“Yeah, well…I don’t want that for you anymore. Plus, I’m your husband, and it’s my job to look out for you. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
We stared at each other for a couple of minutes, and then I reached over and tugged at the waist of his jogging pants.
“What you doing?” he asked.
“Pull ‘em down,” I replied.
His eyes darted around the outside of the vehicle, then settled on me. “You sure? Here? In the driveway?”
I nodded.
He lifted his butt and pulled his pants down. Just as I thought, he wasn’t wearing any underwear. This man had an exquisite penis, and I’m not just saying that because I was crazy about him.
I licked my lips, leaned over the center console, took him into my mouth, and felt him flinch.
“Oh, we doing this? Shit! Okay, okay, okay…” he shouted, his voice filling the inside of the truck.
“Mmmmmm,” I hummed, as I pulled back, popping him out of my mouth. “Let the seat back.”
“Huh? What? Let the…oh! Okay.”
With his seat pushed back, I climbed over the console, kneeled on the floorboard in front of him, and resumed my work, bobbing my head up and down in his lap, slurping and sucking, feeling him grab the back of my head and gently push it, egging me on. His breathing grew louder and louder as I sucked and sucked, sliding my hand up and down his erection at the same time, and when he crested, I grabbed the sides of his stomach and accepted all he had to give, then I climbed up his body and kissed him, a kiss he returned with savagery, sucking on my tongue, holding my head so that I couldn’t have ended the kiss if I wanted to.
When our mouths finally disconnected, he held my face in his hands and looked me in the eye. “When I was at the Sankofa center, the first few days were so hard, I wasn’t sure if I’d live through it. It wasn’t just the detoxing or the withdrawals—I’d been sneaking drinks when I was living with Everett—it was the counseling, the therapy sessions. It was hard having to face what I’d become head on. It was fucking terrifying to think about where I was headed if I didn’t finish the program and get myself together. But hell, I knew what being fucked up was like. That didn’t require work. Getting clean did. I started thinking about leaving, just saying forget it. And one night, after I’d been there for about a week, I had a dream. I dreamt that my mom was sitting on the bed next to me in my room at the center, and she told me not to give up and that she was proud of me for getting help. She also told me that if I held on, if I did what I needed to do to heal, I’d be given a reward. Now I know that reward is you, baby. You are everything I ever wanted, my dream come true.”
I blinked a few times, fighting back tears. “You really mean all that, don’t you?”
“Yes, baby…from the bottom of my heart.”
“Neil, you saved me. I’m the one who won here. You saved me, and you fell in love with me. You know, I’ve had a crush on you for a while now, long before we got married.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, but you never noticed me. You looked through me, just like everybody else does.”
He frowned slightly as he gripped my chin. “Baby, I was too fucked up to notice anything good. Remember, I told you I couldn’t see through the pain to recognize my blessings. You’re a blessing, but I had to heal in order to truly see you that day when we met to talk about the wedding. I saw you. I saw you for what you’d mean to me.”
“Is that why you kissed me like you kissed me?”
“Naw, I kissed you like that because I felt you. As soon as my lips met yours, I felt your soul, and I knew you were my other half. I just had to get you to see it.”
“I see it, Neil. I truly do.”
“I’m so thankful you do.”
22
“Girl, this is nice! Damn! You married up like a motherfucker. I mean, I knew he was Big South’s brother, but shit! This house is the bomb! Nice furniture, and it smells so good! It’s real clean, too. Can I get some water?” As Koko prattled on, I rolled my eyes and grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator. I knew she was throwing out hints for a tour, but that shit wasn’t happening. I heard a long time ago from some old lady that you don’t let folks see everything you got, and what I had was Neil McClain, who I’d left in our bed after fixing him up with some coochie. It was after nine at night, and I didn’t expect him to get dressed and come meet her, and she damn sure wasn’t getting a full tour on the off-chance Neil decided to stumble out of that pussy stupor I tried to put him in.
“Here you go,” I said, handing Koko the water. “You can go ahead and have a seat. What you wearing tonight?”
“Oh!” She dug in her huge purse and pulled out a purple piece of super-skimpy lingerie. “This.”
“Okay. Hmm. Let me go get my new eye shadow palette. I think those colors would work with this. Be right back.”
I went to the room that was mine when I first moved in and grabbed one of my many makeup bags. When I made it back to the kitchen, Neil was sitting at the table across from Koko, and the two of them were in the middle of a conversation. I inspected him in his t-shirt and jogging pants and narrowed my eyes at him.
“I thought you were sleep,” I said, as I unpacked the tools of my trade and sat so that Koko and I were face to face.
“Naw, baby. I didn’t wanna miss seeing you in action for the first time.”
“Ooo, he calls you baby?!” Koko gushed. “I love when men call their woman baby.”
“Neil, you see me do my makeup all the time,” I said, as I searched through my primer collection. “You’ve definitely seen me in action before.”
“Not like this,” he responded.
I left it alone. Koko was ogling him, but I knew she wouldn’t get anywhere with him. As insecure as I still felt sometimes, I knew he loved me.
About an hour later, I was one hundred dollars richer—I gave her the loyal customer discount—and Koko was on her way to TNT to hit the pole.
