“Once or twice a week,” I admitted. “At most.”
The look on her turned to heartbreak. You would’ve thought I said I touched them or I wanted them. Tears filled her eyes, but her anger didn’t fade.
“And as a married man,” she said, voice trembling, “you never thought to mention that to me?”
“For what?” I yelled back. “So you can do this? I don’t pay those bitches no mind. I show them the fucking house and I leave.”
She yanked the door shut.
“Goodbye, Kairo.”
The car backed up fast.
“Khloe!” I shouted, chasing it. “Khloe, stop—”
She put it in drive and took off.
I stood there, chest heaving, feeling like shit when I hadn’t even done shit.
Behind me, I heard heels clicking fast.
“Wait,” Mrs. Nikki called out. “Kairo, let me explain—”
I didn’t even turn around. I got in my truck and slammed the door in her face. She didn’t have shit to explain to me. Whatever conversation she thought we were about to have,wasn’t happening. She already knew I was gone let my mama handle her nasty ass.
When Khloe first pulled off, my first instinct told me to follow her and stay on her ass until she heard me out. I wanted to force her to slow down and actually look at what happened instead of what her mind decided it meant. But my second instinct, the one that had learned Khloe after decades, told me to let her go. I felt it was best to just let her cool off and allow the adrenaline to burn itself out. Right then, anything I said would’ve sounded like a lie, no matter how true it was.
I understood Khloe being mad. I really did. Walking in on that shit, I would’ve lost my damn mind too. In that moment, if she’d decided to wear Mrs. Nikki’s ass out, I wouldn’t have stopped her. The only reason I hadn’t reacted more aggressively was because I respected that woman especially after the horrible divorce she went through. I really was about to bend her wrist back when Khloe walked in. I know Khloe wondered why I didn’t push her off me, but my mind flashed to all that glass, the marble counters, the sharp edges. One wrong push and she could’ve cracked her head open. I wasn’t about to catch a charge or worse over some reckless, lonely, delusional shit.
The forty-five minute drive back to the office felt like hell. I spent the whole ride on the phone trying to calm myself down. I started with Kemi telling her everything. At first, she laughedbecause it sounded so unreal it almost had to be. Then when I told her Khloe walked in, the laughter stopped.
“Oh… nah,” she said slowly. “Okay, I see why you’re mad now.”
She asked if she still planned on continuing the paperwork for the house.
“Absolutely. She the fuck better,” I snapped. “She caused chaos in my house. I need my percentage off that sale, if not more.”
After that, I called my mom. That was the last thing I wanted to do, but I needed her to hear it from me before someone else twisted it. She was already dealing with my dad and his dad being in the hospital, so I tried to ease into it. It honestly didn’t matter because by the time I finished explaining, my mama was heated.
“Oh, I’m going to handle her,” she said, whispering since she was at the hospital. “That so-called friend of mine.”
Turns out, my mama had been clocking her bullshit for years. She told me how Mrs. Nikki used to throw little comments when we were kids. Slick shit about my dad, about how lucky my mom was. How she always focused on the house, the money, the lifestyle… but never paid attention to how, for a long time, my dad had been absent as a husband and father.
“She’s been watching what I had,” my mama said, “but not what it cost me.”
And the fact that the woman watched me grow up, then thought it was okay to come on to me as an adult? My mama was livid.
I hung up the phone feeling drained as hell, like the whole situation had aged me ten years in one morning. By the time I walked back into the office, I was exhausted mentally and emotionally.
As soon as Kemi saw my face, she burst out laughing. I shook my head, half mad and half amused by how ridiculous my life felt at that moment.
“This shit is not even funny,” I said, laughing and sitting in the chair near her desk. “But damn… what the fuck?”
She slid a coffee across her desk toward me.
“Relax and drink,” she said. “You look like you’ve been through war.”
I took the cup, exhaled hard, and leaned back in the chair. Kemi gave me that look. The one that meant I was about to get read.
