“You ain’t won yet.” She slides her hands across my shoulders, kneading her fingertips into my skin. “The jury still has to decide on Monday morning.”
She pulls her lips under her teeth like she always does when I come home with the weight of the courtroom on my shoulders.
“It don’t matter what decision they come to,” I mutter. “We know she lied.”
There’re some days I chant the words over and over to myself while tearing up our kitchen for all the Don Julio bottles Phat put out for recycling until she gets home and sees me—like really sees me—for real. Then we make love until I remember I don’t need those bottles to exist anymore, but it’s hard. Even after Quame’s team blasted Cheyenne’s confession across America, it was still hard.
“Quame says it’s nothing for us to worry about,” I add. “We’re good.”
She groans. “Is the jury all white?”
“Baby...”
“Ason...”
I press my fingers into her thighs. “Relax. You’re exactly where you need to be. We planned for this. You take care of home and I take care of the rest.”
She swallows and nods while I tug at her camisole. “You lead, I follow?”
“And where do I always lead us?”
She stoops down, covering my lips with hers and breathing the thousand questions into my mouth that she’s been holding onto.
“Back home where it’s safe,” she mutters, pulling back.
I tug at the camisole and she pulls it over her head without fussing, because this is the only time we’ll have to indulge in my only pregame ritual. The hour right after the six o’clock news is sacred. CeCe doesn’t have any appointments scheduled. Pops can’t blow me up to pick through my brain about plays, and our place is the quietest.
I fold my arms behind my head while she rolls her shorts off and slides mine down. Between my heavy blinks, she steals a Magnum from my nightstand and tears it open.
The TV hums in the background with more voices speculating about our life because Planet Ace was on another husband-fueled lockdown. No Twitter. No Insta. Just us.
I close my eyes while she rolls the condom over my dick and sinks onto me.
She’s soft and warm and sometimes I wish I could live inside her.
“Home is the best place for you to be during all this. I don’t want you to know what that courtroom feels like and I don’t want you to hear the shit I did back when I was lost—back before I came to you. Do you hear me, baby?”
She chokes on a grunt, with her eyes rolling into the back of her head even though I can’t move.
“Thanks to me, she has money for a lawyer as good as ours,” I gasp out as she pulls her legs up and rocks against me. “But not for much longer, a’ight? Before you know it, it’ll be your money and you’ll be picking out your favorite charity for us to donate it to because we don’t even need it. How that sound? Hm?”
A loud screech barrels from her gut as she nods, with tears welling along her eyelids.
I lift my hips to help her paralyzed body move. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
The way her eyes snap back into place in their sockets makes my breath hitch in my throat. “All those people you so worried about don’t even have the same problems you got. They don’t know what the air tastes like from the fifty-sixth floor, they never hit a hole-in-one on the Fazio course, they won’t be planning a gala for the next six months, and they for damn sure don’t know how to take care of our home. So explain to me why you so worried about what they think?”
“Ason?”
“I’m listening, baby. I’m always listening.”
“I—I...” she stutters out through my grinds.
“You what?”
“I—I—Iloveyou.”
“I know.” I slap at her thigh and laugh. “Now stop letting strangers in our house.”
