Licking the skin of my teeth as I chuckled, I shook my head. “Fohr McClarren, I appreciate the offer, but I’m going to decline… again.”
“I hope you’re well rested, because I’m not leaving until I can convince you to accept. I’ve got all night.” He tossed his free hand in the air as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“It’s morning,” I stated as a matter of fact. He needed to understand the level of intrusion he’d reached.
“That, too.” He wasn’t fazed by my correction.
“People are outside waiting on you,” I tried reasoning.
“Then, let them wait.” He shrugged, pulling his jacket from his arms.
His eyes never left mine as a stare down commenced. Glued to one another like flies on fruit, I waited for contact to break, but it didn’t. Strong-willed and determined to make me crumble, Fohr glared at me with intent.
My entire body ached, feeling as if I’d been lowered into a pit of lava inch by inch. Engulfed in unbearable heat, I found myself struggling to even reap the benefits of the saliva that I swallowed back.
I was parched and needed relief. Needed him to remove the sword from my chest that he’d punctured my heart with. This man was Godly… and commanding. He had every ounce of my undivided attention, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why I was unable to pull away.
“The money has been wired, Kit.” As if we were familiar souls, he continued to call me by my first name, again, intentionally establishing a role that wasn’t reserved for him in my life.
Why is he doing this?
“Why me?” I managed to break my silence, tired of hearing my heart drum in my chest.
“Why not you?” He combated, standing tall, dangling in the air,my air, as if he belonged there.
“Because, I’ve said no, already.”
“But, you didn’t mean it,” he assured me as if he knew my heart.
“What gives you that idea?”
“The fact that I’m still in your home and you didn’t call the police on my Black ass the minute you saw me at your doorstep,” he reasoned, and he was right.
“Calling the police on a Black man is the last thing on my list of to-dos. I’d never recover if their fears outweighed their better judgment and sworn confessions to protect and serve… and you end up with a bullet to your head or knee to your neck until you could no longer breathe. That would never happen on my watch, and not because of me.
“So, me not calling the cops who’d possibly be intimidated by those stakes you seem to be walking on or the bulkiness of your chest has nothing to do with you but everything to do with the fact that I can better protect myself than they can. They’re hunting our Black men for sport, Fohr. I’m offended that you’d even mention a call to them.”
Holding his hands in the air, he nodded. “You’re right.”
He placed the last piece of banana in his mouth before crossing his hands at his center.
“Kit?”
“Please.” My chest rattled as I calmed the intense vibrations of my body. “Please don’t call me that.”
“It’s your name.”
“I know.” I nodded, rubbing the moisture from my forehead. The heat was now seeping through my pores.
“Then tell me…Kit. What should I refer to you as?”
“I don’t know. Anything. As a matter of fact, can you please leave my home? I’m not feeling my best. Maybe it’s the rain that made its way inside or something I ate, but I’m not feeling well.”
“You’re deflecting.”
“I’m asking you to leave,” I mustered the strength to push out. “I really don’t want you here.”
Staring back at the defeat on his handsome face, I almost took back every word that I had planted, but I couldn’t. He needed to leave. He needed to remove himself from my home. He needed to remove himself from my head.
