I licked the inside of her leg while she drove with one hand. She kept her other hand on the back of my neck, scratchin’ her nails down slow, and I bit her before kissin’ ‘em again. I could feel her holdin’ her breath a lil’, and her legs tightened just enough for me to feel it.
From the backseat Sha’Nelle sighed loud. “I think y’all must’ve forgot I’m back here.”
I smiled right into Toni’s skin and kissed it again before sittin’ up straight. I grabbed her hand and kissed the back of it, lettin’ my thumb stroke her knuckles while we drove down the long road to our house.
When we pulled through our gate Toni parked neat beside the other cars. She got out first with Sha’Nelle behind her. I watched her walk to my side of the car and open the door like she always did when I was too drunk to move fast.
I put my feet out but didn’t stand up. Instead, I grabbed her waist and pulled her close. Her body met mine and I kissed herslow, lettin’ my tongue taste hers. She kissed me back and let her fingers curl into my shirt like she wasn’t ready to stop either.
We finally got out and made it upstairs. My buzz was sittin’ sweet, so I started rollin’ up while she went through her phone. I filled the paper and licked it slow and Toni walked over holdin’ her phone with her eyebrows pulled in.
“Baby…” she said. “Look.”
She handed me her phone. There was a picture of our house taken from outside the gate. It wasn’t no caption or name. Just the picture from a fake account.
I stared at it for a long second, then shrugged and handed her phone back. “Let ‘em come.”
I said it calm ‘cause I ain’t wanna alarm her, but my chest felt tight in a way I couldn’t ignore. I wasn’t scared. I was aware. And the awareness hit me hard ‘cause I knew exactly what this meant.
Toni sat beside me and leaned into my shoulder like she trusted every piece of me. I kissed the side of her head and held her close.
“Baby,” I said soft, rubbin’ circles on her stomach. “Ain’t nobody touchin’ you or my baby. Not while I’m breathin’.”
Her body relaxed and she exhaled slow, and I put the blunt down before I even finished rollin’ it ‘cause I already knew tonight wasn’t gon’ end the way it started.
Tonight reminded me why I fight, why I protect and why I kill when I have to.
My family was home. My wife was safe. My baby was growin’, and anybody who wanted to test that was gon’ learn exactly what kind of man I really was.
Trill-Land, ‘LoLux Estate
Later that night…
When I woke up, I ain’t feel Kay’Lo’s body next to mine. The room was still dark and when I checked the time on my phone, it said two in the mornin’, which made my heart start movin’ too fast for me to even breathe the way I needed to.I laid there for a second with my hand stretched across the cold side of the bed, and my stomach dropped ‘cause I already knew what this meant. This wasn’t Kay’Lo up takin’ a piss or grabbin’ somethin’ to drink. This was the part of him I used to be ready to chase through the house like I was puttin’ out a fire.
But tonight, I ain’t jump up the way I always did.
I sat there with my knees pulled to my chest and closed my eyes just long enough to hear my therapist’s voice in the back of my mind, tellin’ me that Kay’Lo didn’t need me runnin’ behind him like he was somethin’ I had to drag back to bed. She told me to slow down, to see him first before I reacted, ‘cause sometimes he needed space to breathe before he could let somebody hold him.
And that thought alone damn near cracked my heart open ‘cause I had been movin’ so fast these past few weeks that I forgot how much he been carryin’. He had been locked up, then we found out about the baby, then he got out and came home to all this love, then he gotta deal with the case hangin’ over his head, then that message came through my phone…
That picture of our house from that fake ass account was the one that scared me for real.
It wasn’t ’causeI thought somebody was gon’ break in right that second, but ‘cause I watched Kay’Lo’s face change when I showed him. I watched the whole mood in his body shift like somethin’ inside him had been woken up without permission.
And now here we was… Two in the mornin’, and my husband missin’ from the bed.
Instead of runnin’ through the house in a panic, I forced my hands to move soft. I slid off the bed and grabbed our pillows and the big black blanket we always slept under. I knew enough now to know that if he was downstairs, I wasn’t just gon’ drag him back upstairs. We was gon’ sit in it together. Wherever he was at mentally, I was gon’ sit right there with him.
I held the pillows against my hip and tucked the blanket under my arm. Before I left the room, I grabbed his hoodie off the chair ‘cause sometimes holdin’ onto somethin’ familiar helped him ground himself. Then I walked out the door and down the hallway, takin’ slow breaths ‘cause if I fell apart before I reached him, I wasn’t gon’ be any good to him at all.
Halfway down the stairs, I saw him.
Kay’Lo wasn’t even in the livin’ room yet. He was in the hallway between the kitchen and the den, pacin’ from one end to the other. His steps was fast and uneven, and his chest was movin’ like he had been runnin’. Sweat glistened across his shoulders, and even from where I stood, I could see the red in his eyes, that came when he hadn’t slept or when somethin’ deep in him had been stirred up too hard.
And my heart just… broke.
He looked like he was tryna fight somethin’ nobody else could see, and the only thing I wanted to do was take that weight right out of his hands. But I didn’t call his name or ask no questions.
