Crazy Kind of Love

by T. Styles

  “I want this to last but something tells me that we aren’t meant to be.” She looked at me with heavy eyes that revealed self-doubt.

  “Stop it!” I banged my hand on the steering wheel. She flinched noticeably. An eighteen-wheeler passed and honked its horn. “Crazier things have happened, so stop trying to fight it! Accept it, Lourdes. You know, there is a verse in the Bible about a certain prostitute and Jesus.”

  “What prostitute?” Lourdes asked incredulously and turned around in her seat.

  “Her name was Mary Magdalene and she was a whore. She washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. The thing is she was able to redeem herself and change for the better. Some religious scholars even think Mary Magdalene and Jesus were lovers.”

  “Wow, how do you know so much about the Bible?” Lourdes asked.

  “While I was in prison I preached, which is how I got the nickname. If you read Luke chapter seven, verse thirty-six in the Bible, the entire story is there. Baby, you can change if you want to,” I said and reached over and squeezed her thigh.

  “If you really believe that I can, I will. I don’t know why but for some reason you make me stronger. With you I can do anything.” She placed her hand on top of mine and looked me in the eye.

  “Then we gonna be alright,” I said with confidence as I squinted into the hot sun and strained my eyes looking for the street Morgan stayed on. Finally I was getting somewhere with Lourdes.

  “I believe you. And I can’t wait to have the life with you I’ve always dreamed of.”

  “Me too. But first I’ma baptize Morgan with this AK-47 and then I’m going back to B-More for some unfinished business.”

  “When will it stop?” She raised her voice as her bottom lip trembled. She smoothed her hair and scanned my eyes in search of an answer.

  “When I make it stop. None of this is just going to go away. It’s either kill or be killed. Which one do you prefer?”

  “I prefer for us to run away and be together.” Lourdes pleaded.

  “Running away is not an option,” I responded just as the GPS informed us that our destination was at the next right turn.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LOURDES

  I wanted him. More than I’d ever wanted any person or thing. But since the beginning of our relationship was bathed in gunpowder and blood, he seemed to be pulled toward violence. Like gravity to earth or metal to a magnet. Why couldn’t he see that, at the rate we were going, we were destined for violence?

  “If you do this, we will die,” I said under my breath looking at my mole-speckled legs. I glanced over at him, hoping that I would get through to the man I was sure I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. “Do you hear me, Preacher?” I paused allowing my words to sink into his heart. “We will die and we will never be able to see if this is real between us.”

  He sighed and I could tell he was frustrated with me. I felt like I was an annoying kid and he was my overbearing father. I never wanted to be with a man more than I did him but if he didn’t respect my opinions I knew it couldn’t work. I was done being second in other people’s lives.

  “What did I tell you, Lourdes? There’s no turning back. We gotta do this or we will forever be on the run.”

  I noticed the GPS was indicating that we were almost there. Before he pulled up to the street I exhaled. “Can you pull over for a minute? I gotta tell you something that can’t wait until we get to Morgan’s.”

  “We don’t have time for that,” he responded, his eyes still glued to the road ahead of us. “Just load the guns so we can get this over with.” He nodded at the duffle bag in the back.

  “This is important, Preacher, and may impact what happens next.”

  He briefly looked at me as if he knew what I was about to say. My heart felt as if it was about to break and I said a silent prayer.

  Please, God, I don’t want to lose this man. I’m hoping that honesty really is the best policy. I hope you don’t let me down.

  Slowly he pulled over behind a dump truck, parked and positioned his body so that our eyes connected. “Go ‘head, Lourdes. What’s so important?”

  “There are a few things you don’t know about me. Some things I didn’t want to tell you because I was afraid that they would end what we have right now. But, I’m tired of being afraid and I want to be the woman that I know I can be for you. And to do that, I gotta be real.” I stared at his face and examined every part of his eyes. His pupils seemed to expand.

