“Because God had finally moved on his heart, and Isaiah couldn’t hold you hostage to his unforgiveness any longer. So, you need to be thanking God for redeeming you to your brother.”
“And do I also need to thank God for the fact that the only woman I have ever wanted to spend my life with has just confessed to me that she was after my money?”
“Yes, because your money no longer impresses me. And for some reason, that only God knows, I love you still.” After saying that, Lily took her Bible from Shawn, stood up and said, “I’m going to check on Imani. I’ll be back down to fix you and the boys some lunch in a little while.”
***
Shawn never imagined that a woman could rip his heart out in such a fashion as Lily did on a regular basis. But what she had done to him this morning had been the worst. Shawn had always felt inferior to every member of his family, because he’d never been the smartest, that title had gone to his oldest brother Eric. He was never the kindest, that title had gone to Elaine, his youngest sister. Never the most talented, that had been Dee Dee, the superstar actress. He’d also never been the most handsome, that had been Isaiah, the heartthrob turned preacher.
But the one thing that he’d been proud of since the day he met Lily was that he believed that Lily had loved him for who he was. Now he was learning that her love had come about because of what he had. Deep down he had always had some lingering doubt. Hadn’t that been the real reason he hadn’t wanted to give his inheritance away? Because he thought he needed the money in order to impress others. He stood up and told his sons, “You boys stay in here and play. I need to take care of something, and then I’ll be back.”
The nursery was upstairs, so Shawn walked with his crutches until he reached his spiral staircase. He then hopped up each step. The pain his knee was suffering was nothing compared to the pain Lily had inflicted on his heart and he was about to have it out with her, right now… today.
He swung the door to the nursery open and then stood there for a moment trying to recover from his journey. Lily was in the rocking chair holding Imani. She looked beautiful to him. So full of love and innocence, the same way she looked when sitting in that same chair, nursing his two sons. But she wasn’t innocent.
“What are you doing up here, Shawn? You’re sweating… are you in pain?” She asked, while getting up from her chair and putting the baby back in the bed. “Sit down. Let me go and get you some pain pills.”
She rushed out of the room and then went into Shawn’s master suite. When she’d lived with him, he’d always kept his pain pills in his bathroom. She opened the medicine cabinet and searched around for his pain pills. She didn’t want to give him the Percocet, because she wanted him to be alert and able to take care of Imani if she needed to do something for her sons. So she located the eight hundred milligram Motrin. This would do the trick. During the time she’d lived with Shawn she’d become an expert on which pain medicines relieved Shawn’s pain, which ones made him sleepy and which ones did the job without making him sleepy. It wasn’t that Shawn enjoyed taking medicine. However, after having three hundred pound guys topple him, game after game, he sometimes needed pain medicine while his body healed itself.
“Here take this.” Lily handed Shawn the pills and a glass of water. He took the medicine and then she said, “Lean on me, I want to get you to your bed so you can lie down. I want to have a look at your knee.”
He wanted to protest, but he was in so much pain from that little hop-the-stairs stunt that he couldn’t even figure out how to form an argument. He leaned on Lily’s shoulder and let her help him to his bed. Lily pulled up Shawn’s pants leg and began examining his knee like a pro. Shawn put his hands under his head as he leaned back against his pillows and allowed Lily to tend to him as she had done so many times before after an injury.
“It’s swollen. Let me grab the oil out of your bathroom so I can massage your leg.”
“Can’t let your cash cow stay on the injured list for too long, can ya’?”
Lily ignored the comment as she went into the bathroom, grabbed the oil and brought it back so she could help ease Shawn’s pain. “Let me know if I’m hurting you,” she said as she began massaging his leg.
He closed his eyes trying to block out the feel of her touch. She was hurting him all right, but not by anything she was doing to his leg. “You know, Lily, right now I’m wondering if you truly understood those scriptures that you asked me to read.”
“I understood them,” she said while continuing to massage his leg.
“Oh really? Well then why haven’t you ever asked me to forgive you? Because right now, you are the one who seems to be in need of redemption.”
“What? Has your pain medicine kicked in already? Because you have started talking crazy if you think I need to apologize to you.”
Lily was working magic on his leg, causing him to feel things he didn’t want to feel at the moment. He pushed her hand away and sat up. “You used me, and you don’t think you owe me an apology?”
Lily sat on the edge of the bed as she said, “You cheated on me with every groupie you could find. So, I think I’ve paid enough for my sins against you.”
“Do you really? Well let me enlighten you, Ms. Lily Washington. You never believed me about anything I said to you… never listened at all. But I’ve already admitted that I was dating other women when we first met. But after you told me that you were pregnant with Shawnee,” he waved a hand in the air, “I don’t even care that you tricked me, because Shawnee and little Isaiah are the best. I’m glad they are my sons… but I stopped seeing those other women for you and you never appreciated that fact. All you did was constantly accuse me of sleeping around when it wasn’t even true.”
“How can you say it wasn’t true, Shawn? Women were always calling you and then there were those paternity test that you had to take.”
