“What . . . is this?” I asked again, my voice low because he was right there, staring at me like I was his hero. Lyrius’s lips parted, but nothing came out. She looked at him and then back at me, tears pouring down her face.
“He—” Her voice finally broke, and then she swallowed hard. “His name is Dakoda.”
Dakoda. The same name I’d told her a time or two that I wanted to name my son. I always wanted my son to have my name but still wanted him to be an individual.Damn.That had anigga’s chest pounding. She’d given her son that name. I stared at her because I didn’t ask her ass that, and she knew it. Her hands tightened together, and her eyes dropped to the floor.
“He’s yours, KO,” she spoke. “He’s your son.”
Everything went still. What the hell did she just say? My son? My eyes darted to the kid for the fifteenth time. The same shit I’d been doing since they’d walked in here. If he wasn’t right here, I would’ve snapped, because I knew damn well the woman who set me up wasn’t standing in my face telling me she’d had my damn seed.
“When?” I asked, not looking at her. “When you find out?”
She didn’t answer right away, and that pissed me off more than the bomb she’d just dropped on me. This kid was five. There was no way she’d known he was mine all five of them years and said nothing.
“When, Lyrius?”
“After,” she said through tears. “After everything.”
“After what?” I shot back. “After you set up the play? Pretended to love a nigga? After I got shot?” I dragged a hand down my face slowly. She was making me show emotion, and I didn’t do that shit anymore. Not since showing emotion put me through a year of recovery. I shook my head once, like that would make sense of all this shit, but it didn’t. Nah. It couldn’t.
“Yeah, after all that.”
“Nah,” I muttered. “Nah, you don’t get to do this.” I backed away from her. I needed to breathe. “You not finna drop no five-year-old on me like this.” The kid . . . Dakoda, shifted, moving on my damn heels, reminding me he was here, listening. The little dude didn’t have any business hearing this shit. This was his mom’s mess, not his.
“Aye,” I said, kneeling and nodding toward the far side of the room. “Go check those gloves out over there. The red ones. They’re real.”
“For real?” His face lit up a little, and his eyes darted to the gloves I had displayed on the counter.
“Yeah,” I said, and he backed up slowly, then took off toward the wall where the gear was stacked. I watched him for half a second, making sure he was good. Then I turned back to her.
“Five,” I said, biting my cheek. “Five years . . . and you ain’t say shit.”
“I didn’t know how.”
“Nah,”—I stepped closer—“you knew how.”
She shook her head, voice breaking. “I didn’t know how to come back to you with that . . . with a baby.”
“Same way you figured out how to leave.” I stared at her. Her tears almost got to me. Almost, but I knew better. The room went silent as I watched Dakoda bounce around the ring wearing my training gloves. My head was spinning out of control. None of this sat right with me. I hadn’t seen or heard from Lyrius in five years. Then she just . . . showed up here—in my building, in the middle of a storm, with a kid she claimed to be my son.
“Why now?” My voice dropped. “Why are you here, Lyrius?”
“I—”
“You need money?”
“No.”
“This part of some setup? You here to finish me off or some shit?”
“Of course, not?—”
“You had five years,” I cut in. My voice rose with the thunder shaking the windows. “Five years to say something.”
“What was I supposed to do, KO?” She snapped suddenly, and that caught me off guard more than the tears did. “Show up at your door pregnant after being involved in setting you up and almost getting you killed?” I stared at her. “You think that would’ve ended good?” she asked, shaking her head. “You thinkyou would’ve looked at me and just . . . excepted me and my baby?”
My jaw tightened. Because on some real shit? If Lyrius had shown up at my door pregnant five years ago while I was still in recovery and my life was falling apart, I probably would’ve told her to get the fuck out of my face.
“I had nowhere to go,” she continued, voice cracking now. “No family. No money. No protection. The people I crossed wanted nothing to do with me, and neither did you.”
