She stood up from the bed, hiding behind the black comforter as if it were armor.
"But."
"But what?"
"The blackmail I mentioned earlier. He knows some fucked up shit about me, and I don't want it to get out."
Ciara wasn't looking at me eye to eye until I lifted her face with my index finger.
"Tell me what it is now, and I can promise that shit won't touch you one bit."
She dropped her head back into my chest, and I lifted it up again.
"It's, I just. I don't want you to look at me differently because of it."
"Ciara, if I'm telling you that you can be honest with me, I mean it. I wouldn't lead you a stray like that. Now what does he know so that I can make it disappear?"
She exhaled and then sat down on the bed with the covers over her body.
"Okay, so when we were teenagers, I was secretly pregnant, and I hid the pregnancy for months. I'm not sure how far along I was, but I ended up having the baby in a fuckin alley, and he was stillborn. Hov I was so scared, and I didn't know what to do so I got rid of his body without reporting that I had him. I just feel like a monster knowing that I put my fucking baby in a box and sent him to the ocean. Like, I don't know why I did that. He didn't deserve to be discarded like trash."
I sat beside her and wrapped my arms around her body. She was trembling like shit, shaking like she was telling me she killed someone.
"Calm down. Don't cry over past mistakes that you can rewrite with your future. You were how old when that shit happened?"
"Seventeen."
"Exactly. A fuckin kid, so of course, the decisions you made back then, you won't agree with right now. Shit, the same goes for me. You know how many abortions I've paid for with bitches. Shit, I bet some of the kids weren't even mine, but I was never taking any chances."
She giggled a little bit while wiping tears away.
"So, what I'm saying is, fuck your past and fuck who he tells because they don't fucking matter either. If you want to leavethat nigga behind, I'll take you away from him, but that's only if you're ready to let him go. Let me know now so that if you aren't, I can move on with my life. On everything, I want to take you with me, but not if you don't want to go.”
She became silent, and I could tell she was pondering her thoughts for a good minute before she spoke.
"I'm ready to go. I'm done with liars and snakes."
"Alright none are allowed around me either, let's go."
She stood up from the bed this time, dropping the blanket to the floor. There was a look of uncertainty on her face, but she still sucked that shit up and flaunted her sexy ass body like she knew it deserved to be. I followed her across the room with my eyes until I already had her body memorized enough to daydream about when I'm not around her.
"I'll be waiting out here for you."
"Okay."
When I saw the two glasses they had drunk out of on the dining table, I went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and grabbed a water bottle to fill it with the wine left in both glasses. If there isn't some kind of substance in here, then I would begin to look at Ciara a little differently. But if there were, I am coming back to the Bronx later to kill her ex-husband for spiking her fucking drink.
His wife is my bitch now, and that's the type of shit I refuse to let slide. I'll get my homie down at the 63rd precinct to test this shit as soon as possible.
Once Ciara got dressed, she walked out of the room with two suitcases in her hands.
"You ready?"
"Yeah, I am, but there is also one more thing I feel I need to tell you if we are about to be all in. I can't hold any secrets from you because I expect you not to do the same for me.
"Alright, go ahead."
"So, Kairo got a gun charge, and he was supposed to go away to prison for a long time, but he got out only after making a deal with the cops."
