Moody’s World

You narrowed your eyes at him faintly, and his dimples deepened. Such an arrogant man…but he was your man now. Before either of you could silently flirt yourselves into unemployment, Kyle’s voice carried across the floor.

“Conference room. Five minutes, everybody.”

A chorus of exhausted groans answered him.

You stood, smoothing down your fitted mocha-colored skirt before grabbing your tablet and notes. Around the office, people shuffled toward the large meeting room with all the enthusiasm of prisoners heading toward sentencing.

Tyriq had already disappeared inside.

Of course he had.

You took your time walking over, heels clicking softly against the polished floor, but right as you reached the doorway, one of the art directors stopped beside you.

“Y/N, hold on—” Denise leaned out into the hallway. “Can somebody grab me a coffee? Please? I’m fighting for my life today.”

You laughed softly. “Hazelnut?”

“You know me so well.” Denise grinned and hurried off toward the break room, while you finally stepped into the conference room and immediately sensed his presence.

Tyriq sat near the middle of the long table, one chair beside him conspicuously empty. Saved just for you. Again.

Your pulse fluttered before you could stop it. As you approached, he leaned back slightly in his chair, his eyes dragging over you in a way that felt entirely inappropriate for 9:42 on a Monday morning.

“Hi, pretty girl,” he whispered quietly enough that nobody else could hear even though the room was only occupied by the two of you at the moment. 

Heat curled low in your stomach instantly. He had way too much confidence now. 

Lord, give me strength, you thought to yourself.

You slid into the chair beside him, carefully keeping your expression neutral even as your knees brushed against his beneath the table.

“Morning, handsome,” you shot back while preparing your notes.

Tyriq went completely still, still not used to you openly reciprocating his flirting. 

You kept your attention on your tablet to avoid smiling, but from your peripheral vision, you caught how sharply his jaw clenched.

Oh. That simple compliment must have gotten to him.

“You can’t just say shit like that at work,” he chastised under his breath, voice suddenly rough.

You finally looked at him then, your chestnut-brown eyes all soft and composed. “Why, baby? You distracted?”

His nostrils flared slightly, but before he could answer, more coworkers piled into the room, breaking the moment apart.

Tyriq leaned back in his chair, dragging a hand slowly across his mouth like he was trying to regain control of himself. Meanwhile, your thighs clenched so hard beneath the table that it was almost embarrassing.

Kyle walked in carrying a tablet and an energy drink the size of a can of oil sheen spray.

“Alright,” he sighed, collapsing into the chair at the front. “Bad news.”

A collective groan spread around the room.

“The Henderson feature files got corrupted during export.”

Several people cursed immediately.

Kyle nodded grimly. “I know. Production deadline’s tomorrow morning, so editorial needs to stay on top of revisions while design rebuilds the spreads.”

Your stomach dropped slightly as the room erupted into overlapping complaints.

“Wait, all the files?” “You serious?” “Oh my God—”

Kyle rubbed his forehead. “Trust me. I know.”

Beside you, Tyriq sat forward slightly, immediately focused. You tried not to find his work mode attractive and ended up failing instantly.

Kyle’s eyes landed on you. “Y/N, I need you overseeing recovery edits tonight.”

Without hesitation, you nodded. “Of course.”

Tyriq’s lips twitched faintly beside you. He loved how serious you took your work. Loved it almost as much as he loved making you lose composure.

“Appreciate it,” Kyle exhaled sharply before scanning the room again. “I need one more volunteer to stay late with her.”

Immediate silence. Followed by even more silence. One editor avoided eye contact altogether.

Rachel lifted her hands defensively. “My son has football practice.”

“Anniversary dinner,” someone else chimed in quickly.

“Nah,” another coworker laughed. “I love this company, but not enough for an all-nighter.”

You bit back a smile.

Beside you, Tyriq stayed suspiciously quiet for exactly three seconds too long. You could practically feel him trying not to volunteer too fast and expose himself. Then finally he spoke. 

“Yeah, I’ll stay.”

Kyle looked relieved instantly. “Thank you.”

Tyriq shrugged casually like he wasn’t internally celebrating. “No problem.”

You kept your face perfectly composed even though your heartbeat immediately sped up. A whole night alone in the office with your boyfriend? Your very tall, fine, talented fingers and tongue-having boyfriend. Yeah, your mind pretty much sank to the gutter. 

Kyle pointed between the two of you. “Once everything’s finalized, make sure the floor’s locked up and the alarm gets set before you leave.”

“Got it,” you answered smoothly.

Beside you, Tyriq slowly turned his head toward you. Not enough for anyone else to notice but just enough for you to catch the mischievous look in his eyes. You already knew there was absolutely no chance either of you were making it out of that office behaving yourselves.

The meeting wrapped fifteen minutes later, and the editorial floor slowly returned to its usual frenzy.

You walked back toward your office with your tablet tucked against your chest, already mentally organizing the disaster waiting for you later tonight. Behind you, conversations overlapped, phones resumed ringing, and somebody had apparently burned popcorn in the breakroom because the entire east wing smelled bitter and just plain old nasty.

You had barely settled into your chair before a shadow appeared in your doorway.

“Hey, Y/N?”

You glanced up to find Marcus from the digital features team holding a marked-up proof in one hand and a latte in the other. Tall, decent-looking, overly confident in the way men in media always seemed to be.

“What’s up?” you asked professionally.

He stepped inside your office and handed you the revision pages. “I updated the pull quotes and fixed the pacing issues you mentioned Friday, but I wanted your opinion before I submit the final version.”

You scanned the first page quickly, already spotting improvements. “Much better,” you admitted. “The transitions are cleaner too. This is good, Marcus.”

“See? I do listen to you,” he grinned.

You hummed softly while flipping another page.

From three rows away, Tyriq watched the interaction over the top of his monitor with narrowed eyes. Not obvious enough for anyone else to notice but enough that the muscles in his jaw flexed every single time Marcus smiled too hard at a compliment you gave.

“You always this sweet when giving feedback?” Marcus asked casually, leaning against your doorway.

You finally looked up fully as you registered the flirtatious tone he was taking. “Excuse me?”

“I’m just sayin’,” he shrugged, his smile widening. “If I knew senior editors looked like this, I would’ve transferred departments sooner.”

Across the office, Tyriq’s fingers froze over his keyboard, and Rachel looked up briefly from her desk with barely concealed interest.

Oh brother.

You, however, remained completely unbothered.

“Marcus Greene,” you sighed patiently, setting the papers down. “Your revisions are good. Let’s not ruin that progress.”

He laughed. “Damn, you cold.”

“Professional,” you corrected.

His eyes drifted over your face again. “So there’s absolutely no chance I could convince you to let me take you out sometime?”

Tyriq looked one squint away from standing up. Instead, he remained seated, shoulders tense beneath his sweater while he stared at his screen with murderous concentration.

You leaned back in your chair calmly. “I have a boyfriend.”

The office noise suddenly sounded very far away to Tyriq.

Marcus blinked once. “Ahh. So that explains it.”

“It does,” you quipped.

“So he's my competition?” Marcus joked.

You barely contained an eye roll as you smirked. “Mr. Greene, you can’t compete with my man’s intelligence or the way he takes me down,” you blurted. “Don’t embarrass yourself.” 

Marcus threw his hands up dramatically. “Alright, alright. I respect it.”

“I hope so,” you snickered lightly. “Now go submit those revisions before I change my mind.”

He groaned on his way out of your office, finally taking the hint. The second he disappeared around the corner, your eyes lifted instinctively straight toward Tyriq, which was a terrible idea because the expression on that man’s face almost made your stomach flip over. Clearly, his irritation was replaced with carnal want. In a way, he looked almost famished. 

You barely pressed your lips together in time to stop yourself from grinning.

Goddamn.

The man looked like he was trying to survive the next eight hours through sheer willpower alone.

A few minutes later, you stood to head toward the printers down the hall. As you passed Tyriq’s desk, you slowed just enough to murmur quietly, “You doing okay, Mr. Withers?”

His eyes lifted slowly from his screen. Almost as if he looked at you too fast, he’d combust. That man was struggling, and you weren’t ashamed to admit how much you were enjoying it. 

“You gotta stop talking about your boyfriend like that at work,” he muttered low enough for only you to hear.

You tilted your head innocently. “Like what?”

Tyriq leaned back slightly in his chair, his gaze dragging over your face with dangerous intensity. “Like you tryna make me lose my damn mind and find us a supply closet or copy room.”

Your thighs clenched immediately, and your pulse quickened, but instead of retreating, you smiled confidently.

“Maybe if I wasn’t completely gone for him, I’d dial it back,” you replied softly. “But I actually like the way he makes me feel.” Your voice lowered slightly. “Emotionally and physically.”

Tyriq inhaled sharply.

Oh, you were evil for saying that out loud, but you couldn’t find a damn to give.

You adjusted the papers in your arms innocently. “But that’s none of your business, Mr. Withers,” you finished sternly. “Get back to work.” Then you walked away before he could respond. Behind you was pure silence. He didn’t even know what to say. 

Rachel glanced over at Tyriq a second later and frowned. “You good?”

Tyriq blinked slowly at his computer screen, like he’d temporarily left his body, and answered honestly, “…No.”

The printer down the hall chose the worst possible moment to jam.

Twice.

By the time you finally finished reprinting the corrected mockups, you were balancing a fresh stack of pages against your hip while muttering under your breath about office equipment being manufactured in the pits of hell.

The elevator dinged softly at the end of the hallway just as you approached.

Perfect timing, you thought just before the doors slid open, and of course there he was. Tyriq stood inside alone, one hand tucked into the pocket of his slacks, the other holding his phone. His sleeves were rolled slightly up his arms now, his tie loosened slightly and sandalwood cologne teasing your nose.

He looked entirely too good for a random Monday afternoon. The second his eyes landed on you, his entire expression shifted. It was as if his body recognized yours before his brain could catch up.

“Well,” he drawled slowly, his gaze dropping to your mouth for half a second. “Look what the elevator done blessed me with.”

You stepped inside smoothly before anyone else from the floor could join you. The doors slid shut, and the elevator was filled with soft jazz music and tension so thick you could cut with a butter knife. Not even ten seconds passed before Tyriq exhaled sharply like he’d finally been allowed to breathe.

“Baby,” he muttered, dragging a hand over his face. “You gotta stop playin’ with me like that.”

You pressed the button for the production floor calmly. “I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Withers.”

“That little speech about your boyfriend?” He stepped closer immediately. “In front of that cocky motherfucker Marcus?”

You kept your composure admirably considering the fact that he smelled incredible and was currently boxing you lightly against the elevator wall with pure presence alone.

“He wouldn’t take the hint,” you shrugged softly.

“And you shut his ass down like you was tryna prove a point while also ruining my ability to function.”

