Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 124320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
“Terrell Anderson.” She chuckles. “It was a total cliché. Prom night my junior year. He was a senior and got us a room. I had to lie to my parents to stay out. Kayla covered for me and made sure I had condoms.”
“And was it good?”
She laughs, but it’s laced with regret. “I guess for him. Not for me. I was disappointed, too. Even more for how he acted after it was over.”
“What’d he do when it was over?”
“Another cliché.” She rolls onto her back and studies the ceiling. “He told all his friends he’d fucked Joseph Allen’s daughter.”
“Bastard,” I mutter, wishing I could find the piece of shit and tear him apart.
“Very much so. When I found out he’d told people, I confronted him and dumped his ass. He didn’t like that. I was a junior who should have been happy he’d deigned to take me to the prom, much less pay for a hotel room and dispose of my virginity.”
“What’d he do?” Because I can already tell he did something I’ll hate him even more for.
“He told me if I didn’t let him fuck me again and suck his dick this time, he’d post pictures of me in the cafeteria. Pictures he took while I was asleep. He even threatened to send them to my father.”
“Motherfucker. What’d you do?”
“What I always did with my problems.” She smiles sadly. “Went to my father.”
“You told him—”
“I told him everything. I always could.” Her naked shoulders gleam in the moonlight when she shrugs. “He told me not to worry. Said he would take care of it, and he did. I don’t know exactly how, but there were no photos and Terrell couldn’t even look me in the eye to the day he graduated.”
“I hope your dad did something incredibly painful that ruined his future.”
Kimba slants an amused glance to me. “He might have. Daddy did have his ruthless streak.”
I shake her playfully under the covers. “That’s where you get yours from.”
“Damn right.” She laughs but sobers after a moment. “Terrell ended up going to Morehouse. If I hadn’t known before that I didn’t want to go to Spelman, I knew then. I didn’t want to be that close, to run into him.”
“Did that idiot affect your decision not to go to Spelman?”
“Not just that, but it did kind of push me over the cliff I was already standing at the edge of. My family name, reputation here in this city, started feeling like an albatross. I wanted to set it aside for a little while and have a clean slate in a new place. Arizona gave me that.”
“That’s where you met Lennix Hunter?”
“Yes.” A wide, open smile touches her lips. “We were two peas in a pod from day one and have been best friends ever since.”
“Is it silly that I still get a little jealous hearing you call someone else your best friend?”
“Yeah, that’s really silly.” She throws her leg over mine and pulls me close until her breasts are crushed between our chests. “Because you should know by now that no one could take your particular place.”
I search under the covers for her hand, link our fingers. “I didn’t even know how much I missed you until I got you back.”
“I felt it at the funeral.” She breathes out a shaky laugh. “As soon as I saw you again, I knew it would be like this.”
“Is that why you shut me down?”
She gnaws at the corner of her lip. “When I saw Noah and Aiko, realized you had a family, knowing the pull I felt between us right away, I knew it would be too dangerous to stay in touch.”
“We’d been having problems even before that, and we’d gone to counseling, but I wonder if some part of me gave up after I saw you, hoping our lives might intersect again.”
I hate to even say that out loud. I hear how it sounds. It was a subconscious thought I’d never given voice to.
She’s quiet, running her fingers through my hair, soothing the turmoil that idea causes.
“Does it make you feel guilty?” she asks after a few quiet seconds.
I press my forehead to hers. “I don’t know what I feel, but it’s nothing related to regret. I did try, had been trying, but after that funeral… I knew why you didn’t give me your number. I felt it, too, that pull. I can’t even reduce it to just attraction. It feels like we were this one thing that was severed in half, and our parts want to be rejoined.”
Wow. That sounded intense.
“I mean—”
“Yes. That is how it feels,” she says.
We’ve only been back in each other’s lives for two weeks. We just made love. It’s too soon to say what I know is true. What has always, on some level, at least for me, been true.