Stay with Me (Strickland Sisters Book 1)

by Alexandria House

  I sat in my hotel room making calls before I headed out to the groundbreaking ceremony. Work was fine, I was performing my duties as I normally would, but unlike in the past, my heart wasn’t in it. Hell, my heart wasn’t even in the same zip code as this job. I missed Angela and had been looking forward to getting back to her for the weekend. Sure, it would be hard to leave her again, but I still needed to see her, couldn’t wait to see her, and then my damn job snatched that away from me.

  There were several reasons, valid reasons, why the timing was wrong for marriage. The biggest one was that as much as I loved her, this one-woman, monogamy thing was still new to me. What if I had a relapse and messed up? Of all the people in the world, I never wanted to hurt her. I would’ve rather hurt myself before I let that happen. But I also knew that I couldn’t even see other women when I was with her, or not with her. She had me, all of me, and no other woman stood a chance. I spent my days here in Arizona working and sleeping. Hadn’t been to a bar or restaurant. Ate room service, thought about Angie, was horny as hell. But I managed to make it from the end of one day to the beginning of the next, not really present but here.

  I checked the time on my phone, my attention shifting to the smiling picture of Angela that served as my screensaver, and sighed as I shrugged into my sport coat and left my room.

  Glenn Turntine was in the lobby waiting for me. A short, compact man, with thick, graying hair and looks that would tell anyone his thin, beautiful wife was in it for the money, he smiled when I entered the lobby, proffering me his hand. “Good morning, Boyé.”

  I hated how he addressed me by my last name, but insisted that I refer to him as “Glenn,” as if I liked his ass.

  Nevertheless, I shook his hand, nodded, and said, “Morning, Glenn.”

  “You ready for your big day?”

  I hated that shit, too. This wasn’t going to be my hotel. If it belonged to anyone, it belonged to the Hill Brothers, the owners of the company.

  “You know I am,” I said, giving him a fake smile.

  “Good! This is going to be a wonderful project with everything we have planned for this resort! It is really going to put Sable Inc. on the map!”

  With my ass doing all the work. I nodded. “Yeah, it’s definitely going to be a great facility. A good addition to the company’s holdings.”

  I swear I was tired of playing these games, pretending to like Glenn’s ass, acting like I still enjoyed this demanding-ass job, and I missed my damn woman, who had cried on the phone that morning. I was still trying to deal with that and really didn’t feel like playing the happy employee.

  As we exited the hotel and headed to Glenn’s waiting limo, he said, “How are the accommodations here? I know you prefer rentals over hotels.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, as he gestured for me to enter the limo before him.

  He settled in the seat across from me. “Hmm, how’s your girlfriend? The YouTuber? Did she travel here with you?”

  I looked up from checking my email on my tablet. I was responsible for the logistics of this groundbreaking and wanted to be sure there were no last-minute issues for me to deal with. “What?”

  “Your girlfriend. She was your girlfriend, right? Um…4C something? How is she?”

  “She’s good.” I dropped my eyes back to the tablet, wondering why the hell he was bringing her up. “And she’s still my girlfriend.”

  “She stayed behind in Tennessee?”

  “Yes, because that’s where she lives.” He was beginning to piss me off. I was in no mood to discuss Angie with him or anyone else.

  “Well, good. At least you won’t be distracted here…unless you find another little Internet star to latch onto. But let me be clear, you mess this one up, Boyé, and I can’t guarantee it will end well for you.”

  I slowly looked up from the tablet again and fixed my eyes on him. “What the hel—what is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means this is a huge project, Boyé, huge, and there’s no room for ridiculous mistakes like the one you made in Tennessee. You screw up like you did before, and your job is gone.”

  “You threatening me?”

  He shrugged. “If that’s how you want to take it.”

  I scoffed. “You know what, Turntine? Fuck you and this job! You gonna sit here and talk about my woman like she’s nothing when what you need to do is keep her name out your damn mouth? Then you threaten me? You must’ve lost your mind! All the shit I’ve done for this company? Your not-doing-shit ass is the one who needs to be fired!” I knocked on the partition as Glenn stared at me with wide eyes.

  “Boyé—”

  “Glenn, shut the fuck up. I mean it. I don’t want an assault charge, but you’ve been working on an ass-kicking from me for years.” The limo stopped and the driver came around to open the door. As I stepped out, I said, “And if it isn’t already clear to you, I motherfucking quit.”

  44

  Now…

  “You quit? You really quit your job?” she asked from her perch on my lap. We were still on her sofa and still naked as I explained to her how I quit my job, caught an Uber back to the hotel, called KC to give him a heads up about what had happened since he put in a good word for me to get the job, got my stuff, made a couple of stops to handle some business, and took the first flight I could get back home, to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, concern clouding her eyes. “I know how much that job meant to you.”

  “Don’t be. I’ll be okay. I was able to save most of my salary over the last few years, because the company always covered my traveling costs, paid for my lodging and rental cars. I can handle the bills. I ain’t gonna be up in here being a deadbeat. And I have a plan for our future, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I was thinking of ways we can grow your channel on the plane ride here.”

  “Our channel? What’d you come up with?”

  I grinned. “I was thinking we could add a series of videos where we debate music groups like we do all the time. You know, which one is better? We could call it, ‘Who You Got?’ Or ‘Verses Versus.’ It could be a weekly thing. And I think we should go to more conferences and film while we’re there and upload it. I got that idea from KC. He was telling me how he and Sarita wanna go to an event, but it’s hard with the baby. That got me thinking there are probably other people who would love to see footage from events.”