A tiny smile tugged at your mouth. “You’re being dramatic.”

“Nah,” he corrected instantly. “You basically told another man how smart I am and how I fuck you stupid.” His voice lowered wickedly. “Then walked away lookin’ like that.”

Your pulse skipped and your face warmed with each passing second. The elevator continued descending quietly while tension thickened between you like cumulonimbus clouds before a thunderstorm.

Tyriq stared at you for a long moment before his eyes drifted lower to your navy blue blazer and how your breasts peeked out of your fitted blouse, then to your pencil skirt hugging your hips the very way he desired. 

He swallowed hard before muttering, “You know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“I’ve been tryin’ so hard to behave at work.” He admitted, his sharp jaw flexing. “Meanwhile you out here accidentally talking filthy to me in broad daylight.”

You rolled your eyes playfully. “That was not filthy.”

“Baby,” he scoffed quietly, stepping even closer. “You told me you like how I make you feel physically.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So…you basically told me you like the way I stroke that pussy.”

Your thighs clenched again as the need in his tone grew heavier.

Okay, so maybe he had a fair point.

His eyes caught the tiny shift in your posture immediately, and his expression darkened with satisfaction.

“Yeah,” he huffed knowingly. “Exactly.”

The elevator suddenly felt way too small. Tyriq braced one hand beside your head carefully, not quite touching you but close enough that warmth radiated against your skin.

“You have any idea what I wanted to do after hearing that?”

Your breath caught slightly because you knew this was inappropriate, but you were desperate to hear what he had to say. 

“What?” you asked softly.

His eyes locked onto yours. “I wanted to drag you into the nearest closet,” he admitted roughly. “To get on my knees and thank you properly for talking about me like that.”

Goddamn.

Your stomach flipped violently, and you felt the tiniest bit lightheaded. Tyriq watched every small reaction cross your face like he was studying something sacred.

“You smirked when you said it too,” he continued, his voice dropping lower. “All bold and unapologetically sweet.” He shook his head once. “Damn near made me take an early lunch.”

The elevator continued to descend and hummed softly. Neither of you moved. You glanced upward toward the small black security camera tucked into the corner of the ceiling.

“The cameras, baby," you warned. 

Tyriq followed your gaze and sighed dramatically. “I hate this damn building.”

You laughed under your breath. “We installed them last quarter, remember?”

“I know,” he grumbled. “That’s the only reason you still standing normally right now.”

Warmth spread through you damn near everywhere. He looked so frustrated and desperate, completely gone for you.

And you loved it a lot more than you should.

A slow smirk curved your lips as your eyes flicked back toward the camera. “They don’t have audio, though.”

Tyriq froze because that newfound information got his attention BAD.

Your smile widened slightly as you adjusted the papers in your arms. “You’ve got two minutes, Mr. Withers,” you murmured sweetly. “Say what’s been on your mind.”

Tyriq blinked at you for a long moment, then he chuckled once, disbelieving and dangerously amused.

“Oh, you bold now,” he remarked, tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek.

You tilted your head innocently. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Mhmm.” His eyes dragged slowly down your body again before returning to your face. “That confidence look real good on you, baby.”

Your pulse fluttered hard enough to annoy you.

The elevator continued its slow descent while the tension between you thickened into something almost visible.

Tyriq leaned a little closer, voice dropping lower. “You know how hard it was sittin’ through that meeting with you beside me?”

You kept your expression calm somehow. “You survived.”

“Barely.” His jaw tightened. “Every time you crossed your legs, I forgot what Kyle was even talking about.”

A soft laugh escaped you before you could stop it.

Tyriq’s eyes lit up instantly at the sound. “There go my favorite sound,” he praised. “Been addicted to that shit since the first week I met you.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“And you ain’t slick.”

You raised a brow. “Me?”

“Yes, you.” He pointed lightly at you. “You know exactly what you was doing back there.”

“I was supervising my department.”

“You was seducing me in that fitted ass skirt. Business casual, my ass.”

You couldn’t fight back the giggle and the way your breathing picked up.

Tyriq noticed everything now. His gaze darkened immediately.

“See?” he whistled softly. “That right there.”

“What?”

“The way you take in shorter breaths when I say something filthy.”

Heat bloomed through your stomach. “You’re entirely too observant.”

“I have to be,” he shrugged lightly. “My girlfriend fine as hell.”

The word still hit you right in the chest.

Girlfriend.

You tried not to smile too hard at it, but Tyriq caught the tiny reaction anyway.

“There’s that smile again,” he grinned.

“That smile.”

You rolled your eyes even though heat continued to pool low in your belly. “You act like I never smiled before meeting you.”

“Nah,” he corrected quietly. “You smiled before.” His green eyes softened. “But now you smile at me.”

Lord, give me strength, you thought. This man was too dangerous in confined spaces.

The elevator slowed briefly to another floor, but thankfully, nobody entered.

Tyriq exhaled in relief. “Thank God.”

You snorted. “You struggling that bad?”

“Baby.” He dragged a hand down his face dramatically. “You called me handsome this morning.”

“It ain’t a crime to compliment your boyfriend.”

“It should be.”

“Mr. Withers, are you saying your performance at work is suffering because your boss complimented you?”

His eyes nearly rolled back. “Don’t do that, Y/N.”

“Do what?”

“That boss voice.” He stepped closer again carefully, eyes burning into yours. “You know exactly what that does to me now.”

The air felt way too hot, and the worst part was that he still wasn’t even touching you. Just standing there close enough that his warmth wrapped around you while his voice slid under your skin like a cashmere throw. 

You swallowed slowly. “You being dramatic again.”

Tyriq blinked once like he couldn’t believe you still showed restraint.

“Dramatic?” he echoed. “Baby, I watched another man flirt with you for ten minutes while knowing what you sound like when you cum on my face.”

You damn near choked on a gasp.

Oh, so he came into this elevator prepared to destroy your composure.

“You handled it well,” you managed to squeak out.

“Nah,” he corrected. “I handled that shit professionally.”

You burst out laughing, a full-blown cackle and the sound visibly affected him. His expression softened completely, eyes warming as he watched you crack up.

“There’s my pretty girl,” he admired.

Your chest warmed and your thighs clenched like they always did at the praise.

Again, the elevator dinged softly while the numbers kept changing above you. Still not there yet. Still drowning in tension.

Tyriq’s gaze dipped to your mouth again before he sighed heavily. “You know what the worst part is?”

“What?”

“I can’t even kiss you right now.” His voice dripped with frustration. “And after hearing you talk about me like that? That’s torture.”

Your stomach flipped. “You’ll survive.”

He looked unconvinced.

“You know what I keep thinking about?” he asked.

You absolutely should not have asked, but curiosity killed professionalism dead five business days ago.

“What?”

His eyes locked onto yours. “How pretty you looked after we finished.”

Your lips parted slightly. “Tyriq—”

“Nah, listen. You looked so satisfied laying on my chest.” A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “Been replaying that all damn weekend.”

The butterflies in your stomach became unbearable. Because THAT was the problem with him. Even when he was being filthy…he somehow still managed to make it sweet too.

You should’ve stopped talking. You knew that, but something about the way Tyriq was looking at you—hungry and completely wrecked over you—made mischief bloom low in your stomach. So instead of behaving like the composed senior editor you once were, you tilted your head slightly and asked.

“You wanna know what I keep thinking about?” 

Tyriq’s eyes narrowed immediately. “Tell me.”

You stepped just a little closer, lowering your voice in the sweetest way possible. “The little sound you made when I started rolling my hips.”

His entire body went still because you had his undivided attention now.

Your lashes fluttered innocently as you continued. “That little growl-whimper thing?” Your smile deepened. “Right before you said…” you paused deliberately, enjoying the way his breathing changed, “‘give me that pussy.’”

Tyriq inhaled sharply, like the air had been punched out of him.

“Baby,” he warned through a shaky exhale. "Y/N..."

You bit your lip to stop yourself from laughing. Because that man looked seconds away from forgetting every HR policy ever written.

His eyes fluttered closed briefly while he dragged a slow hand down his jaw.

“You remember that?” he questioned hoarsely.

“Mmhmm.”

“That’s what you been thinking about at work?”

“All day." you shrugged lightly. “Among other things.”

Tyriq stared at you with genuine disbelief now.

“See?” he swallowed around the lump in his throat. “This exactly what the fuck I mean. You became a menace overnight.”

You smirked unapologetically. “And whose fault is that?”

“Definitely mine,” he acknowledged. “And now I gotta suffer through the consequences.”

The elevator slowed.

Ding.

Both of you glanced toward the doors as they slid open onto your floor. Just like that, the moment shattered. Professional masks slipped back into place almost instantly. Well—mostly.

Tyriq cleared his throat once and stepped back enough to create believable workplace distance, though the lingering heat in his eyes made it obvious he was still mentally inside that conversation.

You adjusted the stack of papers in your arms, smoothing your expression into something barely composed.

The two of you stepped out together into the bustling hallway and immediately ran into Kyle.

“There you are,” he sighed in relief while holding a folder against his chest. “I just got off the phone with Henderson’s production team.”

You straightened up instinctively. “How bad?”

“Recoverable,” he tried to answer optimistically. “Barely.”

Tyriq snorted quietly beside you.

Kyle pointed between the two of you. “Seriously, thank you both again for staying late tonight. I know it’s a pain in the ass.”

“It’s no problem,” you reassured.

“We’ll get it handled,” Tyriq added smoothly.

Kyle nodded appreciatively. “Good. Because if we miss this print deadline, corporate’s gonna personally escort me into five o’clock traffic.”

You giggled softly. Tyriq glanced sideways at you as soon as he heard the sound, the corner of his mouth lifting despite himself.

Kyle continued talking about revised timelines and production exports, completely oblivious to the fact that thirty seconds ago Tyriq had nearly folded you in half verbally inside the elevator.

Meanwhile, Tyriq stood beside you, looking entirely too calm for a man whose brain was currently replaying the filthy talk you had quoted back to him. You could feel it radiating off him. Especially when your fingers brushed accidentally for half a second while you were adjusting the stack of papers.

Kyle finally sighed. “Alright. I’m gonna go fight with design.”

“Good luck,” you offered sympathetically.

The second he walked away, silence settled briefly between you and Tyriq again.

“So we quoting my dirty talk at work now?” he whispered without looking at you.

You whispered back. “You said it, handsome. Not me.”

Tyriq finally turned his head toward you slowly.

“Tonight,” he promised under his breath, “you gon’ learn to stop being cute in professional settings.” He bumped your shoulder before heading back to his desk.

Your stomach damn near did a roundhouse kick. You glanced at your watch and sighed deeply. You still had eight more hours before the office emptied.

