“To call; I know. But calling would’ve meant that I-”
“That you what?” he pressed, needing to hear the words to prompt the rest of their lives together.
Cyanna rubbed her lips over one another and swiped the remnants of the tears from her cheek. “That I-”
“Karys, there you are,” the voice of his on again-off again girlfriend flooded into the room.
Cyanna pulled away, plastered that manufactured grin on her face and looked up at the faux bubbly, perfectly-molded girlfriend. Yanieca. She looked just like a woman who got a man like Karys.
Karys grunted inwardly before allowing Cyanna a few inches of space to herself. “Yanieca, how’d you-”
“Your assistant told me you had a meeting about the new development. So I figured as the operations manager of H&H, I’d pop in and see how everything was going. I didn’t know you’d be here. You know, with your busy schedule and all,” Yanieca said, shooting her gaze over to Cyanna.
Cyanna lowly scoffed in laughter. “I try to be hands-on with my clients. That’s the luxury experience. How are you?”
Yanieca took a seat once she realized Karys wasn’t going to move. “I’m great. Keeping this one’s affairs in order and I’m planning his thirtieth. Did he tell you about it? It’s going to be at the beach house. You and Damarco should come.”
“Damari,” Cyanna corrected.
“I’m sorry?” Yanieca posed.
“His name is Damari,” Cyanna shared, before looking at Karys who was glaring at Yanieca. “I’ll have the office send over the initial contracts and let’s plan a walk through for next week.”
Karys stood when Cyanna did. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
“No need. Enjoy lunch with your girlfriend,” Cyanna hummed as sweetly as she could.
“We need to finish this conversation,” Karys muttered.
Cyanna swayed her head and patted his shoulder in the friendliest way she could muster up. “Enjoy your lunch, K. Yanieca, I’ll see you.”
“At the party right? With a plus one?” Yanieca asked, looking up at her with that jealous glint in her eyes. “Dmarco, your husband?”
“Can’t confirm, he’s a busy man,” Cyanna replied with a roll of her eyes before walking out.
When the door closed, Yanieca looked at Karys. “Why are you always so concerned about her? She has a husband and there’s so many other firms who can renovate that block.”
“It’s the block we grew up on,” Karys stated, instantly annoyed that he had to explain this to her, again. “I thought you had something to do.”
“I wanted to sit in on the meeting and I wanted to go over this guest list one more time before this weekend. If she’s not coming, I can take her name off of the list.”
Karys cut his eye at her. Yanieca’s envy was his fault. She was familiar, so he kept her around for the times he thought he could actually move on from loving Cyanna the way he had. Every time he attempted to create the life he wanted with her with someone else, something would happen. He’d be launched into Cyanna’s orbit again or Yanieca would say or do something that irritated the fuck out of him. Again, his fault. A mess he made that he had to clean up.
“Her name isn’t coming off the list. I don’t want my house toppling over with niggas I don’t know. Keep your friends to a minimum. And since I’ve already paid for this shit, I won’t cancel it. Food is coming out, enjoy it. I got to go,” Karys replied,strolling out the room. He’d learned not to break up with her in public spaces. When he called it this time, it would be the last time he did.
More than ever, he was determined to get his woman.
FOUR
Cyanna
“Mr. Luther,” Cyanna crooned, plastering that face like all was well. Performative at best. The only one who knew that she wasn’t okay was Karys.
Karys. She almost told on herself. Almost abandoned her moral compass and threw it all to the wind. A moment of weakness she needed to avoid like her life depended on it because – what if. That’s what lingered. The question of what if he broke her more than she’d allowed Damari to. At some point, she’d bounce back from Damari whether it be in a week, month, year. Bouncing back if Karys broke her heart? Unlikely. He knew her too deeply. He was too close to the tender parts she guarded. He wiped the tears when her parents died. He covered her pants with a hoodie when she got her first menstrual. He knew her fears. He knewher. The Cyanna that was buried under the conditioning of being perfect – he knew. And because he knew all of those things, he knew where her kill switch was.
Safe to say she just needed him to lock in and be with Yanieca so the thought – the longing of having him could zap from her being. The dreams and mulling over how beautiful they could betogether needed to stop. For her mental, because anything other than that was torture.
“Cyanna. As beautiful as ever. You look just like your mother,” Mr. Luther, her father’s oldest friend and legal confidant cooed, opening his arms to receive her. With his close proximity to her and the family, Cyanna thought he would’ve been the one to walk her down the aisle and give her away – he declined with his highest respect.
