Page 39

“I don’t give a fuck how mad he was about you choosing me. I don’t care if he thought finding out y’all were brothers meant you were supposed to drop everybody else in your life and run behind him. Normal people don’t try to murder somebody because they didn’t get picked.”

That seemed to land. Some of the fight left Tahari’s face, although the guilt didn’t disappear completely, and I understood why. Ghost hadn’t been some random person who entered his life a few months ago. Tahari had known him long before either of them knew they shared blood. Long before he had even known me. Finding out they were brothers had only added another layer to a relationship that was already complicated.

I couldn’t expect him to separate himself from all of that overnight just because I could look at Ghost now and see nothing but the man who tried to kill me. The man who tried to kill my father.

“I should’ve seen where his head was at.”

He was beating himself up, but one thing about me was that I was always going to tell it straight.

“Maybe you should’ve.”

Tahari’s eyebrows lifted slightly at my comment, and I shrugged.

“I’m not about to lie to you just because you’re my man. Maybe there were signs. Maybe you ignored some shit because that’s somebody you loved. People do that every day. Seeing it late doesn’t mean you caused what happened.”

He looked at me for a long moment before releasing a slow breath. I stood and stepped between his knees, and his hands settled naturally against my hips. I ran my fingers along the back of his neck before leaning down and pressing my forehead against his. The moment was silent, and honestly, both of us needed it. Neither of us spoke. We were alone without somewhere we needed to rush to, a doctor waiting to talk to us, or somebody else standing close enough to hear everything we said. The quiet gave all the things we’d been avoiding room to catch up with us.

Tahari’s hands slid around my waist, and he pulled me closer until I was standing against him. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and rested my cheek against the top of his head.

“I could’ve lost you yesterday.”

His voice was so low that I almost didn’t hear him. I closed my eyes and really took in what he just said. Underneath everything else, that was what had been eating at him. I leaned back enough to see his face.

“But you didn’t.”

“I know.”

“Then look at me.”

His brown eyes rolled up in my direction.

“I’m right here.”

His hands tightened against my waist.

“That don’t stop me from thinking about what could’ve happened.”

I understood that because I’d been doing the same thing. Every time I let myself think too hard about Daddy throwing himself over me, my mind tried to finish the scene differently. I imagined the bullets hitting me instead. I imagined Daddy not being there. I imagined Tahari running outside and finding me slumped over the steering wheel. I hated every version. My eyes started to burn, and I blinked before the tears could fall.

Tahari stood and pulled me against him. Both of his arms wrapped tightly around me, and I buried my face against his chest as his hand moved slowly over my back. I listened to his heartbeat while his arms stayed around me. Yesterday, Ghost was determined to remove me from Tahari’s life. Instead, I was standing in the same apartment the next morning, wrapped in my man’s arms while Ghost was somewhere hiding from everybody looking for him. That thought should’ve made me feel victorious, but it didn’t. Too much had been lost for there to be anything worth celebrating. But I was grateful because everyone that he had sought out to harm was still alive, and for right now, I could live with that.

Eventually, Tahari loosened his arms and looked down at me.

“You hungry?”

I thought about it.

“Yeah.”

“What you want?”

“I don’t know.”

His face immediately changed. He hated it when I didn’t know what I wanted to eat.

“Maliah…” he sighed.

“What?”