By 11:43pm, the entire office was silent but also loud. The kind where every tiny sound suddenly felt amplified—the low hum of fluorescent lights, the soft clicking of keyboards, the distant whir of the ventilation system pushing cool air through empty departments.

Only two pages remained.

Two.

You sat cross-legged in your office chair reviewing the final spread while Tyriq leaned against the edge of your desk, sleeves pushed up his forearms, reading over the corrections on his tablet.

Outside your glass office walls, the magazine floor was dark now. Everyone left four hours ago. Empty desks sat abandoned beneath dimmed lights while the city glittered beyond the massive windows.

It was finally just the two of you.

You circled one final sentence in red before sighing softly. “Okay, this paragraph flows way better now.”

Tyriq hummed distractedly, but he wasn’t looking at the screen anymore. He was staring at you. Again.

Your hair had gotten bigger throughout the night, curls soft and wild around your face now. Your lip gloss faded hours ago. Your heels sat abandoned beneath your desk because your feet started hurting around ten. Yet somehow you’d never looked prettier to him.

You glanced up eventually and immediately caught him staring. “Tyriq.”

“Hm?”

“You looking at me instead of the revisions.” 

“I know.”

Your stomach fluttered.

Lord.

There was something especially dangerous about him when he got all quiet like this. Less teasing and arrogance, just warm eyes and devastating honesty.

You tried to refocus on the edits. “We have two pages left.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you lookin’ at me like that?”

His jaw clenched slightly before he pushed away from the desk.

“Come here for a second.”

You blinked. “For what?”

Tyriq walked around your desk slowly until he stood directly beside you. “I just want a hug.”

Oh. How could you deny him that?

That immediately melted something deep inside your chest. You looked up at him properly then.

All tall and tired. Pretty tawny skin glowing under the office lights. Tie abandoned and sleeves rolled up. Warm eyes softened at you in a way that still caught you off guard.

“You’re needy tonight,” you teased.

“Very,” he admitted without shame.

A smile pulled at your lips as you finally stood. The second your arms wrapped around his neck, Tyriq exhaled deeply in relief. Like he’d been holding himself together all night and finally got rewarded for it.

His arms folded around you instantly, large hands settling against your lower back while he tucked his face into the curve of your neck.

Mmm. The sound he made—that soft little hum against your skin—nearly made your knees buckle.

Your eyes drifted shut as his warmth surrounded you completely.

“Missed this,” he sighed.

You rubbed your hands slowly up his back above the thin fabric of his button-up. “You saw me all day.”

“Not like this.”

Your heart squeezed painfully because that was the problem with Tyriq. He said the most romantic things so naturally you didn’t even think he realized how deeply they landed.

The hug should’ve ended already. Instead, his hold tightened and ours did too. The office remained silent around you while the tension slowly shifted into something more intimate.

Tyriq lifted his head just enough for his nose to brush lightly against your temple.

“You smell good,” he complimented.

You laughed softly against his chest. “We’ve been here twelve hours, baby.”

“And you still smell good.”

“Shameless.”

“Mmhmm.”

Neither of you moved. Not even a little.

Your fingers absentmindedly played with the short hairs at his nape while his thumbs rubbed slow circles into the skin at your lower back beneath your blouse.

This was slowly but surely becoming dangerous behavior.

You felt him inhale slowly before his lips brushed the side of your forehead. Not quite a kiss, but you ached in anticipation anyway.

“Baby,” he uttered against your skin. “You know you make it real damn hard to behave around you?”

You smiled against his chest. “I think you like behaving.”

Tyriq pulled back just enough to look at you properly. His eyes dropped briefly toward your mouth before lifting again.

“That’s the issue,” he admitted softly. “I don’t think I do anymore.”

Heat rushed through you immediately, and you felt your panties dampen.

Goddamnit.

You were supposed to be finishing edits. Instead, you were standing in your office, wrapped around your ridiculously handsome boyfriend, while he looked at you as if not kissing you was taking every ounce of restraint he had left.

Your hands slid up and down his chest as you tilted your head up slightly. “You know what I think?” 

“What?”

“I think you’re tired.”

Tyriq narrowed his eyes knowingly. “That what we calling this?”

You giggled softly, and there it was once again. That laugh that visibly weakened him every single time he heard it.

He groaned dramatically before dropping his forehead against yours. “You keep laughing like that and we never finishing these last two pages.”

“You the one hugging me hostage.”

“Cause I missed you.”

Your expression softened as you admitted. “I missed you, too.”

His hands squeezed your waist once, and then with visible reluctance he exhaled sharply and stepped back half an inch.

“We really gotta finish, huh?”

You nodded slowly, still holding onto him a little. “Unfortunately.”

Tyriq glanced toward the unfinished layouts on your desk before looking back at you. “Corporate tryna ruin my love life.”

By 2:07 a.m., your office looked like a battlefield. Empty coffee cups, marked-up proofs, pink sticky notes everywhere, and your abandoned blazer draped across the back of your chair.

Somehow the two of you had pulled it off.

You stood near your desk with your phone pressed to your ear while Tyriq sat beside the final layouts, one leg bouncing restlessly beneath the table as he watched you pace.

“Yes,” you sighed in relief, exhaustion finally loosening from your shoulders as the Henderson client confirmed he received your fax. “Perfect. Thank you so much.”

Your entire face softened at the continued praise you received over the phone. “Seriously, please tell your team I appreciate them staying up with us.”

Tyriq smiled quietly to himself at the sound of your voice.

God. He loved listening and watching you work.

You ended the call a few seconds later and blinked at your dimming screen in disbelief before letting out a long breath.

“We’re done,” you announced.

Tyriq sat up immediately. “For real?”

“For real.”

He looked just as relieved as you felt.

You laughed softly and crossed the room toward him, lifting your hand automatically. Tyriq grinned instantly and slapped a loud high-five against your palm.

“Teamwork,” he shouted dramatically.

“Shut up,” you snorted, still smiling.

He caught your hand before you could pull away completely, thumb brushing lightly against your wrist.

“You did your thing tonight, though,” he admitted warmly. “Whole department would’ve collapsed without you.”

Your chest warmed at the recognition.

“You helped a lot,” you replied honestly. “You’re ridiculously smart, Tyriq.” Your smile deepened slightly. “And creative. Thank you for staying with me all night.”

Something in his expression softened immediately. There goes that look again. The one that always made you feel like the prettiest woman alive.

“Always,” he promised, green eyes shining with admiration.

You pulled your hand back slowly before things got too intense again and turned toward your desk to gather the remaining folders. Then you stretched, which apparently was a big mistake.

Your arms lifted over your head as you arched your back slightly, exhaustion pulling a quiet little sigh from your throat while your blouse tightened across your chest and your skirt hugged your hips even more.

You froze halfway through the stretch when you heard a frustrated groan slip past his lips.

“…Tyriq?”

He didn’t respond, so you slowly turned your head only to find him looking downright wrecked. He sat leaned back in the chair, gawking at you like his final thread of self-control had just snapped clean in half. His jaw was clenched tight as his hands gripped the armrests hard enough for his knuckles to pale.

Your stomach flipped in anticipation.

“What?” you laughed nervously.

Tyriq blinked once like he was trying to rejoin reality.

“Baby,” he exhaled roughly. “You cannot stretch like that at two in the morning after I’ve been behaving all damn night.”

Heat rushed through you immediately. “I was just stretching.”

“Uh-huh.” He dragged a hand down his face slowly. “That’s the problem.”

You suddenly remembered how empty and private your office was. You tried to regain composure by shaking your head and stacking the remaining folders neatly together. “Well,” you cleared your throat softly, “at least we’re finally done.”

Tyriq hummed distractedly, but he was still eyeing you. Still looking entirely too hungry.

You grabbed your heels from beneath the desk and slipped them back on as your stomach growled.

“I could definitely go for some pizza right now.” You glanced over at him innocently. “You hungry?”

Tyriq let out a slow, dangerous laugh.

“Yeah,” he muttered while standing up gradually. “But not for no goddamn pizza.”

Oh.

OH.

Your pulse immediately started misbehaving. “Ty—”

“Nah.” He cut you off smoothly while stalking toward you with unhurried confidence. “Come here.” His eyes dragged slowly over your face. “And feed me.”

The second those words left his mouth, your stomach flipped violently, and the heat between your legs intensified.

“Tyriq,” you gasped, already backing into the edge of your desk, “you are ridiculous.”

“And you stalling,” he countered immediately.

Before you could think of a rebuttal, his large hands slid around your waist, and he lifted you effortlessly. A surprised gasp escaped you as he sat you right on top of your desk.

Papers crinkled, ballpoint pens rolled, and a stapler hit the floor dramatically somewhere beside you. Tyriq barely glanced at the mess. His attention stayed completely locked on you.

“Baby,” he sighed deeply, pushing the remaining folders aside carefully so you had more room, “do you know how long I’ve been trying not to touch you tonight?”

Your pulse pounded harder as he stepped between your knees. Close enough to feel how hard he was through his slacks. 

The office lights cast a warm glow across his skin while the city glittered behind him through the massive windows. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and his green eyes darkened with an insatiable hunger. 

You swallowed slowly as his hands settled on your thighs.

“Tyriq…” your voice softened slightly as you suggested. “Maybe I should shower first.”

That made him pause. Not because he agreed but because he looked genuinely offended by the suggestion.

“Baby,” he tsked, like you’d said something outrageous, “we’ve been editing magazine pages for fifteen hours, not digging ditches.”

You laughed softly. “Still—”

“No.” He shook his head immediately, stepping even closer. “Absolutely not.”

Your stomach tightened at the firmness in his tone.

Tyriq leaned down slowly until his forehead rested against yours.

“I like how you smell after a long day,” he admitted. “Been smelling your perfume mixed with your shampoo and your skin all damn night.” His grip tightened against your thighs. “It’s driving me crazy.”

You felt yourself get wetter. 

“You’re insane,” you whispered.

“For you?” He kissed the corner of your mouth softly. “Very.”

Your hands slid automatically around his neck, fingers rubbing circles into the back of his head, and Tyriq let out a low groan that almost made your eyes roll back.

“There you go with them goddamn hands," he muttered against your lips. “You know touching me like that makes me stupid.”

You smiled softly. “You already were acting a little stupid in that elevator.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Why?” you taunted. “You ain’t like hearing me quote you?”

“Oh, I liked it too much.” His hands slid higher against your thighs slowly. “That’s the issue.”

Your breath hitched as he pulled you in by the waist and ground himself against you. It was the kind of storm that had been building all damn day.

“You know what really messed me up?” 

“What?”

The way you kept calling me 'baby' today.

Your heart fluttered. “It just slipped out.”

“Mmhmm.” He smiled knowingly against your mouth. “And every single time it happened, I wanted to drag you into the copier room and lock the door.”

