Tell Me No Lies

by Nikki- Michelle

  Tell Me No Lies

  Nikki-Michelle

  www.urbanbooks.net

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Tell Me No Lies

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chyanne

  Gabe

  Chyanne

  Jamie

  Gabe

  Aric

  Chyanne

  Chyanne

  Jamie

  Chyanne

  Gabe

  Gabe

  Jamie

  Chyanne

  Gabe

  Chyanne

  Chyanne

  Jamie

  Gabe

  Gabe

  Chyanne

  Jamie

  Aric

  Chyanne

  Chyanne

  Gabe

  Jamie

  Aric

  Chyanne

  Gabe

  Chyanne

  Jamie

  Aric

  Chyanne

  Chyanne

  Epilogue

  Copyright Page

  Tell Me No Lies

  Dedication

  For Michelle and Sam

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the readers who have followed the characters Chyanne, Aric, Jamie, Gabriel, and all the others through this journey. A big shout-out to the ladies of Literary Divas-Forever book club. You ladies made me feel so welcomed when you invited me out to discuss this series. Your generosity and hospitality will never be forgotten. Thank you to my bestie (and wifey number 1 *insider), Kai Leakes; Carlette Norwood (my other wifey, LOL); and the Naughty Angels who’ve supported me during this whole journey (Krisha, Dale, Tameakie, Theresa Hodge, Torrae, Harriet, Andrea, Aamirah, Kim, Kellie, PT, Veronica, and Tiffany). And last but not least, a big thank-you to my literary agent, Brenda Hampton. Thank you for your wisdom and guidance. Without you, I probably wouldn’t be here, and I’m grateful for all the time you’ve devoted to schooling me.

  Prologue

  How did you know when something just wasn’t right? What was that feeling you got when you knew you were doing something that you shouldn’t be doing? Was it intuition? Was it instinct? What kept men and women from cheating on their significant others, wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends . . . fiancés, fiancées? Whatever it was, I needed it to kick in and kick in soon. I was about to cheat on the man I loved with a man who had always caused me more pain than pleasure . . . depending on how you looked at it. He was the reason that I’d had to sit in a courtroom and be belittled by his ex-wife’s defense attorney, the reason I had to be labeled as a home-wrecking whore. He was the reason that same ex-wife had tried to kill me. Yet I was about to let him ruin all that I’d worked for. Why? Why was I about to do this? Why couldn’t I just leave this man alone?

  “Oh my God . . . Aric . . . please . . . ,” I begged.

  I was begging, yes. As soon as he eased and inched his way deep inside of me, I had to start begging. No, I wasn’t begging him to stop. I was begging him not to stop. I was begging him to stay in that one spot that he was hitting. That one spot that was causing me blinding pleasure. That one spot that he’d made his a long time ago. That one spot that had me biting down on my bottom lip, gripping the top of my dryer as he sexed me from behind. The loud laughter of children could be heard just outside. Music played as adults laughed and yelled for their children not to do this and not to do that. Our son’s birthday party was going on outside, but there we were in my house, the house I shared with Jamie. I was allowing Aric to violate Jamie’s space, helping him to disrespect a man who loved me more than he loved himself at times.

  Why was I doing this?

  “I love you. I love you so fucking much, it kills me to see you happy with him,” Aric whispered against my ear.

  He’d told me he loved me. Finally, Aric had told me he loved me. All I heard was that he loved me. I should have heard everything, but all I heard . . . was that he loved me.

  Chyanne

  “What do you mean, you’re not bringing him home tonight, Aric? I was expecting him.”

  “You heard what I said. It’s late. I can drop him off at school in the morning. Makes no sense to bring him to you when I’m closer to my house, anyway.”

  I sighed and shook my head. The day had taken a toll on me. I was tired and stressed, and my feet hurt from being on them most of the day at work. I was so exhausted that I kept yawning between every sentence and my eyes had started to water. Holding my cell to my ear with my shoulder, I pulled my black six-inch heels off and plopped down on my bed. Frankly, I was really too drained to argue, especially with Aric. When things didn’t go his way, he could still turn into a real jackass, even though he and I had been on a good track for a while.

  “Okay, Aric, but next time would you give me a heads-up?” I asked him.

  “Why do I have to give you a heads-up when I’m keeping my son for the night?” he asked.

  I could hear the clear agitation in his voice as he asked the question.

  “Because it’s just common courtesy, especially if I’m expecting him home.”

  I could hear movement in my kitchen and smell the food being cooked downstairs. I stood and began to unbutton my shirt. My head was pounding as the events of the day began to replay in my head. I wasn’t expecting to turn on the TV and basically be labeled a glorified whore and a home wrecker. I was neither of those things, but because I had chosen to continue seeing a married man even after finding out he had a wife, it was my punishment. The media and the blogs were still talking about me, a woman they didn’t even know. There were harsh judgments about me, but it was one of the prices I’d had to pay. I didn’t understand how Stephanie became the victim given all the madness she’d caused.

  “Look, aren’t we on the phone right now? I’m telling you right now that he’s staying with me. That’s all the courtesy you’re getting. Now, go to sleep,” Aric said to me.