  “I’m listening, Lourdes,” he said with heavier breaths.

  “I wasn’t always like this,” I looked down at my hands, “you know, a prostitute and all.”

  “You told me that already. But you also said that it was your mother who put you onto that lifestyle. And I told you that it was her fault you are the way you are, not yours. Remember? Now unless you’re going to tell me something new, we have more important things to tend to.”

  “I do have something,” I swallowed. “And it’s more important. It’s very important.” I looked ahead of me at the yellow bumper sticker on the dump truck. “I was engaged once to a man who meant everything to me. After my mother died, he rescued me from prostitution and gave me the life I never thought was possible. Actually it was he and his brother, Johnson who came to my aid. I knew they were God sent at that time because they found me in an alley on the side of a Laundromat with my wrists slit. I had given up on life.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, baby?”

  “Let me finish,” I said stopping him. “They were on their way to a friend’s wedding the night they saved me but they didn’t go to the ceremony because they took me to the hospital. To this day, I don’t know why they were so nice, but I do know that I needed them in that moment.” I sighed.

  “Why did you try to kill yourself?”

  “My mother died. She may not have been the best but she was my mother and I missed her terribly.”

  I looked over at Preacher again and saw extreme disappointment on his face. He was a religious man despite his rough exterior and I knew he didn’t take kindly to suicide.

  “A few months after they found me, Johnson helped me get my addiction under control. And my boyfriend, who was Johnson’s brother, was patient with me while I struggled to live a life without drugs. I spent a year getting clean and that’s when my boyfriend asked me to marry him. At that time I thought he was the perfect man.”

  “And…” Preacher responded with clenched fists. I knew that his anger wasn’t geared toward me. I figured he was upset because of what I said about another man.

  “He had a darker side. A much darker side. But I knew it before I got with him, Preacher. I knew how he could be, which is why when we first met, when I was in that alley with my wrists slit, I had enough sense to tell both of them that my name was Felicia. Still, I never saw his crimes and I took pleasure in being foolish. I didn’t want to know what he did outside of our home.”

  “Lourdes, I don’t like when a story is dragged out so either get to the point or get to the point,” he yelled.

  I wiped the sweat off of my head. “Please bear with me, Preacher. This is hard for me.” I exhaled. “One day I came home early from my NA meeting. Normally I would have my boyfriend come get me but I wanted to surprise him. He was leaving for Miami later that night and I wanted to cook his favorite meal before he left. So I stopped by the grocery store and when I came home, I noticed three cars out in front of our house. My boyfriend didn’t tell me we were having company and something didn’t sit well in my heart. So instead of parking in the front, I drove around the house and parked near the backdoor. Once there I walked toward the back and opened the door slightly. From where I stood I saw that my boyfriend had his brother, Johnson, on his knees.” I cried. “Open stab wounds littered his back, chest and stomach. I was actually watching my ex-fiancé stand over his brother with a bloodied knife. He had rage all over his face, baby. It was the first time I saw the monster that everyone talked abo
ut in the streets.”

  Preacher seemed confused. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he thought that me and Johnson were having an affair.” More tears rolled down my eyes. “Somebody lied to him and said that Johnson and I were together but it wasn’t true.” I fanned myself with my hand because I was hot. It was the first time I’d shared my story with anyone else. Usually when I thought about what happened, I got high but now I would have to face my pain. “Johnson died because his only crime was getting me clean.” I dropped my head and wiped the rest of the tears from my cheeks. “It was all my fault.”

  Preacher moved uneasily in his seat. “What happened next, Lourdes?”

  “I left my ex-fiancé after that and he was later arrested for attempted robbery. That’s also when I found out I was pregnant.”

  “So that’s all you gotta tell me?” he sounded relieved. “That you got a kid?”