You laughed softly before his lips brushed yours in a full kiss this time. Just enough to make you want more. Tyriq pulled back slightly afterward, eyes scanning your face carefully.

“Please, can I taste you?”

The question hit you harder than anything filthy could have. Because he sounded sincere, almost desperate. It was like this wasn’t just about sex anymore. Your breath caught slightly as your fingers played with the short hairs at the back of his neck.

“I’m not stopping you, baby,” you whispered.

That was all he needed.

Tyriq exhaled sharply against your mouth before kissing you again, deeper this time. His hands slid up your waist slowly, warm palms spreading across your sides like he needed to feel every inch of you. The kiss turned messy fast. You both were hungry for each other. The days of wanting and hours of restraint all finally slipped loose. Your lips parted against his with a soft moan that immediately made his grip tighten.

“Fuck,” he groaned into your mouth. “I missed hearing that noise.”

Tyriq kissed you once more before his mouth traveled lower—across your jaw, beneath your ear, and down the length of your neck where your pulse danced wildly beneath his lips.

His hands moved to the buttons of your blouse carefully, like he was unwrapping something precious.

You watched him through heavy lashes while he worked each button open one by one, kissing your skin in between until your breathing turned uneven.

“Been thinking about this too,” he admitted while opening another button. “Seeing what you wear under these little office outfits.”

You bit back a moan. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Mmhmm.”

The blouse loosened gradually beneath his hands until he finally pushed it open enough to expose the soft curve of your chest beneath your bra.

Tyriq went quiet as his eyes dragged slowly over you before he shook his head once like he genuinely still couldn’t believe you were real.

“You so damn pretty,” he praised.

Your stomach fluttered hard. By this point, you knew you had ruined your panties. 

He slid the blouse slowly off your shoulders, fingertips grazing your soft brown skin just enough to make you shiver. The fabric bunched around your elbows while his mouth returned to your neck again, kissing lower and lower.

Meanwhile, your skirt remained perfectly intact. That was until Tyriq’s hands slid down your thighs next, and the second his fingers hooked beneath the hem, you let out the tiniest whimper. Deliberately, he pushed the pencil skirt upward inch by inch until it gathered around your hips.

“Yeah,” he muttered under his breath once your thighs spread naturally for him. “This exactly what I needed.”

Your pulse hammered wildly as he looked at you sitting on top of your desk—blouse hanging open, skirt pushed up, heels still on and brown eyes already shining softly for him.

Tyriq swallowed hard.

“Baby,” he exhaled sharply, pulling you closer to him as he ground himself into you, “you have no idea what you do to me.”

The office lights glowed softly above you. Computer screens dimmed around the room as the city shimmered black and gold behind the glass windows.

Somehow the quietness made everything feel even more intimate.

His eyes dropped lower to your panties.

“That pussy dripping for me, ain’t it?” he questioned as his fingertips brushed teasingly along the edge of your panties.

Your thighs jerked against the desk. “Tyriq…”

A low groan left him at the way you said his name. That alone almost did him in. He slowly sank downward to his knees, hands sliding along your thighs as he went.

The sight nearly took your breath away. That tall, arrogant man was kneeling in front of your desk in the middle of your office, looking up at you like he could spend the rest of his life there. The sight was too dangerous. 

Tyriq kissed the inside of your thigh tenderly, eyes never leaving your face for long.

“You know what’s crazy?” he breathed against your skin.

Your hand gripped the desk while the other gripped his shoulder. “What’s that, baby?”

“I really was trying to behave today.”

You hummed softly, breath hitching as his fingers trailed up to your panties.

“I’m serious, Y/N,” he continued, voice roughening slightly, “I stayed focused for damn near fifteen hours.”

“Mmhmm.”

“And then you stretched.”

“That’s not my fault.” you insisted in between giggles that soon broke into a full-blown moan as he rubbed your clit through your soaked panties.

“It absolutely is.”

His hands slid beneath the fabric slowly before he paused, green eyes lifted to yours, quietly begging for permission.

You nodded once, and that was all he needed.

Instead of removing your panties completely, Tyriq pushed them aside carefully, exhaling sharply the second he finally saw how wet you were for him.

“Fuck,” he swore under his breath.

The sound alone sent heat flooding throughout the rest of your body.

His forehead rested briefly against your thigh like he was collecting himself before he looked up at you again.

“You know I’m obsessed with you, right?”

Your chest tightened instantly. Because he always said things like that so casually. Like they were obvious facts.

You swallowed hard. “Tyriq…”

“Nah, I’m serious.” His thumb stroked slowly along your thigh. “You got me gone, baby.”

The way he looked at you while saying it nearly melted you on the spot. His free hand gripped your thigh and pulled you all the way to the edge so your heels could rest against his back.

He finally leaned forward, and his nose brushed your clit as he trailed his tongue down your glistening slit.

The first touch almost made your head fall back immediately. Your fingers tightened against the desk while a needy whimper escaped you before you could stop it.

Tyriq let out a satisfied grunt against you instantly, like he’d been craving the taste and sound of your pleasure all day. 

“There it is,” he rumbled softly. “Missed hearin’ you like this.”

The office suddenly felt way too warm. Every little sound seemed louder now—your breathing, the wet squelch of his tongue flicking against your clit, the faint squeak of the desk whenever you shifted.

Tyriq looked entirely too satisfied every time another shaky breath left your mouth. He kept glancing up at you, too, constantly. Watching and studying, addicted to your every reaction.

Your blouse hung open around your shoulders now, curls messy around your face while you tried and failed to stay composed under the way he was eating you for his pleasure. 

His tongue swirled around your clit in tight circles, focusing all his attention on one little spot that made you let out the sexiest noises. His tongue moved back and forth over your hardened nub in such a way that it shot tingles of pleasure up your spine. 

You used your other hand to free your left breast from your bra, cupping it gently in your palm while pinching your nipple between your finger and thumb. 

“That feels so good, Tyriq. Please don’t stop.”

“You already know I’m not stopping ‘til you cum.” Came his muffled reply. He closed his mouth around your clit, sucking fast and unrelenting as his tongue pressed in insistent strokes. Your eyes rolled back as you felt an orgasm approaching. 

“Look at you,” he hummed around your clit, almost in disbelief. “Sittin’ on your desk feeding me this delicious pussy after bossin’ everybody around all day.”

The vibrations made you dizzy, and you moaned so loudly as your thighs began to shake. “Oh fuckfuckfuck Tyriq—”

“Mmhmm?” His eyes lifted innocently.

You narrowed your eyes breathlessly. “I’m gonna cum if you keep eating me like this.”

A grin spread slowly across his face. “That’s the point, baby,” he admitted shamelessly. “Your cum belongs to me.”

He flattened his tongue at your entrance and dragged it back up, swirling at the base of your clit. “Taste so good.”

He pushed two fingers into you slowly, curling them upward at the perfect angle while his other hand tugged your panties to the side even tighter. 

“Fuuuuck!” you moaned even louder. 

He sucked your clit harder, long fingers curling deeper. The pleasure was building so sharply and fast that you choked on every moan and whimper.

“I’m gonna fuckin’ cum,” you gasped out, body tingling all over and toes curling inside your heels.

“Give it to me,” he groaned against you, the vibration surging through every nerve as his skilled tongue applied even more pressure against your clit and his fingers thrust faster. You came with a sharp cry, mouth falling wide open as you jerked against the desk. His grip on your panties and thigh tightened as he held you in place, his lips still tugging at your clit. You chanted his name in between screams of pleasure as you saw constellations. 

“Ty-Tyriq, please!”you begged as you tried to close your legs, but he held them open as he continued eating your pussy like it was his last meal. 

“Fuckfuckfuck—Tyriq, baby, please! I-I can—fuuuck!”

Tyriq didn’t stop until your whole body went slack in his arms. Once it did, he rose and immediately wiped your hot tears with the pads of his thumbs. 

He kissed your lips twice. “You taste so good, baby,” he praised. “So fuckin’ pretty when you cum for me.”

You unzipped and pushed down his slacks as he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off. As soon as his chest was free, you trailed warm kisses all over his pecs and even licked his nipples. He gasped in pleasure before lifting your chin and crashing his lips back into yours, his tongue finding yours almost immediately. You moaned softly as you tasted yourself on his tongue and pulled him closer. Tyriq’s hands slid firmly along your back before one settled against the bunched-up skirt around your waist, pulling you flush against him while the other cradled your jaw carefully like he still couldn’t decide whether he wanted to worship you or lose his mind over you.

Probably both.

You whimpered softly into his mouth as his tongue brushed yours again, rougher this time, deeper, and the sound he made in response nearly sent you over the edge again right there on the desk. The desk shifted faintly beneath you when he ground himself between your legs, and your breath hitched immediately at the feeling of his bulge pressing against your sensitive clit.

Tyriq broke the kiss only long enough to drag his mouth down your neck again, breathing you in slowly while he freed his rock-hard length from his briefs and tapped his tip against your clit.

“Please, I need you inside me,” you whimpered desperately. “And don’t be gentle. I want to feel you tomorrow as I walk through this building.”

He groaned deeply, “Anything you want, Y/N.” He lined his erection up with your entrance while his other hand gripped your waist so tight you were almost certain there’d be thumbprints there in the morning. “Look at me.”

As soon as you tilted your head up and locked eyes with him, he pushed inside. The feeling was no longer foreign but still a tight fit at first. You remembered to relax as much as you can so he can ease inside better. He pushed deeper, muttering all kinds of obscenities in between moans until he finally sank all the way inside you. 

Your lips parted in a breathless moan as both hands shot up to his shoulders to brace yourself. “Ohh fuuuckk Tyriq…”

He groaned into your neck as he began to thrust hard and deep just like you asked. “So wet—tight as fuck—squeezin’ the fuck outta me…ALL MINE.” He was already losing it, but then again, so were you and you just got started. “Tell me,” he demanded, breaths growing sharper. “Tell me how it feels.”

“Tyriq, baby, you feel so fuckin’ good,” you moaned softly as you glanced down to watch your walls stretch around his girthy dick as he fucked you harder and deeper. 

“You feel so fuckin’ good, baby,” he shot back in between grunts and groans. 

Your bodies moved together into that unique rhythm only the two of you seemed to be able to orchestrate as sweat began to slick your chests. Broken breaths sync with your rolling hips.

“Goddamn,” he groaned, trying with all his might not to bust embarrassingly quickly. “You feel too good, Y/N. Too. Fuckin’. Good.”

“Shit—I’ll never get used to how good this feels. I’m so glad it was you. I only want you, Tyriq.”

“Mmm. Look at you.” He leaned in closer, lips brushing your ear as he panted. “So fuckin’ pretty when you taking this dick.”

It wasn't just the words; it was the way he delivered them. Smooth but intense, soaked in adoration and filth all at the same damn time. His thrusts took you apart while his words put you back together. 