  I sighed. “You don’t have to be rude about it, Aric. I haven’t seen him since I dropped him off for school this morning.”

  Taking my earrings off, I yawned again.

  “Go to bed, Chyanne. AJ is fine, and he’s in his room, sleeping now. I’m about to go to bed myself, so good night.”

  “Tell my baby I love him.”

  He didn’t say anything else afterward. He hung up the phone, and I walked into my bathroom. I’d moved since the incident happened at my old place, when Aric’s now ex-wife had tried to kill me and my then unborn son. Jamie and I were still together. Despite the big circus-like spectacle that I’d made of my life, I’d picked up the pieces the best way I knew how. Now I was twenty-seven, and it had taken months of counseling and a lot of love and support from Jamie to get me to where I was. Sometimes I just couldn’t believe all the hell I’d been through with Aric. I sat on my bed in a daze, thinking about it. Let me give you a rundown of things that happened.

  In September 2010 I met the man who I thought was the man of my dreams, Aric McHale. Our relationship was shaky from the start and became one that was complicated by a deep sexual attraction. While I didn’t know it in the beginning, I finally learned he was married, and that marriage cost me dearly, almost taking my life and that of my and Aric’s unborn child.

  Aric’s secrets went beyond his having a wife to his having slept with my best friend, April. The people in my life all had their own ties to Aric, and they seemed to side against me. Even my friend Gabe, Aric’s best friend and another man I was strongly attracted to, turned out to be Aric’s wife’s brother. The only person I could depend on was a man who kept taking me back into his life no matter how man
y times I chose to return to Aric. Jamie was the one constant in the chaos that had become my life, and I had finally realized that he was the person I wanted to be with.

  Jamie and I had moved to the Lake Spivey area in the Hidden Lakes community of Metro Atlanta. It was very different from where I’d once lived. First off, it was a posh neighborhood. We’d moved into a house so big, I initially got lost a couple of times looking for the bathroom. The house was beautiful. It sat on a lake and had a boat dock in the back. It was a gorgeous Mediterranean estate with a private backyard and landscaping that took your breath away. Jamie knew how he wanted the yard manicured. I’d found that he was a stickler for getting things done right the first time around, so as not to repeat them. The foyer and the front room played host to nine-foot vaulted ceilings, Italian marble flooring, and hanging chandeliers, which added to the elegance of the house. Tile roofing and the exterior’s stucco and brick finish set the house off and gave it that Mediterranean feel. The whole thing was courtesy of Jamie. Although my business with Shelley was off to great start, I had not reaped enough dividends yet to purchase a house in that price range.

  But the thing I found most interesting was the fact that even though we lived in an upscale community, Jamie was still that same Afrocentric guy that I’d met before. He still burned incense. He still painted and played around with his camera from time to time. I guess what I was trying to say was it seemed that money hadn’t changed Jamie. The personality he had when I met him was the same personality he carried over into our relationship. He didn’t boast or brag about the money he had. Just as before, he was humble.

  There was a lot about Jamie that I didn’t know before we became an item. I’d known he owned several bookstores, but I had had no idea his bank account could rival those of most top-playing athletes and businessmen. He said it’d come from being smart with his money, investing, and being frugal. I had had no idea he owned more than one home. That loft that he’d invited me to was just one of many. He had an MBA but never gloated about it. Over the course of us being together, we’d learned so much about one another. He was a great father to his twelve-year-old son, Ashton, just as he was a great father figure to AJ.

  He’d told me the story of how his son’s mother had intentionally gotten pregnant by him. It was quite interesting. The way Jamie told it was that they had been together since his first year of college. He was a top football prospect, and several colleges were vying for him. He accepted a full-ride scholarship to the University of Georgia and was set to go to the NFL, until he abruptly changed his mind. He didn’t tell anyone of his decision not to join the NFL until he was certain about what he wanted to do.

  The reason he changed his mind was that she had come to him weeks before and had told him she was pregnant. She was banking on him going to the NFL. She told him she’d been on birth control, and they were still using condoms. She lied about the birth control, and she had been poking holes in his stash of condoms, finally getting pregnant like she had wanted. Well, little did she know that her decision to get pregnant helped him turn down offers from several NFL teams. He chose in the end to stay home so he could be a major part of his child’s life. I respected him for that.

  Funny thing about it all was that she came right out and told him what she had done after finding out that he had turned down the opportunity to be in the NFL draft. She was pissed. She had wanted all the glitz and glam that was sure to come with all the money Jamie would have earned in the NFL. He was the best wide receiver UGA had to offer, and his stats proved it. He and I laughed about it when he told me of her deceit. He broke up with her the same day, but they remained friends for the sake of his son. Now what I hadn’t expected was for her to be a white woman. Imagine my shock when she dropped Ashton off and in came a biracial child who was the spitting image of Jamie. I couldn’t hide my surprise and didn’t try to. I was sure the look on my face spoke volumes.