  “Partly,” I said honestly. “When my ex-fiancé was locked up, I quickly realized that I couldn’t take care of our kid alone. I was afraid that I would be the same mother to her that mine was to me. So I let stress take over. The only problem was I was getting high for two people now. Myself and my baby.”

  “How did the pregnancy go?”

  “I ended up giving birth to a little girl on the floor of a dope house. My ex-fiancé’ found out about my condition from jail but what could he do? He left me alone and the streets took me in like they always did.”

  “Where is she now?” He asked.

  “She was taken from me and placed in a foster home. And when my ex-fiancé was released from prison he got her back. By the time he got to her though she was very violent. The drugs I used when I was pregnant did something to her mind. She was heartless and cold, and she needed help but my ex-fiancé didn’t want her to get any.”

  He leveled a dark expression my way. There were so many lines on his forehead from frowning that his face resembled a road map.

  I looked at him deeply. “My daughter’s name is Feather Holliday.”

  His body melted into the seat. “Are you telling me that at some point you were engaged to,” he turned around and looked out ahead of him, “the…the nigga…”

  “I was engaged to Morgan Holliday. The man who wants us dead.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PREACHER

  It felt like I had been hit in the gut with a gigantic fist as I turned towards Lourdes, for a fleeting moment, her beauty looked like treachery in disguise. I thought about punching her in her face like a man. But instead, I just looked at her, dumbfounded.

  “You were in engaged to Morgan Holliday and Feather is your child?” I yelled with my jaw clinched tight. A lady walking her dog turned and looked back us. Banneker Street, the address the GPS had given me was a few blocks away.

  “Let me explain,” Lourdes said as she placed a ringlet of hair behind her ear and turned to face me.

  “Explain what, that there is a real possibility that you still love this nigga and that is why you didn’t want to tell me until now? I’m damn near at his door about to murder him and now you’re telling me this bullshit!”

  “What part of what I said makes you think I love him?” Lourdes yelled. “Baby, I was trying to protect you!”

  She reached to touch me. I slapped her hand down and she winced in pain from the gunshot wound to her arm.

  “Preacher, this is why I wanted to see her before I testified against her in court. I wanted to see if she was capable of committing murder again and I didn’t want to testify until I looked into her eyes. You can’t begin to understand how embarrassing this is for me. To have a child out there in the world I don’t know. And I begged Morgan to get her some help but he didn’t respect me because I had started back using drugs.”

  “So you would leave your own child alone with him?”

  “I know,” she said holding down her head. “But I thought she was better off without me until I saw her in the back of that school.” She paused. “But as far as me loving him, that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

  “Prove it. Go knock on the door, then I’ll do the rest.” I said unfazed by her tears, determined not to let a woman’s emotions get me killed. After all, if she was telling me the truth and Holliday was indeed her baby daddy, there was a very real possibility she was still attached to him. But not just that, I needed to tip the scale in my favor with the element of surprise. What better decoy to use than a woman, and not just any woman, but Morgan’s woman?

  “You’ll get me killed.” She said in a shaky voice. “I thought the plan was to catch him off guard and then attack.”

  “No, you’ll get him killed. Unless you still have feelings for him.”

  “Preacher, there has to be a better way. Please don’t—”

  “Don’t you understand? You have to do it. You don’t have a choice; it’s either kill or be killed.” I challenged her. I needed to know where her head was, and where her heart was. She expelled a deep breath of courage, and then inhaled like she was taking her very last breath. I saw a vein pulsating in her neck when she turned and looked at me just as a United Parcel truck passed.

  “If that is what you want me to do, I’ll do it.” There was a tremor in her voice. She placed a tuft of hair behind her ear and shifted in her seat as the clouds hid the sun, giving us some much needed shade.

  She was scared.

  “Whatever it is you want me to I’ll do. But just promise me, after this is over with, we can go far away.”

  I gave her a slight nod of the head as I continued to hold her with my own suspicion. I knew many a nigga in the chain gang because of chicks who betrayed them over a change of heart.