“Fuuck,” he gasped sharply as he shifted the angle of his hips slightly before setting a rougher pace. “You love giving me this pussy, don’t you?” 

You nodded. “Yes! I l-love the way you fuck me!”

“What was that? I ain’t hear you.” His hand slid up your body, squeezing your breast while the other was still trapped inside your bra. 

“I love the way you fuck me!” 

“You the boss at work, but when it comes to this tight-ass pussy, I’m the boss, ain’t that right?” He lifted his leg and placed his foot on the desk before yanking you into him, making you take every inch as he fucked you nice and rough. 

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

You couldn’t even respond. The screams of pleasure and the squelching sounds of your pussy getting wetter and wetter should have been answer enough, but apparently those weren’t good enough for him. 

“Answer me, Y/N. Am I the boss of this pussy?”

“Yessss!” you cried out, squeezing your legs around him and digging your nails into his shoulders as he fucked the breath right out of you. “Ty—shitshitshit—I’m gonna cum,” you whimpered a warning, toes curling so hard inside your heels they slid off, clattering to the ground.

“Mmhmm,” he moaned loudly, restraint slipping as he felt your walls tighten around him. “Cum all over this dick, pretty girl.”

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

You came so hard that black dots temporarily speckled your vision. Your mouth fell open in a loud scream that swiftly became muffled as you bit into his pec. His dick twitched inside you at the jolt of pleasurable pain, but he didn’t dare stop. As he continued to pound you through your orgasm, the tension coiled tighter and the euphoric hum sparkled under your skin. The wet squelches and hissed curses filled the room along with the squeaks of the desk.

“Oh my fuckin’—shitshitshit— I-I need—” you let out the neediest whimper as you looked up at him, brown eyes shining and jaw slack. “Tyriq, pleaseee! Cum for me.”

“Okay, baby—fuckfuckfuck—I’m gonna cum inside this perfect pussy.” 

Your thighs shook wildly as the pleasure became almost too much. Still, you held on for dear life as he chased his own orgasm. 

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

He let out a groan so loud it seemed to bounce off the office walls as his long legs buckled, and thrusts faltered when he spilled inside of you, cumming hard. Your chest rose and fell fast, thighs jerking every time Tyriq twitched inside you.

The office was completely silent by the time the two of you finally came back down to earth. It was silent except for your soft, crescendoing laughter.

Tyriq stood between your legs while you tried—and failed—to catch your breath, both of you smiling so hard it was almost embarrassing.

“Why are you grinning like that? ”you laughed breathlessly.

“Because,” he shrugged shamelessly, brushing your sweaty curls back from your face, “my girlfriend got that super grip.”

You rolled your eyes even though warmth bloomed all through your chest. “You so damn ridiculous.”

“And you just let me ruin you on your desk.” He glanced around dramatically at the scattered papers and crooked keyboard. “This is nasty workplace behavior from a senior editor.”

That made you burst into another fit of laughter, your forehead dropping against his shoulder while his arms wrapped around your waist automatically.

“Oh my God,” you giggled. “Kyle would actually kill us for this.”

Tyriq laughed too, warm and deep against your skin while he held you close. Somehow, this part felt more intimate than everything that happened before it. The tender way he kept kissing your forehead between giggles like he couldn’t even bother to help himself.

You stayed wrapped around each other for another ninety seconds before Tyriq finally sighed dramatically.

“Aight,” he muttered reluctantly. “We should probably clean up before your office start looking like a crime scene.”

“Mmm.”

Neither of you moved.

Tyriq looked down at you knowingly. “Baby.”

“I know, I know,” you acknowledge, smiling weakly. “I just don’t wanna let you go yet.”

His whole expression softened instantly. “Damn, Y/N,” he sighed. “You say sweet shit like that and expect me to keep it together?”

You snorted softly while he kissed your cheek again.

Eventually, the two of you forced yourselves apart long enough to gather your clothes and tidy up the office.

Tyriq buttoned your blouse back up for you slowly, fingers brushing your breasts every few seconds just because he could.

“You know,” he noted while fixing your collar underneath your curls, “I used to be scared of you.”

You gasped in shock. "No, you were not.”

“Baby, the first day I met you, you corrected my grammar without blinking.”

“It was sloppy.”

“It hurt my feelings and turned me on.”

“You survived though.”

“Barely.”

You giggled again while smoothing down your skirt and stepping into your heels.

Meanwhile, Tyriq gathered the stapler and scattered papers from the floor, but he kept getting distracted by staring at you.

At one point you bent over to grab a folder underneath the desk and immediately heard him grumble, “I know you fuckin’ lyin’.”

You looked back at him and raised an innocent eyebrow. “What?”

Tyriq pointed a long finger accusingly. “You know damn well.”

Your laugh echoed through the empty office again because he was shameless. That man was down horrendous.

Eventually the last folder got stacked, the computers shut down, and the final office lights dimmed around the editorial floor.

Tyriq grabbed both your bags before you could protest.

“You don’t gotta carry everything,” you commented.

“I know.” He slid an arm around your waist casually as you walked together through the dark office to the employee elevator that led to the parking garage. “I want to.”

“So, you just don’t give a damn about the cameras no more, huh?”

“Oh, I never did. I want the whole world to know you mine and I’m yours. Especially Marcus. He had me fucked up today.”

“Aight now,” you rolled your eyes as you stopped at the security pad on the hidden column to set the alarm. “Don’t start, Tyriq. I already shut his ass down.”

“I know,” he smirked. “The way his cocky smile dropped when you told him he couldn’t compare had me enraptured for hours.”

The elevator ride down felt entirely different now. There was no longer any unbearable restraint or pretending. Just soft smiles and lingering touches while Tyriq stood behind you with one arm around your waist, absentmindedly kissing the side of your head every few seconds.

“You tired?” he asked quietly.

“A little bit," you nodded honestly. “And hungry.”

“Good.” His lips brushed your temple. “Imma feed you, then you gon’ sleep real good tonight.”

You looked back at him with a tiny smile. “At your place?”

Tyriq blinked once, as if the answer should’ve been obvious. “Baby,” he scoffed softly, almost offended, “where else would you be?”

Your stomach fluttered instantly. You both had nice homes, but being in his space brought you a level of comfort you didn’t know was possible until recently. 

The elevator doors opened into the parking garage a second later, but before you could step out, Tyriq caught your wrist gently.

You turned back toward him and immediately got pulled into a slow, warm kiss. You lost track of how long the two of you stood there, smiling into each other’s mouths as you swayed.

By the time he finally pulled away, both of you looked equally gone.

“You know what?” he whispered against your lips.

“What?”

“You definitely not beating the ‘completely gone for your boyfriend’ allegations now.”

“Damn baby, why didn’t you tell me you had all this good pussy?”

Cameron mumbled against your bare leg that were currently hiked over his broad shoulder, his voice dripping with admiration a lot sweeter than the way he was fucking you.

The question was rhetorical but emphasised just how much he was enjoying being inside of you.

Goosebumps broke all over the surface of your flushed and damp skin, choking on a whiny moan as your cunt tightly squeezed and pulsated around him. The throbbing sent a shiver down the length of his spine and settled in his bones. A flurry of chopped sobs poured from your mouth as your climax began to climb. You were so close. And he could feel it all.

You would have tried to answer his question but in truth - you didn’t know how to.

The two of you met during freshman in college - sharing the same physiotherapy classes and the two of you instantly clicked. When he first approached you - you couldn’t believe that he’d even talk to you. When you first arrived on campus, his name was uttered in every corner. He was the person to know because of his projected career. You had wanted to keep away from him - you didn’t like attention being drawn to you at all but Cameron just had to be enrolled on your course.

Even worse, he came to sit next to you.

You stilled at just making eye contact with him. Low sitting blue eyes, dimples deep as he smiled, rosy lips begging for attention and from his seated position alone you could tell that he was tall. He made sure that you couldn’t ignore him and you hated that fell for his charm, hook, line and sinker.

The attraction was shared and the chemistry intensified with each interaction but nothing ever came off it.

Football. Girlfriends. Endorsements. A great rookie career - all of it got in the way.

So friendship is what you settled for and you were grateful just to be a part of his journey.

Unfortunately for you, he was relentless. The friendship status did not matter to him at all and Cameron steadily flirted with you like the devil of temptation resided in his flesh. Always hanging around, giving you his undivided attention when you were close. Treating you just on the edges of a girlfriend, yet always teasing the word ‘friend’ in front of you. You always let it wash over you because being close to him in any capacity was worth it.

That attraction however, could not be denied and could not be hidden. And he’d picked up on it and he played with it - he played with you. He enjoyed teasing you. Kissing you on the neck, hands on your lower waist as he moved past you, hugs that lingered. Girlfriends be damned - you were the apple of his eye even if you denied what you were to him.

So that was how you found yourself in his penthouse - on a supposed regular night in with your best friend on his days off. So how you ended up in your current predicament was unbeknownst to you.

A movie, typical gossip, a game of tease.

From there all it took was a kiss.

A soft brush of your lips when he leaned down above you, whispering teasingly against your lips, fingers underneath your chin before gripping your jaw so that you couldn’t shift your eye contact away from him. So that he could see all of that want dripping out of your eyes.

“Do it.” You dared him.

And it was no surprise that he listened.

You had been so determined not to fall into his orbit and now you were on your back, sweating out your hairstyle, tank top ripped and panties pulled to the side as he manhandled you in every way. Your pussy stretched out and creaming around the thickest dick you’ve ever had in your life as you moaned in bliss. Fuck, you loved every second of it.

Cameron’s thrusts were deliciously brutal, his hips snapped into yours as your legs hang over his shoulders. He fucked you like you were a bitch in heat and you sounded just like one. Your mouth dropped open as your cries and whines could not be contained, sounding real pretty for him.

He breathed heavily through his nose at the sight your cream coating the length of his dick. Cam wedged his hands underneath the arch at the base of your back and gripped tight. He used your body as leverage to fuck into you even deeper.

The heat of the bedroom was making you delirious as much as the way his fat mushroom tip was pushing against your softest spots. You were so loud and Cameron drank all of your sounds by shushing you with rough kisses.

The wet clapping emitting from where your bodies connected was getting so loud, Cameron had to look down. His loud moan barely registered through the fog clouding your senses.

“You’re sooo fucking wet baby. Gushing all that good shit all over me, fuuuccckkk.”

You were looking up at him, doe eyed, a soft crease pinching in-between your eyebrows with your teeth biting onto your bottom lip as you tried to control it. He was hitting all of your good spots and it was so intense, it sat like a weight on your chest.

Then, Cameron pushed your legs back so that your knees were touching your ears and he moved to hover directly above you. He used his upper body to contort you into the perfect position for him - ready for his taking and you were in awe with how it left you feeling. The weight of pleasure sinking into your bones, deeper and deeper.

