22
Layla had lied to herself. Big surprise. That’s why she was standing outside Rashad’s door a little more than twenty-four hours after she’d seen him.
Last night, she barely slept and stared up at the ceiling, thoughts constantly on Rashad and what he was doing.Howhe was doing. She came over unannounced with the intention of taking him by surprise but now didn’t think that tactic was a good idea.
“I should have called first,” she muttered, turning away.
The door swung open, and she froze like a deer in headlights. Rashad looked dressed to go out in basketball shorts and an aquamarine men’s running tank. The sleeveless shirt showed off his muscular biceps, wiry forearms, and he smelled good, too, as if he’d recently showered. She bit back a moan of feminine appreciation.
“Hi.”
He stared at her as if she were an alien being. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” she replied with a nervous laugh, tucking her hair behind her left ear. “I know better, and… no, that’s a lie. I do know why I’m here. I came to hear your explanation.”
“Oh.” He blinked, as if snapping out of a trance. “Er… come in.” He stepped back, continuing to stare, stunned by her appearance.
She walked into the familiar space that after two short weeks and their emotion-charged parting didn’t feel familiar anymore. “If you’re going out, I could come back.”
“No, I was going to meet Alex and Sherry at the park, but I’ll let them know I can’t come. Have a seat and give me a sec.”
She sat on the edge of the sofa while he sent a text. Afterward, he took a seat in the armchair, rested his elbows on his knees, and simply looked at her. “It’s good to see you, sweetness.”
Her chest hurt with nostalgia to hear him call her by the familiar endearment, but she pushed aside her feelings. “I want the truth, Rashad.”
“I’ll give you the truth.”
Layla rubbed her hands up and down her thighs. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. This isn’t us getting back together. I came here to understand why you lied to me, and why you changed your name to Rashad.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding. He took a deep breath and released it. “Well, you know my real name is not Rashad Greene. It is now, legally, but when I was born, my name was Deshawn Reddick. To explain how I got to this point, I need to start from the beginning, way back, to when my parents met.” He took another deep breath and let it out slowly. “My father, Chester Reddick, was a quiet man, kept mostly to himself but had a good-paying job. He met my mother at the local YMCA. She worked there, and he had a membership and used the gym. They started dating and eventually got married, but their relationship was rocky, and my mother decided she was going to leave him. My dad wasn’t having that. They fought constantly, and one night… he raped her.”
Layla gasped.
Rashad rubbed his hands together, staring at the carpet. “She had me, but um… she didn’t stay. She left me with my father and moved from Texas to Alabama where she had family.”
Rashad continued with the story, telling her that while his father wasn’t cruel, he wasn’t affectionate, and Rashad longed to gain his approval. He excelled in football, thinking that would make his father show interest in him, but he didn’t. Around the time he was twelve years old, reports of a serial rapist had the city on edge. His M.O. indicated he was targeting prostitutes and women considered loners, without family or close ties. A Black male was the only solid description they had.
Rashad became preoccupied with this criminal and, through his own research, noticed that on all the nights the attacks occurred, his father had left him home alone. Pure speculation, but he became suspicious of his father, and when he found Chester’s blood-stained clothes in the garage, he called the police.
“Oh my god.” Layla’s brow wrinkled, and she covered her mouth with both hands. “That must have been very difficult to do.”
“It was. I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing, and if I was wrong, my relationship with my father would be irretrievably broken, but I wasn’t wrong. They eventually found the body of that last woman, and DNA connected him to the rapes of the others. Twenty-two women over the course of ten years.
“After Heather passed, I thought about him a lot and reached out to him. I don’t know what possessed me to do that. We hadn’t communicated in almost 20 years, ever since he went to prison. Maybe I wanted family and needed to know how he was doing. Maybe it was unresolved guilt for calling the police all those years ago. Whatever the reason, it was a mistake.”
“Why?” Layla asked softly.
“He didn’t care about me,” he said simply. “We exchanged letters and talked. At first he referred to me as Deshawn—on the phone, in correspondence—but I kept reminding him that I was Rashad now. Then he started asking me for money. Initially I didn’t care and didn’t mind because I thought we were developing a relationship. I’d finally gotten his attention and, I thought, his love. Warped, I know.
“He began asking for more money and more frequently. I figured out pretty quickly that my need to connect with him wasn’t reciprocated when I asked him about any photos he had of me and my mother, and he said he’d give them to me for a price. That’s when I really knew he didn’t give a damn about me.”
“Oh no,” Layla whispered.
“That’s what was in the envelope the other day—the photos that I asked for. For whatever reason, he changed his mind. But I knew last year that he was using me and playing with my emotions because I missed having a father figure in my life and longed for that type of normal relationship. Once I realized what he was doing, I told him I was done. Then I cut him off.”
“How did he take that?”
He smiled wryly. “Not well. He sent a pretty nasty letter, accused me of thinking that I was better than him, and more or less cursed me out. Even reminded me that I was the reason he was in prison. I thought that was the end of hearing from him until you picked up the package from Liam.”