“I can’t stop people from calling my phone. But, if you’ll remember, I had my house phone number changed when you moved in, but even that wasn’t good enough for you. You made me feel like dirt because women wanted to falsely accuse me of being their baby’s daddy, when all the while you were just using me as a cash register.”
Lily raised her hand, tired of the fight. “Okay, maybe you have a point and I am or was a big hypocrite. But it hurts to feel like I wasn’t enough for you.”
“And it hurts to feel like an ATM machine,” Shawn shot back.
“Point taken. And believe me, I have learned my lesson,” she said as she stood up and began walking out of the room. “I need to go check on the boys.”
She got as far as the door when he said. “You didn’t find me even a little bit handsome when we first met?”
Lily swirled around. She looked at Shawn for a moment and then said, “Baby, don’t sell yourself short. I might have been grateful that you were rich. But it’s always been about you.” She took her time looking him over. “I was mesmerized by those deep dimples, those big brown eyes and bushy eyebrows… not to mention the fact that you’re all chiseled and buffed. I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. You are gorgeous and you already know it. I’m just giving you a fatter head than you already have.” She turned back around and this time she left the room without a backward glance. It was getting too hot in there.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Shawn and Lily sat in the kitchen with Melvin Cotrell and Detective Ron Jones. The kids were asleep so they were able to speak freely about Paris Holmes. Detective Jones had pen and paper in hand, Melvin nodded toward Shawn. “Okay, first off, Detective Jones, I want you to know that I will do everything I can to help you find Paris’s killer.”
“I wish you had felt this way a few days ago. The trail is getting colder by the minute,” Jones said.
“I know, and I’m sorry about that. But I couldn’t tell you why I went over to Paris’s house without making sure that I wouldn’t be hurting Lily.”
“Why would Lily be affected by what you had to tell me?” Jones
asked.
“Shawn went to see Paris because I asked him to talk to her,” Lily responded honestly.
“I see,” Jones said, “And why did you ask him to talk to her?”
“Paris had been bothering me ever since Imani was born. First she wanted me to talk to Shawn and get him to admit that Imani was his… but I couldn’t do that. So then she got this hair brained idea about us being in a reality show together.”
“What kind of reality show?” Jones asked.
“Something about football wives… but I told her that I wasn’t married to Shawn, so I wasn’t going on any show with such a title. Nor would I do any reality show. I just think the women on those shows are too catty.”
“Okay, you mentioned that Paris wanted you to convince Shawn to claim his daughter, but you didn’t want to… why is that?”
“I can answer that question for you, detective,” Shawn piped up. “If I claimed Imani as my child, Lily was worried that she might end up getting less child support money per month.”
Lily hit Shawn in the arm. “Stop being a jerk.”
“Stop being a gold digger.”
“You know what, I wish I’d never said anything to you at all. You are so childish.” Lily stood up and stalked out of the room without a backwards glance.
Jones glared at Shawn. “Did you really have to antagonize her while I was interviewing her?”
Still sulking, Shawn pouted, “I wasn’t trying to antagonize nobody. I was just stating a fact.”
“Well all right then, Mr. Fact-Stater, is the money issue the reason you thought Lily might have killed Paris?”
Shawn raised his hands, calling for a time out. “Whoa, wait a minute. I never said I thought Lily killed anybody.” He pointed in the direction where Lily had stormed out of the kitchen. “Go ask her. The night Paris was killed, Lily was at church with about seven hundred witnesses.”
“Okay, since the two of you obviously can’t be in the same room together, I’ll finish with you first and then go ask her,” Jones said and then asked, “So, why did Lily ask you to speak with Paris?”
Shawn was hesitant to answer the question. He was worried that in his anger he might say something that would hurt Lily. And no matter how ticked off he was with her, he would never want to cause her harm.
Melvin spoke up. “Shawn, we’ve already gone over this. Lily will be fine, but you need to cooperate with Detective Jones.”
“All right, all right. Look, here’s the thing,” Shawn said to Detective Jones, “Paris called Lily up gloating when the DNA results came back. She told Lily that she didn’t need her for that reality show anymore because she had Imani.”
“So Lily was jealous?” Jones asked.
“Yeah, well, at least I assumed she was jealous, but now I don’t know.”
“Of course I was jealous, you idiot!”
The three men at the kitchen table turned toward the entryway to see Lily standing there glaring at Shawn. She then turned to Detective Jones and said, “I came back because I remembered something that might be of use.”
“Come back and sit down with us,” Jones offered.
She glared at Shawn before saying, “That’s all right. I’ll just tell you what I know and then go back into the family room.” She then turned back to Jones and said, “The last time I spoke with Paris, she told me that I could have Shawn because she no longer wanted him. Evidently she had a new man.”
“I see, and did she tell you who this knew man was?”
“Not in so many words. But I got the impression that it was the man who she claimed was going to produce that crazy reality show.”
Detective Jones scribbled on his notepad, then he asked, “Did you get this producer’s name?”
Lily’s brow furrowed as she tried to remember. “She told me that man’s name.” Lily popped her fingers a few times then said, “It was Jason something. Yeah, his first name is Jason, I don’t remember his last name. But I bet one of the wives would know.”
“What wives, who are you talking about?” Jones asked.
