And such a simple gesture of friendship even after five years of no contact was the straw that almost broke Danielle’s emotional back. Her breath caught as she felt her tears rising along with the words she wanted so desperately to spill to someone. To tell someone that she was not yet thirty and looking death dead in the eye and knew she would not win.
“No, no, I’m good. I swear,” she said, blinking rapidly as she picked up her Birkin and then reached past the folded file to pull out her shades to put on. She also removed the Tiffany platinum case holding her business cards. She removed three and pushed them into Monica’s hand as she rose to her feet as well.
“Tell Latoya and Keesha that these are my numbers, and to call me to keep in touch,” she said, her voice beginning to break. “I have to leave now to catch a flight to LA. Okay?”
Monica took the cards and also took Danielle’s hands into both of her own. “Give us a chance, Danielle. Give us a chance to help you,” she said, her own eyes filling with tears. “To be there for you like you have always been there for us.”
Danielle forced yet another of her A-List smiles and hugged Monica close before she turned and rushed from the restaurant like fire was on her heels.
Chapter 29
Monica
“Is there a package for Mr. Steele?” Monica asked the doorman in the foyer of their building.
“There was but I took it up to him about a couple of hours ago,” he said.
Monica nodded and smiled as she turned from his front desk. She felt light-headed and had to force herself to take every step to the elevator. Every single step.
Xavier hadn’t lied. He deliberately made sure the second batch of packages were delivered while they sat like lambs to the slaughter in that ballroom.
She dreaded this moment but there was no escaping it.
Monica rode the elevator alone as she tried to think of just what she would say to Cameron. But that was difficult when she didn’t know just what he knew and by what method it was delivered. Just how bad was it?
As soon as she walked into their apartment and closed the front door she took slow steps across the foyer but saw Cameron sitting almost in complete darkness and silence. He was dressed in dark denims and a dark midnight navy shirt, sitting in one of the four chairs positioned around an ottoman in front of the ceiling-to-floor windows. He looked out at the city landscape with his chin resting in his hand.
Monica came to a stop behind the sofa.
“I see you made a friend,” he said, never once taking his eyes from whatever they focused on outside the window.
“Cameron—”
He held up his hand and shook his head before tapping his ear before he raised his hand and pointed the remote toward the flat screen over their marble fireplace.
Seconds later the sounds of Monica moaning in pleasure filled the sound system while the video of Xavier eating her on the wall of her office filled the television. She diverted her eyes. “Cameron, let me explain—”
He whipped his head to look at her with his eyes so filled with pain that she felt weakened by it. He picked up a black leather box and walked over to her. “Explain what?” he asked. “Huh? Explain how this stupid shit got delivered to me at our home? Huh?”
He opened it.
“So I’m never keeping secrets, and I’m never telling lies . . .”
“So I’m never keeping secrets, and I’m never telling lies . . .”
“So I’m never keeping secrets, and I’m never telling lies . . .”
Monica rushed over to him and snatched the box away from him to slam it closed.
“Did he send this to me?” Cameron asked, stepping in front of her to tightly grip her chin as his eyes bore into her like black diamonds. “Huh? Is your lover making a play for you? Does he want you?”
Monica tried to jerk her chin free but Cameron’s grip tightened. “You’re hurting me, Cameron,” she told him, bringing her hands up to try and pull downward on his forearms. They felt like bands of steel.
“Is he the reason you won’t have my baby?” he asked, finally freeing her with a jerking motion that made her head snap back a bit as her hair swung back and forth across her shoulders.
“I would never leave you. I would never cheat on you,” she told him, wanting to reach out and touch him but not trusting the heated anger that was clearly etched in the lines of his face.
He laughed bitterly. “So what’s that?” he asked, slashing his hand across the air to point to the screen.
Xavier had to have looped the image because Monica knew their little interlude had not lasted this long.
“I was drunk and I apologize for making a horrible decision but I promise—”
“Your promises don’t mean shit to me anymore, Monica,” he said coldly.
Monica felt weak with anguish and allowed herself to lean against the high back of the sofa as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Cameron, please—”
“Who is he?” he barked.
Monica raised her head and looked at him. Was now the time to explain about Xavier and his schemes? It wouldn’t change the fact that she had let herself be seduced by him. “I am not in a relationship with him. Never slept with him. I’ll never see him again. I was drunk and angry at you and it was stupid and I ended it. I stopped him from—”
“Eating your pussy,” Cameron supplied with a sarcastic shrug as he began to pace back and forth before her.
“Cameron,” she said.
“Is this because I got laid off? Because I am still the one paying the bills in here,” Cameron told her, stopping in his pace to pierce her with his eyes.
“You know what?” he said, throwing up his hands and walking past her. “I can’t stand to look at you right now. I’m out of here.”
She reached for his arm. “No, please don’t leave me. Please Cameron you don’t understand,” she begged, clutching to him desperately. “Please.”
