Guilty for what happened at Simone’s house. Guilty for bringing Marcus to the hospital. Guilty for the look on Street’s face when I introduced them. Guilty for being on this couch instead of in that bed and not feeling bad enough about the reason why.
I fell asleep eventually and it wasn’t restful.
—
Morning came and Marcus’s side of the bed was empty when I walked to our bedroom and checked. I could hear him through the closed office door before I even got to the kitchen. He was on the phone already, which was normal. Marcus was always working.
I went to knock and let him know I was up.
I had my hand raised to knock when I heard his voice change. Not louder. Lower. The kind of register men used when they didn’t want to be overheard.
I stopped.
“Yeah. I’m sure that it shook him up. Graze but it could’ve been worse.” A pause. “That’s the point. You want him scared and wondering what went wrong and who did it.” Marcus whispered. “He doesn’t know. Neither does she.”
I stood completely still in that hallway.
“The twins ain’t too smart. The older one is too focused on the title fight to be looking deep into anything right now.” He laughed at something the other person said. “Exactly. Let him stay focused on that. That’s the best thing he could do.”
I took a step back from the door.
My heart was beating fast in a way I couldn’t put into words. What did I just hear? Marcus knew about Mazi getting shot. Not the version I had told him — I hadn’t told him anything specific because I didn’t know anything specific. I had told him basically that a friend of the family was in the hospital. That was it. I hadn’t said anything about a shooting or a trap house or any of it.
He knew details I hadn’t given him.
And he was talking about Street’s title fight like it was something he was monitoring. Like he had a hand in where Street’s attention was pointed.
I walked back to the kitchen and stood at the counter with both hands flat on the marble and breathed.
I didn’t knock on that door.
I made coffee and when Marcus came out of the office twenty minutes later I smiled at him and asked how his morning was going. I listened to him talk about his calls and his meetings and I nodded in all the right places and said all the right things.
But something had shifted in me that I couldn’t shift back. I no longer trusted him and I didn’t know what to do with that.
—
The mayor’s dinner was Marcus’s kind of event. He loved being in the mix of political stuff. Loved working the room, loved the visibility, loved being the kind of man people wanted to know. I had been to enough of these with him to know that it wasn’t my crowd and all I was supposed to do was look good on his arm. I was over it and ready to go as soon as we walked through the door.
Until I saw Street.
He was near the bar with a woman beside him that I recognized immediately because everybody in Dallas recognized Kyla Bridges. Community leader, city council candidate, beautiful in a way that photographs didn’t do justice to. She was standing close to Street and he was holding her hand. They were laughing at something and he looked relaxed in a way that he almost never looked in public.
Something went through me that I wasn’t used to feeling.
I had just been with this man three days ago.
Three days ago he had looked at me like I was the only woman in the world and now he was standing across this ballroom holding another woman’s hand, laughing and not looking in my direction at all.
Marcus said something to me, I turned and smiled then I said something back, but really I don’t know what either of us said.
I excused myself a few minutes later and stepped into the hallway. I called Street’s number.
It rang.
And rang.
And went to voicemail.