“O-oooh!” You gasped as you pulled on the sheets underneath your fingertips.

His beautiful, blue eyes never left your face as he watched your pretty face surrender into the pleasure he was delivering. Your eyebrows drew together tighter, as if you were about to cry, your lips forming into an ‘o’ form as he slowed down his strokes, letting you enjoy the feel of him. Inch by inch.

Soft curves and hard muscles colliding into each other. Naked,skin on skin - still, felt like there was a barrier between the two of you. The thought slamming into you, nothing will ever be enough, you will always want more. Cameron groaned as he felt the pain of your nails breaking into the skin of his back as you unintentionally brought him closer.

You were begging for him without words and that caused him to smirk in satisfaction. Cameron couldn’t believe you had been keeping this type of connection away from him. The type of connection that quenched your thirst but left you famished for more.

He was brought out of his thoughts by the feel of your trembling fingers tracing his bottom lip, tugging it free from his teeth. He placed a tender kiss on the inside pad of your thumb before his eyes drew back to where your bodies connected. The sight of it caused all of his blood to soar down to his aching dick.

Slathered all over his base was milky white. It built up generously and it accumulated so much the flapping wetness caused his eyes to roll to the back of his head. He couldn’t believe you’d ever get this wet.

“Yeahhh mamas, I can’t believe she’s this wet for me …”

Cameron doesn’t take his eyes off your cunt as he slammed back in, the wetness drawing a delicious drag with drag. He threw his head back as a deep groan left him. The sound was so primal it sent nasty shivers down your spine and settled in your pelvis.

But you didn’t move your hand away from his pelvis as he was folding you even deeper. In fact, Cameron, lowered his upper body until he was completely folded over yours. His pelvis ground against your clit, his trimmed hair brushing your clit - hard.

Cameron was wild in his lust.

He sucked bruising kisses into your neck, his tongue trailed hotly up to your mouth to claim it in a deep kiss. It was all consuming, overwhelming. His long tongue flattened against yours in maddening swipes, sucking the muscle sloppily into his own mouth which made you lightheaded.

Blood rushed to your ears as he ground his hips up again, hammering away at that spot inside you but not enough to make you cross eyed and your hand pressed on his abdomen.

Cameron kept his eyes on as you gasped desperately. Your eyes closed as he nipped at your bottom lip which caused you to sigh softly. His tongue darted out and soothed the sting of your bite before whispering inside your mouth- eyes glazed, “Move that hand, baby.”

You didn’t move your hand but he did it for you. He grabbed your wrist and trapped it above your head as he drilled into you. Your mind was mush the more he thrusted into you so you didn’t even try to think straight. Cameron was so caught up in the moment - not just from the heat of your pussy but how tight and how creamy you were.

Letting out a string of swears, Cameron captured them by bringing your mouth into another overwhelming kiss. His cock aching whilst he swallowed your wails as you twitched and ached around him.

Until you couldn’t take it anymore. Cam gave another harsh yet hard roll of his hips into your swollen opening while he was battering at that tender spot inside of you and then … you were coming.

And fuck! You were coming, hard. Your nails clawed at Cam’s rigged muscles as a swarm of stars completely eclipsed your vision whilst your body went into shock with wave after wave of vicious pleasure.

Your wails were so loud, you struggled to recognise your voice. But Cameron had a clear view to the ecstasy flooding your face he pumped his hips forward, pushing himself deeper into your body. Filthy words of praise and encouragement directly in your ear, prolonging your orgasm.

“That’s it, babygirl … I love the way you’re cumming all over me…”

Tears spilled from your eyes and you were close to passing out when Cam dropped his head into your chest and took one of your swollen nipples into his mouth, his thrusts slowing down in tempo as he shot his cum deep inside of your heat with a muffled groan.

He filled you up to the brim and then popped out your nipple out of his mouth with a satisfied sigh.

The both of you were riddled with tiredness, thighs were killing you, and your body was trembling like a leaf but a grin had etched onto your lips regardless as Cameron placed calming kisses everywhere his lips could touch.

He slowly pulled out, warm yet concerned eyes checking over you for any sign of discomfort as you basked in the glow of the aftermath. Your eyes closed as you sank into the softness of the blankets beneath you. You left his kisses on your cheeks in the tender way that you’d grown accustomed to.

“You okay sweet girl? I didn’t hurt you did I?”

“No, baby. I’m good.” You shook your head as you hummed in satisfaction. You felt him shift away from the bed, leaving you in your peaceful lonesome until you felt him wipe you down gently with a wet towel. You heard a thud as he tossed to rag onto on the floor when he was done.

You felt the bed dip beside you before Cameron slipped up behind you. Your hands reached behind you and brought him closer with a soft hum. You had crossed that line in your friendship and you couldn’t process what it meant for the future for the both of you. But you’d bask in whatever this moment meant for you.

Cameron nuzzled his face into the crook of your neck. “We’ll never just be friends after this.” He mumbled.

He was right about that. Nothing would ever be the same.

𓈒  ˙ ꪆৎ if someone asked the cannon: ‘cameron, is there anything better than boxing?’, he would have knocked them clean out and spit over their withering body. because how dare they? how dare they even assume there be an answer? the question had not once, in his entire six-year professional career, even occurred to him. boxing was the absolute core of his identity, down to the most microscopic parts of his being . . .

just ten minutes ago, his boxing mitts and robe were the largest gift. his world began and ended in the squared circle; twenty-three feet by twenty-three feet, sixteen ropes parallel, four fucking posts . . .

but he’s found a new love. a love that’s been in his life far longer than boxing. a love that’s always stared up at him with goggly eyes set behind massive lenses and chunky, dorky frames. a love he’ll curse himself for rejecting and swatting off, like one pesky mosquito. a love he never saw himself indulging; frequently assuring his closest brother — who was presently demoted to stupid-fucking-opponent — that he would never make any advancements, “wouldn’t touch that girl wit’a ten foot pole. trus’me.”

and almost ten years later, he is touching. touching all over. and licking and biting and kissing and grunting and moaning and trying his very best to calm it. he hasn’t had a hard-on this severe since the night he lost his virginity. those light-green eyes were watery, and very blood hot, but cameron ‘the cannon’ cade would have sworn on a stack of bibles that they were also the eyes of a sober man . . . of a man who only had his fiancée on his mind. he looks to his opponent’s sister and desperately wants to see his fiancée . . . but his brain won’t let him. she didn’t feel like this- and she damn sure didn’t smell like this either.

there’s a different sort of sweetness in the air. a homey, secure smell. a smell that when his eyes flutter shut from pleasure, his pussy-drunk brain presents a paradise his younger-self would hurl at. somehow, this smell completely overpowered the unpleasant stench of him . . . totally shocking, given the sweat hanging at his hairline, behind his steaming neck, along his tensed arms and hands (still wrapped in reddened bandages), between his straining fat thighs, and the dried blood below his nostrils and at his busted lips . . . the cannon feels stupefied.

another girly, futile whine spills and his weighty cock is twitching. it burns having to go soooo slow, but he doesn’t want to cause pain. not any more than what he was already inflicting on such a precious body. and he wasn’t even all the way in, just barely a full quarter. every-time cameron pulled back, stopping before his plump, glossy tip — deep pink in shade — could plop out . . . he’d push back to feed more of his delicious cock in— “‘s t-too m-mucch- “

shit- what a voice. “it’s not- stop sayin’ that shit.” but there wasn’t much else to do. cameron was holding both arms back, using one large hand as a makeshift-cuff. “wish i had a camera . . . let you hear how fuckin’ ungrateful you sound.” because yeah, most girls would kill to be in this position: pressed against a chilly locker with their flowery top bunched at the waist, polka-dot skirt hiked and few-of-a-kind undershorts torn through. “no more runnin’. jus’ let’me fuck you open- c’mon . . . trus’me.”

and if you weren’t so absolutely smitten by cameron cade . . . you would’ve stopped this right here. he was going against about five of your ‘non-negotiable’ boundaries during sexy-time. “you trust me, righ’?” with that free hand of his, he snakes around your waist and clamps his palm over your shivering abdomen, that dangling jewellery marking your brown skin. “i’ll make us feel good- i promise.”

“i promise,” he whispers against your neck, “i’ve got’chu.” and kisses and nibbles and licks. “know you’wanna make this dick nut- “ cameron dropped your hands and swooped around, collecting one soft boob. he squeezed and tweaked at your nipple, slowly wiggling his hefty hips, digging that huge cock a little further. there was a hole to be pierced and molded; to the shape of him. “no more cryin’ . . . le’me do ‘t all, yeaah . . .”

your face, all flush and livid pallor, blazed . . . glittery lips drawn back from your teeth in a mini pout . . . is enough to make the cannon explode. cameron bends in, hot breath fanning over your parted lips, “i’m gon’a nut insid’a you, ‘kay?” more of a declaration than a warning. a sure-thing. almost guaranteed. nothing would stop him from cumming in your tummy, not even you.

he’s in. “ooooh . . .” all the way. “shit.” you’re shuddering wrackingly, legs feeling rubbery and unreliable. “. . . doesn’t that feel soooo much better?” cameron pecks the salty patches of your cheek. “say it- tell me ‘t’s my dick makin’ this sloppy pussy feel good . . .” cameron pleads through aggressive munches.

after so long, yeah, it had been him. finally. your college-self wouldn’t believe this to be true. the boy you had a gigantic crush on throughout your child, pre-teen, and teen years? wanting to make you feel good? you? the girl cameron cade pinched and tripped and plucked and shoved and teased and mocked . . . currently being forced to take the entirety of his curvy cock.

thwack thwack thwack! seemingly, all those years of unnecessary mistreatment has . . . gone out the window. faded out into nothing. to darkness with each thwack thwack thwack. how could you still be upset when this was the outcome? frankly, you’d experience it all over again if it meant having cameron cade’s dick so far up your pussy — it was a miracle to be so incredibly lengthy and girthy and know just how to use it . . . shining pearls of wetness bubble over his happy trail and pubes.

shlap shlap shlap! “you-you’re being . . . so . . . rough!” huffing, puffing. and cameron doesn’t take that as a cry to stop. he doesn’t even ease up. again, your arm swings back to try and stop his mean ramming, but he just forces you away — changing his mind, cameron clutched a hand around your bicep, which made fucking you that much smoother.

