“You’re going to marry me,” he said. Flat. Like it was already done and I was just the last one to find out. “I don’t care what you want. I don’t care what you think. That part ain’t changing. I have shit that I have lined up, and you not about to fuck that up for me. So yeah, yo ass is gonna marry me and that ain’t up for debate.”
“You can’t just—”
“Where were you going?” he asked calmly, but cold.
The shift in subject threw me off. “What?”
“Where were you going.” He said it again slower like I hadn’t heard him the first time. His eyes were locked on my face reading everything I was trying not to show.
“For a drive,” I said. “I just needed some air.”
He nodded slow. The way people nod when they already know you’re lying and want you to know that they know.
“For a drive,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“With duffel bags.”
My stomach dropped.
I turned my head toward the window and through it I could see one of his men standing next to my car pulling my bags out of the backseat. My three duffel bags. The ones I had packed this morning after I decided to skip town and run from this damn arrangement. The ones that were supposed to get me far enough away from Dallas that this whole situation couldn’t reach me.
I turned back around.
He was still watching me. Hadn’t moved. Hadn’t changed his expression even slightly.
“Those are — I just had those in there from—”
“Stop.” He didn’t say it in a mean way. He said it the way you talk to somebody when you’re tired of hearing them. “Don’t insult me.”
His men loaded my bags into the back of the truck and closed it. That’s when it hit me all the way. They weren’t taking me somewhere and bringing me back. This wasn’t a warning or a scare tactic. And I couldn’t pay these people off.
“Please.” The word came out before I could decide whether I wanted to use it. “Just let me go. I’ll talk to my father. I’ll figure something out. Just please don’t do this.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes but it didn’t reach the rest of his face.
“This wouldn’t be happening if you had just agreed,” he said. “You think I got time to be chasing grown women down driveways? I got a whole operation to run.” He leaned back. “But you made it clear you were about to run. So now I gotta make sure you don’t. You’ll stay at my house until the wedding. After that you’ll have more room to move around. But right now you don’t get that.”
“You can’t keep me at your house—”
“Yeah, all right. Watch me.”
I opened my mouth and closed it because there was genuinely nothing to say to that.
“Hand me yo phone.” he said, holding his hand out.
I looked at his hand. Then at his face. “Are you serious right now.”
He didn’t repeat himself. Just kept his hand out and waited with the patience of a man who had never once not gotten what he asked for.
I reached into my pocket and put my phone in his hand. My hands were shaking and I hated that he could see it.
He looked at the phone, then looked at me. “You get this back when you act like you got some sense.”
“That’s my phone. You can’t just—”
“I just did that too.” He tucked it away. “You got anything else you want to test me on right now or are we good? I’m not the nigga to play with, and I hope you catch on sooner rather than later,”
