Page 85 of SIN Looks Good On Us!

He smiled, flashing his shiny golds. "Not from somebody that's gone be my woman."

“Okay, fine. I’ll move in temporarily since I gave you everything except my social security number.”

“Oh, I already got that,” he laughed.

“At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be back.”

"I'll go with you. In case there's another altercation."

"No." I shook my head, standing up to grab a pair of tights and a shirt. "I don't need you there for that."

"Kaior!"

"He's not gonna do anything to me, Jokah. I just want to walk away from this gracefully. Not with you standing over my shoulder making it into something bigger than it needs to be."

He studied me for a long moment, like he wanted to argue, before he finally nodded.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay." He got up, pulling on a pair of sweats. "But you call me the second you get there, and the second you leave. Both times."

"I can do that."

Once I made it downstairs to the valet, I climbed into my car and sat there a second before pulling off.

My head was still spinning from Jokah suggesting that I move in after only knowing him for a week. It sounded insane every time I replayed it in my mind. But some part of me wasn't fighting it as hard as I probably should have been.

Seven days was all it had been since he pulled up outside my job with hibachi grills like it was nothing. Somehow in that short amount of time, he had already unraveled every wall I thought I built up over three years with Kyrie.

I should've been scared. Any reasonable woman would've been cautious about a man moving this fast, wanting this much this soon. But every time I tried to talk myself into being cautious, I thought about how safe I felt with him, how seen, how he looked at me like I mattered without me having to ask for it.

I hadn't realized how empty my relationship with Kyrie had become until someone else showed me what effort looked like. Jokah and I barely knew each other, yet I already felt closer to him than I had to Kyrie in longer than I cared to admit.

I merged onto the highway and let myself sit with the truth of it, instead of running from it the way I usually did. I wasn't scared of Jokah. I wasn't even scared of moving in with him, not really. I was scared of how easy it all felt. Nothing in my life had ever been this easy, and part of me kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the version of him that everybody whispered about in the streets and behind closed doors to finally show up and prove everyone right.

As I drove down I-95 with his scent still lingering on my skin and the memories of last night replaying in my mind, I let myself believe that maybe some things really could be this simple. I held on to that feeling for as long as I could. I turned the radio up and focused on the road. I wanted a few more minutes before I had to face the reality waiting for me at the end of my driveway.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I hadn't slept worth a damn in two days. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Chanel standing in Talia's doorway or felt Kaior's fist catching me clean across my face. Then Chanel got her lick back too. I couldn't even be mad. I had earned every bit of that shit. I sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of Hennessy in front of me, turning it slowly between my hands instead of drinking it. My mind wouldn't stop running the same play over and over, trying to figure out where everything went left.

My phone buzzed across the table. It was my homie Jon. We used to work together at Amazon.

I grabbed it so fast I almost knocked the bottle over.

I didn't answer that one. I set my phone down on the table, and for the first time in a long time, my hands weren't steady. It hurt sitting here doing research on this nigga Jokah.

Talia had mentioned his name a few days earlier, before Chanel found out about everything. She told me he was the man everybody had been talking about, the one sending food to Kaior's job and taking her out. At the time, I hadn't thought much of it. I was too busy trying to figure out how to fix the mess I made to care who Kaior was spending her time with.

Now I cared.

My mind drifted back to the night I came home drunk. Kaior had already been asleep by the time I climbed into bed beside her. I wrapped my arms around her, pulled her close, and just before she rolled over, she whispered his name. I remembered ignoring it because I figured I was too drunk to hear her right. I even convinced myself I imagined it.

Then my mind drifted back to the Gucci outfit, the purse, and the shoes we argued about after she stayed out all night. Now it all made sense as to why she stood there and looked me dead in my face, refusing to tell me where any of it came from. I kept pushing because I thought she was hiding something from me, and I was right. Jokah bought all that shit. I closed my eyes and shook my head.

The signs had been sitting right in front of me the whole time, but I was too caught up in my own lies to recognize them. While I was out giving another woman my time, another man was busy showing the woman I loved how she was supposed to be treated.