“nuh-uh. stay here,” he chokes out, “you got it. you got it. you got it.” cameron’s voice significantly pitches and he’s so into it that he doesn’t even realize that you’re squirming . . . yet splashing and dribbling juices over your pretty, velvety ballet flats.

with the other hand, he lets go of your wobbly hip and grips the front of your neck, snatching you into his torso— “ahhn-gh~!” —so beefy. and so insanely sweaty.

plapplapplap! plap . . . plap . . . plap . . . cameron’s slowing down just so he could pant mumble in your ear, rude and annoyingly, “anyone fuckin’ this at home? hmm? who better? me or him? say th’ truth” he’s such a boy. you swallow thickly despite having an awfully dry throat, voice all raspy and strained for the very obvious reason: “nno,” you hiccuped.

cameron hums and leans his head in. like he didn’t hear you the first time. “no h-him.” and cameron feels butterflies. for a reason he can’t yet pinpoint. with a sly smile, “yea’?” well . . . this just got far more intimate. you’re nodding against him, cunt leaking a bunch more — even with sluggish, mindful plunges, he was still so deep. so so deep. sooooo deep. he didn’t have to try. he just was. that. big. and fat. for no reason at all. small amounts of slippery arousal that oozed from his tip painted your cervix.

“mggh~!” and his pace has quickened. the cannon could practically taste his oncoming load. cameron drawls, “ohhhh fucccccck,” listening to the way your gooey pussy peels away from his soaked thighs; a slich slich slich! clicky noise as he sinks back into your ribbed, silken walls. his eyes snap shut and both of his hot hands grab onto your shoulders.

with unbelievable power, cameron is banging you backbackback onto his cock. “fnh-hnnnh! cam- fucc-ah!!” and he continues to grunt out curses, knees starting to buckle. the way your pussy slurps him in, ass clapping at his pelvis, you’re short-circuiting: tearing and drooling and squirting a-fucking-gain. he keeps at it; taking you upupup to that orgasm cliff and harshly bringing you back down.

“‘m bouta busss~” cameron chortles, tugging and slamming you back and forth, just jackhammering without a single care in the world. filthy words leave his mouth, ones he could never imagine saying to you if he weren't so gone and not so damn pussy whipped. “mmm-righ’there. uurrgh!” his chest’s ballooning and you could feel how fast his heart’s beating from his palms, how careless he’s becoming from his strenuous efforts.

tongue lolled out like some stupid doll, you don’t think you’ve ever been fucked like this before. ever. and after this evening, would you ever get this back? this dick? probably not. a new bar’s been impossibly set. cameron’s ruined everything for the next man —

GASP. there’s an explosion: “hnnht!” and another sticky spurt: “hnht!” and another splash: “fuck!” syrupy ribbons of sweltry white seed trickles from your walls. to cameron, it feels like the winds been knocked right outta him. and you . . . you are suffocating. roasting from the inside out. he keeps his arms around you, worried he may collapse.

adonis is going to kill you. cameron first.

𓈒  ˙ ꪆৎ hello. it is currently 4:40am edt (the birds are chirping) and this took approximately 2days. i have genuinely been busy with my summer career class, job, & trying to make time for personal relationships. i do get creative writing ideas often, but i’ve been lacking the brain power to push forward. i have NAAWT dropped from the ‘tyriq withers’ wagon. i’m still at the party literally. + wondering what else i could share with this univerrssseeee!!!!!

it’s 4:52am & my period has started. perfect

A chair scratches across the hardwood floor causing your head to pop up. Your eyes met with Tyriq's who's expression read sarcasm and irritation. "Didn't know you tutored."

"Tyriq, what the fuck are you doing here? Where's my student?" You whispered harshly. He chuckled before using his thumb and pointer to pinch his nose.

"Told him to take a lap." He smiled sarcastically as he leaned back in the seat.

"Are you crazy—" He laughed again before leaning towards you on his forearms.

"If you seriously thought that he was coming here to study then maybe you need a tutor more than he does." His mocking tone made your nerves burn with anger.

"Don't—"

"He's not stupid. Not smart either but not stupid. His dad is in a pretty important seat right now so I doubt he'll fail." Tyriq explained. Your anger diminished, you knew better than to tutor a bunch of spoiled brats.

You push your chair out from under you and collect your things. Tyriq does nothing but watch you quickly pack your things away. "Why are you avoiding me?"

You wanted to scoff in his face. "Does it matter?"

"I think it does when the girl I slept with leaves before I wake up." You shushed him as you looked around the library.

He scoffed, his arms crossing over his chest. "You're embarrassed."

He acted as if he had it all figured out but he didn't in the slightest. "You're the president's son."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" His laugh beyond genuine. He thought you were a fool.

"It means, how the fuck would that look? Golden boy running around—"

"A college boy doing what college boys do?" Your head snapped to his. "What?"

"You do know that I'm beyond the president's son right?" He asked before chuckling at you.

"You do know you have eyes on you at all times right?" You sassed back as you slung your bag over your shoulder.

He had that smug look on his face making you want to smack it off of him. "You don't take shit serious."

"Alright I'm sorry." He said as he walked towards your already retreating figure. You moved swiftly to get out of that library. "You really wanna get away from me."

You stopped to face him and sigh. "Yeah I do. Tyriq, that night was a one time thing. We had a heart to heart then—" He rolled his eyes as he stopped in front of you.

"We had skin to skin. There's nothing wrong with that, ❀." He threw his arms down as you watched him.

"This will never happen again, do you understand me?" You spoke sternly and pointed your manicured finger in his face. You strutted off without hearing his answer as he watched you go.

That was almost two years ago.

You could've stood on your words, could've moved to a different college, and erased him but life just doesn't work that way. Life pulls you in repeatedly until it feels like you've had enough. Your parents wouldn't let you switch schools, this was the top of the top. Where else would you go? You couldn't possibly tell them you slept with the presidents son.

Tyriq went away for a while but you couldn't remember what for. You didn't care though as long as you didn't have to see him again. As long as you didn't have to sit with the guilt of that night. Tyriq on the other hand couldn't stop thinking about you. He couldn't wipe you out of his mind.

He could still hear the way his name rolled off your lips right when you reached your peak. He could still feel your soft skin in his hands. He could remember everything vividly and it drove him insane. Through the time he was away he could only think of you; even when he didn't want to.

The night of the big charity gala had a huge turnout. Many people from college showed up looking refined. You could remember the many faces that would once get shit-faced on a Friday night. They were all different now—more mature but just for the night. You especially felt different like something was waiting to happen.

"Stand up straight." Your mother hissed causing you to subtly roll your eyes.

Your mother hadn't changed in the slightest. She was strict and refused to show anyone the slightest bit of weakness. She was on your case all through college about your studies. As soon as you finished those she sent you to graduate school. It was daunting and you were sick of it.

"Any straighter and I'll be an ironing board." You seethed quietly as you gripped your champagne glass.

"Perfect posture—" You walked away before she could finish, greeting whoever walked towards you.

It had always been your mothers way or the highway. One slip up and you would have been living with her mother. That was no insult to you since she was a polite old woman. It saddened you that she was getting up in age, and all she wanted was to see her granddaughter and her daughter when they had time. Your mother never had time and was ashamed of her own mother. It was sickening to hear but you knew how cold your mother was.

Your heels click against the marble floors before you entered an empty room. You needed somewhere to breathe as much as this corset would let you. You wanted to slouch—to just be. You plopped down on the couch and sighed softly. Your aching back finding release from the tension you once carried.

"This is the longest night of my life." You mumbled to yourself.

You heard the doorknob jiggle causing you to spring upwards. You smooth out your dress and fix your posture. You assumed it was the many people your parents had you meet throughout the night. "Sorry, I was just leaving—"

Your voice caught in your throat when he emerged. His hair was cut clean and his suit fit him perfectly. You hadn't seen him in so long, and yet not much had changed about him. His eyes met yours with an intense stare.

"Long time no see." He smirked at you as he closed the door behind him. Your eyes didn't leave his figure as he walked closer to you.

"I was just leaving." You repeated before moving around him. He gently grabbed your arm before pulling you into him.

The scent of your perfume wafting at him. It had been so long since he's seen you. He missed you, more than you would know. You stiffened as his arms wrapped around you. His nose in your hair as you both stood in this silence.

"I've missed you." He murmured into your hair. You wanted to push him away but something was pulling you into him. You chopped it up to his expensive cologne.

"Tyriq, we ended this remember?" You didn't look at him. You didn't embrace him. You just stood there wondering when he got here.

"You ended it. I didn't agree to it." His hands trail up to your cheeks making you look at him.

"And why do you think I ended it, Tyriq?" You backed away from him causing his hands to drop.

"Because you're scared." You scoffed at him. What a stupid accusation. He thought this was all a joke. "Scared?"

He nodded slowly as he licked his bottom lip. "Scared of what our parents may say."

"You're the presidents son—" You reminded him as if he needed it.

"Tell me something I don't know." He chuckled before pulling you in by your waist.

You placed your hands on his chest to create distance. It had been a while since you've seen him. So long that you almost felt embarrassed to be around him. It was different because you both seemed different. He was more assertive and you felt it.

He leaned down, your noses touching. His breath fanning your face as you stand perfectly still. You couldn't kiss him; you knew better. Anyone could walk in on the two of you. That would be both of your reputations down the drain. Your mother would give you shit for it and you knew it.

"The door." Your voice shaky as he pulled you closer once more.

"I locked it." He muttered softly. He leaned in before kissing you softly.

His hands tighten around your waist as you melt into him. You tried to fight it; that aching feeling whenever you so much as heard his name in a room. You didn't want to fall into old habits. You couldn't afford to but god did you yearn to. Something inside you wanted this—needed it.

Your breathing grew heavy as your hands trailed up to the back of his neck. You pulled him deeper into the kiss as your lips meshed together. Your bodies rolling against each others. He tasted of mint, you assumed from whatever gum he was chewing earlier.

You pull apart and heave as you try to catch your breath. The room felt muggy as you looked anywhere but at Tyriq. You felt like you folded too quickly but he felt like it wasn't quick enough. He couldn't help himself after not seeing you for almost two years. His kisses turn sloppy as he trailed down to your neck; leaving open mouth kisses across your skin.

"Tyriq wait—" You panted as your hands move to his wrists. His tongue flat on your pulse.

You fought to stay composed. If someone could see you both right now you'd get an earful. "You're not thinking straight." You told him as you lifted his head from your neck.

"I swear to you I am." His voice deeper as he stared into your eyes.

"You're not and—"

"Stop telling me what I am and what I'm not." His voice stern causing you to freeze in your spot. His hands now resting on your sides.

"Your lust is high, Tyriq." You told him slowly as if he were stupid. He couldn't help but to shake his head in disbelief.

"You don't know how I feel because you've never once asked me about it. You just slept with me and avoided me for the rest of the semester." He tried not to get upset because he told himself if he saw you tonight, he would try again.

"Why would I? We slept together, big fucking deal!" You shouted as you walked away from him and towards the desk in the room.

His eyes followed you as you placed both hands on the desk and sighed in frustration. "It's a big fucking deal to me."