He shook her off and continued his steady pace to the door. Seconds later it slammed shut.
Monica stumbled back but stopped just short of falling to the floor. She took off behind him and rushed out of the apartment just as the elevator doors shut him off from her view. She felt desperate and kept pushing at the buttons like it would make the elevator go in reverse.
Wanting to reach him before he left the building, she took off down the hall and pulled the door to the stairwell so hard that it swung back and slammed into the wall. Her heart pounded and her hair flew around and at times behind her as she took flight after flight of stairs. At times she moved so quickly that she stumbled down the steps or slid into the wall of the landing as she pursued her man at a feverish pace that she refused to give up.
By the time she reached the lobby floor her throat was dry from her gasping for breath. Her heart felt like it was kicking with steel-toe boots to be free of her chest.
“Shit,” she swore, her chest heaving as she fought hard not to collapse.
Monica licked her lips as she pulled open the door to the lobby and rushed across the beautiful marbled floor. An elderly woman with her dog on a leash entered the building and walked directly into her path. Monica’s momentum forward could not be stopped and she tripped over the dog and its leash.
She cried out as she hit the floor and the dog cried out from its leash being jerked forward by her foot.
“Ju-Ju,” the woman exclaimed.
Monica turned onto her back to undo her foot from the leash. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning back over to climb to her feet and race out the doors of the front of the building.
She looked up and down the street for any sign of Cameron. She thought she spotted him a block up the street and took off behind him. Nothing short of rich white folks staring at her kept her from screaming his name.
Monica had barely made it ten or fifteen feet before a man stepped into her path and she collided into him like he was a solid brick wall. She stumbled back and shook her head. “Excuse me,” she said, attempting
to sidestep him.
He sidestepped with her.
Monica frowned. “I said excuse me,” she said with attitude, looking up at him.
She gasped in shock as she realized she was standing before Rah, her ex-boyfriend who went to jail for assault for stomping on her leg and breaking it in two.
He was thicker in size and much meaner in demeanor as he grabbed her arm and roughly jerked her close enough to him to press a gun to her side. “I swear to God I would gladly blow a bullet in your guts and kill you, bitch,” he said, his voice rough and his eyes wild.
She looked down at the gun as it gleamed from the streetlight above.
“I knew if I just waited around I’d catch Miss High Society all alone,” he said, digging the gun in deeper as he led her to a van illegally parked around the corner.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“Shut the fuck up, bitch,” he said in a voice that just sounded like murder and mayhem.
He attempted to push her into the back of the van but Monica used the last of her strength to resist him. He reached out quickly and backhanded her. Monica fell backward into the van.
The gun.
Fuck this shit.
She moved back into the darkness of the van just enough to shield her from him as she unlatched her purse and pulled the 9mm out. She removed the safety.
Click.
He heard the gun before he saw it and quickly pointed his arm inside the van to point his at her as well.
POW!
Chapter 30
Latoya
On the entire ride home Latoya had clenched and unclenched her steering wheel until she was sure she rubbed some of the color from the leather. When she left the hotel and went to the parking deck to claim her car the first thing she did was check her phone. Not one call from Taquan. And one from Bones.
Lord help me.
Craving a pill so bad, her body was filled with so much anxiety that she could strip and just sit in her car at the red light butt naked. She seriously felt like she was going to freak out. But she thought of Keesha and the genuine support she offered even as she knew her own world was colliding.
She had the number of the rehabilitation center Keesha went to and she was going to call it first thing in the morning. She knew that meant a long talk with both her husband and the father of her older child.
She activated the Bluetooth system of her car that was connected to her phone as she dialed Bones’s cell phone number.
“Yo.”
“This Latoya. I was calling you back,” she said, forcing normalcy into her voice as she fought to control the trembling from the pills and the nerves she felt because she didn’t know the reason for his call. Has Xavier gotten to him too?
“I know I’m not supposed to get Tiffany again for another two weeks but my moms decided to go to this big family reunion in Atlanta—”
Latoya felt waves of relief course through her. “That’s fine. I mean she won’t miss school, right?” she asked.
“Nah, we just flying down there for the weekend.”
“Okay.”
The line went quiet.
Latoya wiped her hands over her mouth and lowered the windows to let in some of the crisp fall night air.
“You a’ight?”
Latoya jumped in surprise. She assumed he hung up. “Yes,” she said.
“A’ight then.”
The line disconnected.
They never minced words and she was surprised he even took a second out of his life to check on her. That was a first. But again she understood and never pressed him or his mother for more.
So far Xavier had spared her with Bones. So far.
Latoya came to a stop at another red light and stared at her phone for a long time before she finally dialed Taquan.
“Latoya,” he said, his voice filling the interior of the car.
“It’s me.”
“Are you on your way home?”
“Yes.”
“Your parents are here,” he said.
She closed her eyes and hung her head so low that her chin almost hit her chest.