“Paris set up a meeting about a month ago with several of the football players’ wives in order to get the ball rolling on that reality show. One of them might know Jason’s last name.”
“Okay, I’ll track that down.” Jones stood up. “I think I have a handle on what happened between you all and Paris that day, but Ms. Washington, can you tell me where you were on last Wednesday?”
“During the day and evening?” Lily asked.
“Around eight at night.”
“I was at church. We have Wednesday night Bible study and I always attend.”
“What’s the name of your church?” Jones asked, preparing to write the information down.
“Tabernacle of Faith, it’s in the Fifth Ward.”
“Thanks a bunch. I’ll be back in touch if I have anymore questions. Will you be staying here for a while, Ms. Washington?” Jones asked as Lily walked him and Melvin to the front door.
“No, I’m going home tonight, so you can reach me at the address I gave you earlier.”
“Well, thanks for the help,” Jones said as he walked out the door.
“Not a problem. Even though Paris and I had our differences, I truly hope you find her killer.”
Jones nodded.
Melvin said, “It was good of you to want to help. Most people in your shoes would have just stayed out of it.”
“Thank you for being here to help Shawn, Mr. Cotrell,” she said and then shut the door after Melvin walked through it.
“What’s this about you leaving tonight?” Shawn asked as he entered the foyer. “You owe me another night, remember?”
Lily swung around, ready to do battle. “If you think I’m staying in this house with you another ten minutes, you need to think again. I’m going to get my boys and get out of here.”
“Oh, so you’re just going to renege on a promise like that, huh? I thought keeping your word meant something to you Christians.”
She calmed down a bit at those words. He continued walking towards her as she said, “I do strive to keep my promises, but I don’t like having my words twisted and turned around into something other than what I said.”
He was in front of her now, so close that he could feel the warmth of her breath as she breathed in and out. “So, when you admitted that you wanted to date me because I had money, I shouldn’t have taken that to mean that you were being a gold digger?”
“Yes… I mean no. Look, you’re making things out to be worse than they really are.”
He stepped to her, pinning her against the wall and his rock hard chest. “Then explain it to me Lily. Because I really need to know what was real between us and what wasn’t.”
“It was all real, Shawn. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
He rubbed her cheek with the back of his hand. “When I touch you, how does it feel?”
She was shivering. “I like it when you touch my face.”
He bent down and nibbled her neck. “You used to go wild when I nibbled your neck like this. Did you really like that or were you just pretending?”
She closed her eyes and moaned, giving him all the answer he needed.
Shawn touched his lips to Lily’s and kissed her like a starving man who’d been given a plate of food. Their bodies melded together as Lily wrapped her arms around him and feasted upon his lips as well. When they came up for air, Shawn held on to her and leaned his head in her hair asked in a husky tone, “When I kiss you like that, are you kissing me back because you want me, or my paycheck?”
Lily pushed Shawn away from her. She had temporally lost her mind when he started touching her, but that paycheck remark brought her back to reality quick, fast and in a stomping her feet hurry. “Get away from me.”
She ran up the stairs, woke her kids up and told them to go give their father a kiss goodbye.
Shawnee was the first to protest. “I want to stay here, Mama.”
“Well you can�
��t. Now go do what I said so we can go.”
Shawnee and little Isaiah made their way down the stairs. Shawn was standing at the bottom of the stairs. They hugged him and then little Isaiah said, “Go with us, Daddy.”
Lily came down the stairs with purse and keys in hand. “Daddy needs to stay here with baby Imani, honey.”
“Why can’t baby Imani come with us? Or why can’t we all just stay here?” Shawnee asked as he started crying.
“Don’t cry, son. I’m sorry about all this. But I’ll make it up to you, okay?” Shawn promised.
As they walked out the door, Lily was wondering who in the world was going to make this up to her? How many times could she fall for the same creep in one lifespan?
CHAPTER NINE
As usual, instead of dealing with the issues he and Lily had, Shawn tried to hook up with another woman. He had promised Jules Moore that he was going to take her out to help her get over the breakup with her ex-boyfriend. Secretly though, he was hoping that Jules could help him get over Lily.
“So what do you want to do today?” Jules asked as she lounged on the sectional in Shawn’s family room with him.
“You know my knee is all busted up, girl. What more do you want me to do beside prop this leg up and look at your beautiful self?”
She moved closer to Shawn and blew in his ear as she said, “I thought that since you called, you wanted to go out or something?” There was an emphasis on the something.
Oh yeah, Shawn wanted to do something with Jules, all right. But he had been tricked by Paris and Lily, he wasn’t trying to go for his third strike so he told her, “I need to get let my knee heal… got to get back on the field and earn my paycheck.”
“You’ve been on the injured list a lot this past year. What’s up with that?”
Shawn hated when people asked about his injured status. It made him feel like a loser, because after signing a twenty million dollar contract, he had lost focus. The fight wasn’t in him anymore and he was losing his love for the game. At twenty-nine, Shawn was hoping to hang in there just two more years so he could fulfill his contract and then retire. He picked up the remote and flipped through the channels. “You wanna watch a movie?”
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