Ivoree meant to Cashmere, and he would absolutely put up with her at arm’s length for Cashmere’s sake, but Ivoree’s tone told a different story. She said packaged deal like, if he dated Cashmere, then he dated her too.
“You make it seem like it’s a bad thing.”
Savio glanced at her and noticed her pouting. His frown deepened. “Did you need something?”
He was about to get up and go to his room in a second if she insisted on hanging around the living room. His patience was already thin, and her ass decided that ice skating on the shit was a safe thing to do.
Ivoree’s eyes glistened with unshed tears at his tone, but Savio couldn’t find it in him to give a fuck. “You don’t have to be so damn mean to me. You’re so nice to her. Everyone is so nice toher. Why can’t you just be nice tome?”
Savio gave her a blank stare. There was so much he could say to her at that moment. Maybe people weren’t nice to her because she was selfish and spoiled. Cashmere jumped at Ivoree’s every whim, and Ivoree never said so much as thank you. There was also this air of fakeness surrounding Ivoree. Even when she tried to be a nice girl and the perfect woman when she was around Cashmere, the shit came off as so phony.
He didn’t feel like trying to explain that to her though. Instead, he made a move to stand up so he could exit the conversation altogether. He would definitely be contacting Marcellus as soon as he got to his room to get reassigned. He didn’t care if he had to take a pay cut or move out of Cashmere’shouse. Playing security for Ivoree’s looney ass was no longer in the equation.
“Wait.” Ivoree cried as she grabbed his arm to prevent him from getting up. Before he knew it, her crazy ass had straddled him and pushed off Cashmere’s robe, revealing her naked body.