  “I’ll knock on the door and if he comes, handle your business. I’ll go inside and look for Feather. I have to drop her off at the police department to get her proper help.”

  I nodded again.

  “We’ll drive around the neighborhood and wait until the sun sets. When it does I want you to walk up to the door. When Morgan answers just give me a signal.”

  “Like what?”

  “Take the ponytail holder out your hair and I’ll take over from there. Okay?”

  ****

  My thoughts were my only companion as we drove around the affluent neighborhood, with its well-manicure lawns and million dollar homes. The entire time, Lourdes sat next to me, stone faced, quiet. She had not spoken a word since I gave her the instructions on how we were going to murder her ex-fiancé.

  My grandma always told me if you follow your first instinct, people will think you’re a genius. Well, that day I should have followed my first instinct to abandon the mission after Lourdes dropped the baby daddy bomb on me. But I didn’t.

  Big mistake.

  Dusk set over the horizon, turning it a deep purplish blue like a blanket comforting the night sky as crickets chirped. I parked the big SUV in front of the next house over from Morgan’s palatial mini-mansion. Someone had left their sprinkler system on and droplets of water wet the windshield.

  Lourdes grabbed the door handle and stalled. For some reason, she wouldn’t look at me as she spoke. “I love you.” She gathered her composure by inhaling and exhaling deeply.

  She shut the car door gently and tiptoed across the lawn away from the sprinklers. My heart raced in my chest as I grabbed the chopper off the backseat, hopped out the car, and scurried across the lawn, ignoring the water sprinklers drenching my clothes. I stood behind the bushes, watched, waited, and plotted. Murder is not as intricate as it may seem when executed quickly and efficiently.

  The plan was relatively simple: Morgan would come to the door and see Lourdes. He’d freak the fuck out and I’d step out of the bushes. BOOM! There wasn’t much to it.

  Lourdes knocked on the door. I cocked and aimed the chopper and felt my left leg twitch like it had a mind of its own. I was ready to charge forward.

  Lourdes fidgeted and shifted on her feet. She turned around and looked in my direction. I knew she w
as thinking about turning away but she didn’t. Instead she knocked again, this time louder, and I felt my heart drum in my chest.

  The door suddenly opened and a ray of dim light shined on Lourdes. I stepped out the bushes, ready to dump on my unsuspecting victim. Then something went wrong. Terribly wrong! Lourdes became animated, gesturing with her hands wildly. She was in a deep conversation, maybe an argument with a woman. This was not part of the plan. From my position, all someone had to do was look in my direction. I was completely exposed.

  I lunged from the bushes and trudged across the wet grass with the AK-47 cocked and ready.

  “No! Please don’t,” Lourdes yelled.

  My intent was to Rambo the front door and rush through the house without losing my element of surprise. That was until the person at the door waved a gun at me, catching me completely by surprise. Right then, right there everything seemed to move in slow motion. I shot in the doorway hitting the person in the head, blowing off a large chunk of their face.

  Lourdes howled like a wounded animal as she dropped to her knees. I stepped over the body into the house just as Morgan ran out the dining room, followed by a hulking figure with a face that I’d never forget. It was the hit man Victor I had fought with in the hotel. Even with two black eyes I recognized his ugly mug.

  He reached for his strap too late. I shot him in the chest and the bullet knocked him against the wall. A portrait and some type of vase crashed to the floor as he slammed into the wall and keeled over on to the floor with a thump.

  Morgan took off for the stairs; he was dressed suavely in an expensive-looking white linen suit. I shot him in the spine. His legs buckled as his body was thrust forward. He grabbed hold of the railing, and his legs moved like he was treading water as he tried to get back up. I trotted up the stairs to the maddening sound of Lourdes crying in desperation behind me and I confronted Morgan as his legs continued to kick. He held on to the rail as if it was his lifeline and looked over his shoulder at me. I placed the chopper to his head.