“You’re a magician,” Neil said, as he watched me pack up my makeup.
“Why you say that?”
“Shit, you saw what you did. That girl was hurting before you fixed her up. This is what you do all the time? Transform people?”
“Neil, for real…why are you acting like I don’t do my own makeup all the time?”
“Because you enhance your beauty. You still look like you when you’re done. That girl looks like a different person!”
I shrugged. “I do what I can.”
“You need an office or a salon. Do they call them salons where you do makeup?”
“Yeah, a salon or a studio or a beauty bar. Blac Chyna has a place where they do makeup.”
“Well, you need one. I’ma make that happen soon.”
“You don’t have to do that, or are you already tired of folks coming here?”
“No, it’s just that you deserve to have a legit place of business.”
“Hmm, you know what I wanna do?” I said, slipping into his lap.
“What?”
“Go out. Let’s hit Second Ave.”
“It’s ten.”
“That’s when grown folks go out.”
“But I’m almost finished with the book I’m reading.”
“Baby, I wanna say something, but I don’t want you to get mad and divorce me.”
He chuckled, wrapping an arm around me. “You ain’t getting rid of me that easily. Say what you gotta say.”
“I think…maybe feeding yourself all that heavy information helped you fall into that hole you were in. Well, that plus the not having sex thing. Anyway, your shit was off-balance. All learning and seriousness and no fun. I think that’s why we work. I’m the opposite.”
“Yeah, you are all fun, ain’t you?”
“I try to be. So anyway, put the book down and take me out tonight. You owe me anyway. You didn’t even have to non-alcoholic wine and dine me before we got married.”
After he kissed me, he said, “Okay
, baby.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck and sang to me as we danced to Xavier Omär’s Afraid, and I wondered if the words had ever rung true for her. If I hadn’t been given the information that she was supposed to be my wife from Mother Erica and then received confirmation in my dreams, I would’ve been afraid to love her, afraid I’d mess things up. But as it was, I entered our marriage with confidence that everything would work out, because this thing between us was predetermined, predestined, and preordained.
I kissed her mid-verse, and she yelped into my mouth, then melted into me. Sage’s body was so soft. I loved the feel of her in my arms.
We stayed out on the floor through a couple more songs, then headed back to our VIP seats.
“Hey, I’ma hit the restroom and go get some water. You want anything?” Sage asked, once we were on the couch.
“No, I’m good, baby. You know, you can drink alcohol if you want. It won’t bother me,” I said.
“My king isn’t drinking, so neither am I. Anyway, you keep me high on you. I don’t need to drink.” She handed me her purse and cell phone, kissed me, and left.
All I could do was smile.
“What you up here grinning about?”
I watched as Nolan rounded the sofa and sat across from me.
“What you doing here? You not off making a movie or something?” I asked.
“Not tonight. Popped in here to make sure the place was still standing. The VIP room occupied?”
I shook my head. “Naw, you know Sage likes being out here in the middle of everything, so this is where we are.”
“I know that’s right. Keep her happy.”
“Shit, that’s what I plan on doing.”
“That’s your heart, huh?”
I looked up at my twin. “My whole heart. I need to be thanking you and Everett every day for asking me to marry her. But y’all still ain’t shit.”
Nolan threw his head back and laughed. “Look, I was tryna keep my wife happy. You get it now, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I get it. I’d wrestle a damn lion for her.”
“Shit, I’d fight Mayweather for Bridgette.”
“We some lucky motherfuckers, huh? Blessed.”
He nodded. “We are most definitely blessed, little brother.”
Sage’s phone buzzed in my hand, and instinctively, I checked the screen. “What the fuck?” I said.
“What? Is that Emery’s shady ass?”
“No. This is Sage’s phone. Her punk-ass ex just texted her.”
“What the nigga saying?”
I stared down at the phone, felt my damn heart speed up, and hopped up from the couch holding her purse and her phone.
As I rushed away from him toward the closest ladies’ room, Nolan shouted, “Neil! Wait!”
“What the fuck is this?!”
I almost jumped out of my shoes at the sound of Neil’s voice assaulting my ears the second I stepped out of the restroom. He was holding my phone up in my face, so close that I had to back up a little to focus on the screen, and when I saw the message, I dropped my eyes and sighed. “Baby—”
“I saw his other messages, too. This motherfucker been texting you this shit the whole time we been together?!”
“Baby, can we get out of this doorway? You know what? Let’s just go,” I said as calmly as I could.
“No, you wanted to go out, so we’re out. Just explain this shit to me, and we’ll be good,” Neil insisted.
“Uh, Neil, man. Maybe you should listen to her. This is personal business. Y’all don’t need to hash it out here.” That was Nolan, whom I’d just noticed standing behind Neil.
Neil seemed to think about it, his eyes still narrowed at me. Then he finally mumbled, “Let’s go,” and I followed his angry ass out of the club.
“I’m waiting,” he said, eyebrows raised.
From my seat on the passenger side of my truck, I bit my bottom lip as I turned my attention to the text message emblazoned on my phone.
