I stared at the road ahead of me for a moment, jaw clenched so tightly that it made my teeth hurt. Outside my windshield, the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles traffic was regular and normal, the kind of normal that made you notice when something was off or didn’t feel right within you.
I didn’t respond to Kam verbally. I just copied the address she sent and forwarded it to him.
“I’m on my way,” he said before he hung up.
I punched the gas in my Benz as if I were trying to outpace my own thoughts. The city lights blurred past me. I kept thinking about Princess’s face when she asked me to always be honest with her.
Amora lived in a gated community, not the kind with paparazzi and glossy magazine houses. There were quiet streets and clean sidewalks with trimmed trees watered every morning. Whenever I visited before, I never saw the neighbors standing outside to watch who pulled up. They didn’t have to. They already assumed you belonged there if you got through the gate. She had done well for herself, I could admit. Her hustle and drive to become a television personality paid off tremendously. I always liked having her around because it never felt like she was there only for the money.
When I reached the gate, I rolled down my window at the keypad and typed in the code she sent. The gate opened smoothly without a creak.
My stomach twisted anyway.
Kam pulled up behind me two minutes later. His truck sat low like it had weight to it. He hopped out before I even killed my engine, his sunglasses on that still couldn’t hide his expression, then walked up to me as I opened my door. “You good?” he asked.
I cut the engine and stepped out. “No.”
He nodded. “Then don’t try to be Superman in there,” he said. “We going in, we handling business, and we leaving.”
I swallowed and shut the door behind me. The air smelled like sprinklers and fresh-cut grass. As we walked up the driveway together, we noticed the curtains move in the window.
“Here we go,” I mumbled.
She opened the door before we could knock, as if she stood on the other side and timed our steps.
She looked great. Even with no makeup and hair pulled back, she was effortlessly beautiful. Even through her beauty, I noticed her puffy eyes. They looked like she’d cried already today and didn’t think it necessary to pretend she hadn’t.
“Hey, Zay . . . and Kam?” she asked.
The three of us stood at the door for a moment. Kam was behind me, quiet and solid.
With a huff, she moved to the side and held the door open to welcome us in. I stepped inside.
Kam, sunglasses still on his face with a blank expression, trailed behind me like he was security.
Amora’s eyes flicked to him. “What he doin’ here?”
“He stayin’,” I said and walked to the living room I had been in many times before.
Her mouth tightened, and she shook her head. “Whatever.”
The house was clean, but it always used to be. It had that real clean feeling, not the one where it felt she had tried to impress me. It felt as if she’d been cleaning to keep from falling apart. The only difference between those times and this one was the baby things everywhere in small ways.
A folded blanket lay on the couch.
A pack of wipes sat on the coffee table.
A swing was in the corner of the living room . . . where the baby was asleep.
I stopped immediately, as if a force held me back as I stared at him. Amora walked past me without saying anything and went straight to the swing. She leaned down and gently lifted the baby. He cooed as he woke from his slumber. She turned around and walked slowly to where I stood in place.
When I saw him fully, my stomach dropped. He was truly adorable. And he was so small that it made my body freeze with nervousness. His hair was curly, soft, and thick. He had little, chunky cheeks like he’d been kissed every day, and big, brown eyes that didn’t know a damn thing about stress, blogs, captions, or grown folks’ shit.
Amora held him as if they’d gone through hell and survived on pure will.
She walked closer to me, and I didn’t move. I couldn’t tell if my legs forgot how or if my mind was too busy trying to calculate what this moment meant.
“We can sit here in the living room,” she said softly.