  She was a blond-haired white girl with the body and attitude of a black woman. She and I remained cordial. I had no qualms about her, even after I heard her ask Jamie what he wanted with a woman like me when he could have his pick of any other woman. I would have come out and told her a thing or two about herself, except Jamie put her in her place rather nicely. He told her I was more of a woman than she could ever hope to be and that was why he loved me and needed me more than his next breath. I smiled. That was why I loved the man. I still remembered the day we agreed to give our relationship a go. I’d finally gotten over my Aric kick, and the rest was history, as the saying goes. Jamie had been there for me more than anyone had ever been.

  Looking around the bathroom, I sighed and stretched, then smiled at the note Jamie had left for me. He’d always leave me little notes to remind me how much he loved me. As usual, his note was short and sweet.

  I love you. Missed you, too. Smile, because you’re beautiful.

  I put the note down with that same smile plastered on my face and went to turn on the water in the whirlpool bath. The bathroom itself was a massive space, almost as big as the master bedroom itself. There were amber glass vessel sinks that sat atop a Chinese-inspired custom vanity and cork tile flooring. The oversize shower was big enough for me, Jamie, and four more adults to fit in comfortably, and it also functioned as a steam shower and had a sound system. Yes, when I showered, I could press a button on the wall, and the sweet, soft, and serene sounds of nature would pour through. A subtle waterfall wall was at the foot of a state-of-the-art tub, which included a chromatherapy option.

  After taking the rest of my clothes off and tossing them aside, I poured bath beads into my water along with honeysuckle bubble bath, then stepped inside to let the jets massage my tense muscles. As I lay there, I thought about my and Jamie’s relationship. When he and I first got together, I was still in love with Aric. There was no need to sugarcoat it. I’d never let Jamie know that, because I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him. The man loved me and had taught me so much about myself over the course of our relationship. Most importantly, he had taught me how to love me, both mentally and physically.

  At the beginning of our relationship so much guilt consumed me that oftentimes I couldn’t even look Aric straight in the face. I’d felt to do so would betray Jamie in another way, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. After that few months of Jamie and me being together, I’d grown enough to let my love for Aric filter away, and I began to love Jamie the way he deserved to be loved. And, I must say, our relationship gave me all I needed and then some. I couldn’t complain about a thing. Not to say that it was perfect, because we’d had our arguments and fights. There were some things that I’d noticed that sometimes gave me pause, like his abrupt change in mood and the way he would sometimes get easily agitated. But Jamie knew how to talk to me to make me calm down enough so we could work through our differences and move on. We never went to bed mad, and our sex life was the stuff that I could only read about.

  I wasn’t sure what made me let go of the fantasy of Aric and me getting back together. Well, being together at all, since technically we were never together to begin with. I had to always remind myself that Aric had never given us a title. But, yeah, I let go of that whole fantasy of him coming back for me. It could have been the fact that he’d stuck to his guns and left me alone, or it could have been the fact that I went to pick up AJ once and another woman was sitting in his home.

  Yes, it shocked the devil out of me, because I was not expecting it. There had not been any other women until he found out Jamie and I were serious. I felt like he’d done that only to get under my skin. He didn’t seem to care one way or the other. He allowed me to come in and introduced me to her as the mother of his son. I remember standing there, looking and feeling so foolish that I simply rolled my eyes and walked upstairs to get my son. Aric just stood in the doorway of AJ’s room, watching. There I was, still holding on to him, when it was clear he wasn’t holding on to me. He leaned against the doorpost with his legs crossed at the ankles while I picke
d AJ up and walked back past him. I’d never forget his look. It was something akin to a smirk, a sneer, and an outright scowl, and I had no idea why.

  I jumped away from my thoughts when I heard Jamie knock on the bathroom door. Another thing I loved about him was he always respected my privacy.

  “Come in,” I said as I sat up and looked toward the door.

  To say my smile didn’t instantly brighten when he casually strolled in, looking like a black God, would mean I was lying. The drawstring linen pants hung low on his waist, showing off the perfect V cut, which I loved to kiss around just before performing oral sex on him. His abs sat perfectly and matched the cut and ripples of his chest. His mocha-hued skin had a natural glow and called out to be kissed. Jamie’s locks had grown and now hung below his shoulder blades, and he’d gotten thicker muscle-wise. Those perfect white teeth shone at me when he smiled. In his hands were glasses of wine. He sat down on the side of the tub, then leaned in to kiss me.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he greeted afterward.

  “Hey, baby.” My smile was a megawatt one.

  I took the glass of wine when he held it out to me, and sipped a little before handing it back to him.

  “How’d your day go?” he asked after placing both glasses beside the tub.

  I frowned and shook my head. “Awful. Got a big client today, and he was a handful. Then I had to sit there and watch Stephanie with this smirk on her face the whole time she was doing the interview on CNN.”

  “I thought we agreed you would stop watching the news until after she was sentenced?”

  I shook my head with a frown. “I know, but it was like she got some kind of sick, twisted pleasure from seeing her attorney assault me verbally.”

  He rubbed some wet hair from my face and looked at me. “That’s what he is paid to do, baby. He’s trying to get his client no jail time by any means necessary.”