I see you still posting pictures on IG of you and that nigga you paid to marry your fat ass. Motherfucker must’ve been broke as hell to green card you.
“He sends this mess, and I just ignore him,” I explained.
“Why haven’t you blocked him?”
“I…I don’t know?”
“You don’t know why you been letting this nigga send you this shit for months on my watch?”
“It doesn’t bother me. I don’t care what he says. I think maybe if I blocked him, he’d think he was hurting me.”
“Sage, I love the hell out of you, but that doesn’t make sense.”
The tears began to fall, and I didn’t try to stop them. “Maybe…I think I look at those to remind myself that me and you aren’t a dream.”
“What?”
“It—I don’t understand why you love me so much. The stuff he sends? That’s what I’m used to getting from guys. I’m—I was always a joke to them, something to do, someone to play with, and that’s partially my fault, because I seemed to always pick assholes and then take shit off of them because…hell, I don’t even know why I let them treat me like that. I guess I just didn’t want to be alone. And look at me? I’m not what most people see as attractive and I know it.” I sighed and sniffled. “Look. I-I’m not used to what me and you have. The way you treat me? It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around it sometimes. I’m scared all the time that I’ll wake up and realize this was just a dream.”
“Baby…” he grabbed me and held me. “You don’t know that my love is real?”
“In my heart, I do,” I whimpered. “I know what we have is real, I do, but it’s just hard to wrap my mind around it. I told you, I’ve liked you for a while. I’ve wanted you for a while. Besides my career, I’ve never gotten anything I really wanted before. Especially nothing like this. Not love.”
I felt him sigh and wondered if he was just over me and my insecurities, but I couldn’t help it. I knew he loved me. I didn’t doubt that for a minute. I was just too messed up in the head to receive it properly. When I opened my mouth to try to explain that to him, he pressed his lips to my ear and began to speak.
“When Ev and Nolan came to me and told me about you, about your situation, I thought they were crazy. Yeah, I’d seen you hanging with Jo and Bridgette, but I didn’t know you. To me, they were asking me to marry a complete stranger, and that shit wasn’t happening. So I told them no and went about my business. Went to counseling—”
“With Mother Erica?” I asked.
“Yeah. I told her about you, about what Ev and Nolan asked me to do, and she advised me to do it.”
“She did?”
“Yeah, she said you were my soul mate, the woman who was especially created for me, and I thought her ass was crazy, too, but I knew better. I trusted her not to steer me wrong. I just didn’t understand. So, that night, I dreamed about you. You were sitting in your car, parked close to a bridge, a bridge I’d driven over before, and you were crying. I could…I could see the humiliation and hopelessness you felt. You were staring at that bridge and the water, and you kept saying that no one would care if you did it, if you jumped.”
I stiffened in his arms.
“In that dream, I was there in the car with you, and I tried to touch you when you opened the car door. I tried to stop you. I kept telling you it’d be okay and that I would help you. I was begging you not to hurt yourself, and I remember it all felt so real. My heart ached for you like we were connected, like I was feeling your pain. It was kind of like the connection Nolan and I have. In the past, we sometimes shared experiences when we were nowhere near each other. I felt that same connection the first time I kissed you.”
“I think I felt it, too. I just didn’t know what it was. I’d never felt anything like it before.”
“Me either, not that strongly. So, like I was saying, I tried to stop you, and then I screamed at you that I’d marry you and that I needed you, and the crazy thing is, I really felt like I needed yo
u, and then you stopped, sat there for a minute looking around the car, and closed the door. That’s when I woke up. I tried to go back to sleep, but every time I’d drift off, I’d see you in my dreams, feel your pain. And if it wasn’t you, it was my mother telling me you needed me, that you were mine. The shit was exhausting. I couldn’t get any peace or rest until I told Ev I’d marry you.”
He kept holding me, and I let him, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t give him a response.
“I know this all sounds crazy. I know you probably don’t believe—” he began, but I interrupted him.
“No…I know you’re telling the truth. I’m just…I don’t know what to say, because that actually happened, me being in my car looking at that bridge. I was trying to figure out how to get over the barriers, because I was going to jump. I was hopeless and humiliated, because I had tried one last time to get Gavin to help me. I tried everything…I begged him, literally fell on my knees and pleaded with him, and he still said no, and all I could think was what was the point? If someone who should’ve cared about me wouldn’t help me, what was the use in living? I felt…worthless. I mean, I had my friends, but like you said, I couldn’t see through the pain to recognize my blessings.”
“Baby…”
“After Gavin rejected me again, I couldn’t go back to Bridgette’s. I felt so damn low, I actually slept in my car for a couple of days, finally made my way to that bridge, and I remember feeling like I wasn’t alone and thinking that that should’ve scared me since it was the middle of the night, but it didn’t. When I opened the car door, this overwhelming feeling that things would be okay hit me. I didn’t know how they’d be okay, just that they would, and that made me close the door. That was the last night I spent in my car. When I talked to Bridgette, she told me she needed me to come home, because she and Jo had figured things out for me. Turns out you were what they figured out.”
It was his turn to be silent.
“Neil?” I said softly. “Do you believe me?”
Let Me Free You (McClain Brothers Book 4) Page 12