“Why are they there?” she asked, rubbing her forehead with her fingers.
“I called them. We are all so disappointed in you and want explanations,” Taquan said. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?” she asked, intentionally stalling.
“Someone sent a box here saying you were addicted to pain pills and pretending to be sick to get them from the doctor.”
Latoya let her head fall back against the headrest. “I need help. I need your help. I need you, Taquan,” she said, her voice filled with all of her emotions.
“So it’s true?”
“You don’t understand how unhappy I have been. You are so caught up in building that church but you forgot about me and my dreams and my hopes and what the hell made me happy,” she said, her voice rising. “I just needed an escape. I need—”
“So it’s true?” he asked again.
“Yes, Taquan. Yes. Okay,” she said with emphasis slamming her hand down onto the wheel. “I didn’t know I would get hooked.”
“So you know how this will look if the church board finds out about it?”
The rest of Latoya’s words faded. She sat in her car at a red light on a deserted street, shocked and hurt beyond belief. “Is that all that matters, what the church board thinks?” she snapped. “Not ‘let me counsel my wife the way I go slave-running for everybody else in the church.’ Not ‘let me support my wife through this addiction and her recovery the same way I did my flock.’ Not ‘let me hold my wife and tell her that we are going to get through this together’?”
“You are my wife and I am the pastor of that church and you were raised to know better and do better and you know I would never abide by my wife doing drugs,” he said, his voice angry. “You have continuously tried to block my path—”
“Go to hell.”
“What did you say?”
Latoya laughed bitterly even as her heart shattered into a million pieces. The pain was so deep in her chest that she could barely breathe around it. “I said that you, Reverend Taquan Sanders, can go to hell. You are not God and you certainly are not my God and I live my life for Him—or at least I should be. I got away from that and so did you. See the body of this family is only as smart, strong, and gifted as the head. You do a great job leading your church but you are a horrible husband and I do not want to live in your life anymore.”
“You would leave me?” he asked, his voice echoing into the car after a long moment of silence.
“You left me a long time ago,” she told him, shifting her eyes to the streetlight as she willed it to turn green.
“You’re not taking my son,” he said.
“He’s better with you . . . for now,” she admitted, calling on every bit of strength she had. “I’m going into rehab in the morning.”
Taquan fell silent again.
“You still there, Taquan?”
“Listen we need to talk. Come home—”
“Send my parents home, this is a family matter between you and I,” she said, her voice insistent.
“Latoya—”
She shifted her eyes up to the rearview mirror as someone came up on her with their bright lights.
“Latoya, I do love you.”
Her eyes widened as the lights came closer and she could hear the squeal of tires just seconds before the car slammed into the back of her vehicle. Latoya was rammed forward against the steering wheel just before the air bag ejected. Her car went lurching forward into oncoming traffic and both a pickup truck and a car slammed into the sides of her.
“Latoya . . . Latoya . . .”
Chapter 31
Keesha
Keesha frowned as she drove up on her street and saw several of her neighbors standing on the street outside her townhouse. They eyed her as her Benz neared and she turned onto the driveway. It wasn’t until she climbed from the car and locked
it that she heard the crash of furniture coming from inside the house.
She went racing across the driveway and up the stairs to unlock the door and enter the house. “Oh my God,” she said, looking on as Corey stood posted up against Shawn as they circled each other like predators.
Both were shirtless and bruised, with blood coming from their noses and lips.
“Dirty trick-ass motherfucker,” Corey said, bobbing and weaving before he swung suddenly and uppercut Shawn.
“Stop,” she screamed, holding up both her hands.
They ignored her and Shawn lunged forward, wrapping both his arms around Corey’s leg to pick him up and slam him over his head. Corey crashed into the wall and all of her framed pictures came crashing down to the floor with him.
“Keesha, that you?” Diane called down the stairs.
She turned and dashed up to the guest room, coming to a stop in the doorway. “How long they been going at it?” she asked, reaching in her purse for her cell phone.
Diane was sitting in the middle of the bed on a large inflated doughnut to keep her from putting pressure on her bullet wound. “About ten or fifteen minutes. Shawn went to the store to get beer and it’s been on ever since he got back.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“Shee-it, I got a warrant for a bad check,” she said, picking up her lit cigarette from the ashtray sitting beside her on the bed.
“You just mad she was calling for this dick soon as your ass left the house.”
“That’s all your broke ass good for,” Corey shot back.
Keesha walked into the room and picked up the ashtray to move to the bedside table. She winced at the sound of glass crashing. This is some hood shit.
“Two cousins, huh?” Diane asked, releasing a stream of smoke.
“911.”
“I need the police sent to my house. My boyfriend and his cousin are fighting.”
“What’s your address, ma’am?”
“Fifty Ball Street.”
“There have been other calls placed about that residence and we already have a unit en route.”
Keesha was not surprised. She ended the call.
Never Keeping Secrets Page 22