  “Wow, that sounds great, baby.”

  “And you can teach me how to edit so I can help with that, and that way we can crank out more videos every week. Oh, and we need to start selling merchandise, t-shirts and stuff like that. I have a friend who can put us a website together.”

  “You’ve really been thinking about this, huh?”

  “Yeah, baby. So what do you think?”

  She smiled. “I think I love everything you said and I know I’ve missed you and I’m glad you’re back. And I’m sorry I let you go without me.”

  “It’s all right. If you hadn’t stayed, I wouldn’t have realized how much I hated that job or that this is where I need to be. That job served its purpose by bringing me here to you. Now it’s time for me to move in a different direction with you.”

  “But I still owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have pressured you about marriage when I knew you had commitment issues. I know it’ll happen when the time is right.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You don’t want to get married anymore?”

  “I didn’t say that. But I can wait. I just wanna be with you. I don’t ever want us to be apart again.”

  “Me either, baby. That’s why I got this before I left Arizona.” I dug into my pocket and pulled the ring out. “Will you marry me?”

  I stared down at the gorgeous ring and blinked back tears before lifting my eyes to Ryan’s face. “Are you sure? I don’t want you to do this just because you know it’s what I want.”

  “It’s what I want, too. Am I scared? Yeah, but I know I love you and I know I always will. I kno
w I want to spend every day of the rest of my life with you, Angie. Baby, if you’ll have me, I wanna be your man, permanently. So…will you marry my unemployed ass?”

  I hugged him tightly. “Yes!”

  He squeezed me to him, kissing my neck and whispering, “I love you, Angie. We’re gonna have a good life. A great life.”

  I nodded against his shoulder. “As long as we’re together, it’ll be the best life.”

  My phone buzzed in my purse for the one-hundredth time since I pulled Ryan in the door, and I knew it was probably Nicky. “I never made it to my mom’s for dinner, and I was late before we…you know. That’s probably Nicky now wondering what happened to me. I better answer.”

  He nodded as he rubbed the back of his thumb down my cheek.

  I slid from his lap onto the sofa and began searching for my phone. By the time I dug it out of my purse, I had missed Nicky’s call and quickly sent her a text letting her know I was okay, wouldn’t be able to make it to dinner, and would call her later. When I turned back to Ryan, he was beside the sofa on bended knee.

  “Thought I’d do this the right way,” he said. “Give me your hand, baby.”

  I fought back tears as he slid the ring on my finger and rejoined me on the sofa, kissing me deeply.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you for loving me like you do.”

  He shook his head. “Naw, baby. Thank you for letting me love you and for loving me back.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  45

  Five months later…

  “All right, everyone. You know why you’re here, why you’ve packed this hall today. You’re wearing the t-shirts. You’ve seen their videos. So I wanna know, are you ready for this year’s Natural Hair Expo’s featured guests?”

  The crowd roared in response to the MC’s question.

  “Okay! Their YouTube channel has over two million subscribers, they average more than half a million views per video, both have huge social media followings, so suffice it to say, these two have taken the online and natural hair worlds by storm. I present to you the newlyweds we all love, 4C Angie and Ryan!!”

  Ryan grinned and gripped my hand, leading me to the stage as the crowd erupted again, growing even louder as we stepped onto the stage and took our seats. We were both wearing t-shirts with our new channel name and logo on them—4C Love. We waved, and when Ryan brought my hand to his lips and kissed it, I thought they would shout the roof off of that convention center.

  “Woo, y’all really do love them,” the MC, a fellow vlogger known as Naturella Gabriella, said. “As you all requested, this will be a Q&A rather than a panel discussion. There are two mics set up at the front of the aisles, and we’ll take as many questions as we can in the time allotted.” She turned to us. “Ryan, Angie, on behalf of everyone here, I want to thank you two for joining us. I know newlyweds have other things they could be getting into.” She gave us a smile and a wink.

  Ryan lifted one of the microphones that had been lying in our chairs to his mouth, and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll get to that later when we get back to our room.”

  The crowd laughed.

  Then Gabriella said, “Hmm…well, we can all tell from your videos that you two can barely keep your hands off each other.” She turned to the crowd, and added, “Y’all remember that kiss at the end of that video where Ryan washed her hair, right?”

  The crowd nodded, and yelled, “Yes!”

  “All right, let’s have the first question.”

  We fielded a ton of questions about anything and everything from Ryan’s accent, to what it was like for us being full-time vloggers, to the lipstick I was wearing at that moment.

  “Are you guys going to upload a wedding video?” one young lady asked.

  “Yes, as soon as Ryan edits it,” I answered, cutting my eyes at my husband.

  “That’s my wife’s way of calling me out,” he said. “But I’m working on it.”

  Most of the crowd laughed a little too hard, something I called the Ryan Effect. Woman seemed to lose their minds around him, laughed too hard at his jokes, smiled too much when they were in his presence, stuff like that.

  A teenaged girl approached the mic, expressing to us how much she enjoyed our videos, and then she asked, “Ryan, anyone can tell how much you guys love each other, so my question for you is: what do you love most about Angie?”

  He reached over and grasped my hand in his, looked into my eyes, and said, “Everything.”

  Stay tuned for Believe in Me, Renee’s story. Coming soon.

  A southern girl at heart, Alexandria House has an affinity for a good banana pudding, Neo Soul music, and tall black men in suits. When this fashionista is not shopping, she’s writing steamy stories about real black love.

  Connect with Alexandria!

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  Also by Alexandria House:

  The Love After Series:

  Higher Love

  Made to Love

  Real Love