I stroke my fingers against them while her warm breath tickles my skin and her lips graze my scabbed knuckles. Kenny and Faye stare while our eyes dance together and our obsession with each other floats between us. Slim puckers her lips and presses them into my skin, waiting patiently for me, like always.
“No. ‘Cause I don’t love that part of me more than I love you,” I mutter. “Go get your stuff.”
She pinches her eyes shut, and a single tear rolls down her cheek. Her lips move, and I think I hear her thanking God above all the noise from the cars speeding down the street and the thunder rumbling.
She pulls away from me and gaits back into the house with my keys balled in her hand.
Kenny scoffs. “How much more disrespect can I take in my own house, Faye?”
She holds her hand up to him, narrowing her eyes at me. “You think this is right? Letting her move from one man’s houseright into yours—especially after what’s happened? You told me to tend to her, and the minute I try to, you bulldoze over me. I expect this type of shit from Arnez…but not from you.”
“How the fuck I’mma let you tend to her when you even more broken than she is, Faye?”
“And you ain’t?!”
“But I made a choice. I chose!” I stab a finger into my chest. “Now you need to make one and stand on it. Talk to your fuckin husband.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
LOVIE
I packedmy life into two duffel bags, one hard-shell suitcase, and Yesenia’s frayed Coach tote—and I’m not allowed to touch any of it.
Rich pushes through his front door with the tote in the crook of his arm, a duffel bag on each shoulder, and his fingers threaded through the suitcase’s top handle.
“We can go back and get the rest of your stuff this weekend,” he murmurs, toeing his shoes off and walking toward his bedroom. “Call Faye tomorrow and tell her to pack it up. I don’t want no shit when we get there. I love her, but I’ll beat Kenny’s ass over you.”
“Uh-huh.” I nod, studying him from behind the island in the kitchen, just in case I missed something in the days we spent apart.
His bedroom eyes fall a little lower when they look at me. There’s a bruise forming on his right cheek that he rubs anytime he glances at all my stuff. And his swollen lips look puffier every time he bites them after reassuring me that everything will be okay.
“We gonna be okay, baby,” he murmured the entire drive home while squeezing my hand. “I’m gonna take care of you...of us.”
I push away from the island and patter down the hallway behind him, chasing those words. Inside his bedroom, he rolls the suitcase in front of his dresser and drops the rest of my bags around it with a grunt.
We stand in silence.
Now I think I know what he meant about there being no such thing as a fairytale type of love because the truth is that he’s never lived with a woman intimately. It’s in the frown on his face as he stares around his bedroom with his fingers hooked through the sides of his wet shirt. The truth is that we’re still indebted to a man who hates him and everything he stands for. The stress of it is in his hunched shoulders. The truth is that he has no plan beyond this moment, but thinks he should because he’s still carrying parts of that old legacy that says a man has to figure out how to take care of his family. The panic is in his russet eyes.
I crawl onto his bed and watch him watching my bags again while rubbing his cheek.
“Rich? Are you okay?”
He drops his hand, then turns around and crooks his finger. “C’mere.”
I meet him at the edge of the bed where he hooks his hands under my arms and sits me up on my knees so we’re eye to eye.
He pulls his broken necklace from under his wife beater I kept, and studies the sparkling diamonds. Afterward, his eyes trail to my middle and stay there.
I smell the alcohol on him just like I did back on Aunt Faye and Uncle Kenny’s porch. The tart scent flirts with the rosemary and oakmoss that’s always floating off him, and my nipples harden.
His wispy eyelashes flutter, then his shoulders droop as if he can finally let the alcohol he’s been drowning himself in do its job.
“What I’m supposed to do now, baby?” he slurs, glancing up at me. “Wha…what do I do with you?”
I nudge him back, then I reach out and pull his T-shirt over his head, dropping it on the floor.