"Okay?! What do you want me to do, Tyriq? Huh?" You snapped turning towards him. You throw your arms down to your sides. "It was a mistake!"

He could feel his chest grow tight and heavy. He wanted to get angry or even tell you about yourself. He truly tried to stay calm but your disregard for his feelings rubbed him the wrong way. "A mistake? That's what you think?"

"Oh come on, Tyriq. There's no way you thought it was more than just sex." You rolled your eyes as you crossed your arms.

"I don't just go around having sex with anybody. It wasn't just sex to me." He admitted as he stepped to you.

"I kept pursuing you and you continued to push me away. I refuse to let you go but maybe I get that from my dad." He said as he caged you between the desk.

"Maybe you do." You mumbled as he just watched you.

"You're just scared what others think but I couldn't care less what they say about us." He told you as he made you look at him.

"Tell me you want me to leave you alone and I will." He told you as he caressed your chin.

You wanted to speak up; to tell him to leave you alone. You couldn't your mind wouldn't let you. You both sat in silence as you just watched you think to yourself. He didn't move, didn't make a sound. Time ticked by before he smirked.

"Thought so." He answered before bringing your lips to his. He gave you a gentle, sensual kiss.

A rough jiggle of the handle made you snatch away from him. His thumb rubs against your lower lip before he backs away. He raised his pointer finger at you as he raised his eyebrow. "Don't forget what we talked about."

When he swung the door open there stood your mother in surprise. She tripped over her words as she realized who Tyriq was. She hoped he could put in a good word for her with his parents. Your mother noticed you in the room and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "What's going on?" She asked a suspicious drawl to her voice.

He moved around her like she was nothing. "Just two friends catching up."

Tyriq left it at that before meeting your eyes again. His shoes click down the hall before they eventually disappear. Your mother walks in making you stand up straighter. Her fast pace before she grabbed your arm shook you up. She dragged you to the door of the room with a stern look.

"How did you get close with the presidents son?" She demanded an answer as she yanked your arms down.

You grimaced before answering her. "We were going to the same college."

She smirked mischievously. "Keep seeing him."

"What? No!" You sounded almost flabbergasted. Your mother didn't like any of your friends and none of her reasons were good enough for you to stop seeing them.

"Excuse me? You like a comfy life? You'll help me and your father out." She spoke sternly making you frown up your face.

"What? That's—" She cut you off by snapping her fingers in your face. An action that was common for her throughout your childhood.

"You'll listen to your mother. I'm not arguing with you either." She pointed her manicured nail in your face before walking off.

You sighed, putting your head in your hands. You didn't want to use him for personal gain. You didn't ask to be a politicians child either. You wanted to leave this stupid building, get out of this stupid dress and go home. You were exhausted and ever so annoyed. You didn't know how you were going to get yourself out of this one this time.

BabyDaddyTeddy! Changed his direction in careers, putting his foot down and having a honest yet loud conversation with his father, Gr*nt. Teddy’s been at boot camp for approx. two weeks…on his way to having his dream job. A Coast Guard. All the way out in Connecticut mind you—which took less time to get to by hoping on The Spencer’s jet but before all of this from what you heard, Teddy was having a grand time. Minus the whole academics part—Teddy had the drive and you supported him.

BabyDaddyTeddy! Who plays it cool as ever as soon as he see’s your face, although you’re positive that you definitely heard a, “Awl shit,” from him before he cleared his throat. They have him in a neck brace. The main result of the accident. It was a requirement of the academy to be involved in a varsity sport. He chose rowing. Felt that was most fitting. Waters were too choppy that day—something he had to be prepared for. Teddy along with other cadets lost control of the boat. He was thrown from the boat, he guarded as much as he could but…face still hit the rocks. Scrape to the cheek and chin, minor concussion, more cuts + bruises along his body and partial paralysis at the neck. It wasn’t permanent thank God but seeing him like that? Did something to your heart ngl.

BabyDaddyTeddy! Who never took set backs well and was honestly embarrassed that you were seeing him like this. “Why are you here? I know you didn’t bring Tillz all the way here for this.” - you sit beside his bed, used to his shit talking. You didn’t give him a verbal response, your eyes say it all. He sighs, you catch his fingers moving, palm up at his side. Immediately you slip your hand into his. He squeezes. A good sign that had you sharply inhaling. Your head rests down on top of your joined hands for a moment. Soft breathing and Teddy’s heart monitor fill the room. You already said you were scared of loving him but losing him was just as terrifying. Twila shouldn’t have to lose her father. Not you like did. Something you brought up when Teddy showed he was taking this Coast Guard path seriously. He doesn’t crack a joke this time…which means he’s just as shook. His blue-green hues peek down at you, hand still in yours and for the first time today? He’s a little less tense.

BabyDaddyTeddy! Unfortunately had to put the academy on pause for…just a little while according to professionals. Teddy considered seeing other doctors to keep pushing his body but neither you or Glamma Gail were having that. This pause would actually turn into months. The only positive about this was that he was able to spend more time with Tilly…because being away from her just within those few weeks, not getting to see her as much felt like he was missing out on her growth. Apparently that was part of the discipline when it came to these type of careers and although he sulked and got irritable, Teddy was still thankful to hold what he created with you.

BabyDaddyTeddy! Thought about going back to destructive ways…the excessive drinking and actually hid out at his second home. Which was supposed to be his main house opposed to his once beloved house boat but instead…he just poured more into your daughter. He ended up enrolling her in ballet classes that took place every Tuesday and Thursday. Took her swimming with him which became almost therapeutic for him. His relationship with water definitely changed. Tilly started to sleep over at his so much that you had to be vocal about it, “Hey, that’s my baby too. I still want her home with me, Teddy.” - “Too bad. So sad.” - “Excuse you?” - “…what I meant to say is you’re welcome to move in too.” ???! You just took that as words and didn’t even consider it…since you two were…figuring things out but also not? You both took up space in each others lives because you both simply wanted to be there. Whether you both admitted it or not. Now you kinda understood what it felt like coming back to an empty house. And yes you definitely gave the goat to a loving family who got a kick out of how you ended up with it in the first place.

BabyDaddyTeddy! Who was kinda careless about what he wanted for Father’s Day. When you were on rocky terms…you didn’t necessarily ask but still felt it was right for Tilly to spend time with him, muttering a, “Happy Father’s Day,” to him on drop off’s and kept it moving. Although your MOTHER still felt the need to give shoutouts on Facebook and personally give him small gifts? When things started to get better…your mother would go out of her way to ask Teddy what he wanted and tried to use it as inspo for you to come up with what you and Tilly could surprise him with. Your mother was not subtle at all with her love for Teddy Spencer and it showed. This year…considering what he’s been struggling with, you had a plan in motion.

BabyDaddyTeddy! Was not necessarily in the mood to go out for Father’s Day. Partially since he wasn’t on the best terms with his own father but he, “fixed his face,” for his mother’s sake, going out to breakfast with his parents. Gift tucked under his arm. Teddy also had a handmade card from Tilly at school that he brought over for her and FaceTimed you so Tilly could talk to Grandad Grant while he praised the card more than the usual material gift Teddy handed over. Teddy knew his father could be calculated so he tried his best not to care about the dismissal he was getting from the man. As long as he was being good to Tilly then Teddy could swallow his anger. Phony smiles and declined quality time at the golf course with Grant and his questionable politics buddies, Teddy went back home to nap—assuming he’d see Tilly later until you’re calling him telling him they have reservations at 7.

“What?” Teddy huffed, “A art gallery? I’m not trying to do all that.”

You give a cackle that makes Teddy frown at how evil that almost sounded, “Didn’t you say Tilly was gifted?”

“I never lie on my child.”

“Your child?” You laugh under your breath, “I’m not gonna go into a spiel about that right now. Tilly is already dressed, ready to go, and hopefully not ruining her adorable fit with something sticky since you’re wasting time. I also shaved my legs for this. Get your ass up.”

Teddy scoffs. “And what does that have to do with me?”

“It has a lot to do with you not pouting on the boat for the rest of the night.”

He didn’t know how you knew that’s where he ended up after breakfast with his parents. Then he figures his mom must have snitched on him to you since she called him a hour later to check on him.

Annoyance was very clear in Teddy’s tone as he bit back, “And I won’t be as soon as I see Twila Linnea Spencer’s face…and maybe yours too. Shit, i don’t know.”

“If that last bit was your way of flirting then that was trash.” You reply, “I’m not gonna tell you again. You got thirty minutes.”

He mocks you just to be met with the call disconnecting.

He immediately calls back with a sigh, “…What color are we wearing, babe?”

The, “babe,” was certainly sarcastic but Teddy still picks up on the grin in your voice and he can’t help but to roll his eyes.

BabyDaddyTeddy! Who lightened up a bit as soon as he had his eyes set on you two. Also hearing the shrill of, “Daddy!” Hitting his eardrums along with the patter of Tilly’s jelly sandals and her arms spread out to greet him was enough to make his night better already. He pecks Twila’s cheek repeatedly who holds onto his neck, giggling. When you stroll over, fresh silk press clipped back and in beige attire like you requested, Teddy can’t help but to lick his lips. Especially at your shimmering legs. You smile at him with your glossed lip combo, gift bag on your wrist and a cross body bag against your waist.

“Glad you understood the assignment,” you nudge your head in approval, “Let’s go.”

He can’t help but to slip one arm across your shoulders while he held onto Tilly in his other arm. You allow it, leaning into him a bit as you walk together.

He says lowly at your temple, “You could just say I look good too.”

“Too?” Your nose scrunches up.

“Duh. It ain’t a one man show right now. We all pulled up coordinated. Picture perfect. The drip is on a thousand, act like you see it.”

Your lips smack, “Stop talking and open the door.”

BabyDaddyTeddy! Who personally wasn’t big on the fine arts or whatever so he didn’t understand why going to an art gallery tonight was so important. It all looked the same to Teddy. He even snorted once when his mom cried over one large painting she had delivered and placed into the entry way of his modern childhood home. It just wasn’t his thing. Until he saw one painting…a ship in a bottle. There were two hands shown resting on the table in front of the ship. One hand appearing older, lighter in complexion, a few sunspots, and a heavy gold watch on their wrist. The other hand was a much smaller one, could be a kid’s, tan melanin and their hand was spread flat against the table almost as if they were leaning towards the ship in the bottle. Teddy wasn’t sure what type of technique they used but…it felt close to home. He doesn’t read the text, strolling around the almost empty gallery with Twila nearly yanking him along.

The second is a…house boat?

It’s the side view at the docks.

Maybe around sunset with the orange sun rays bleeding from the top right of the painting. It’s that same technique, soft and delicate work. In the dark water, Teddy can make out what appears to be a pink tutu floating in the water.

It isn’t until he gets to the third painting, Tilly pulls him over to that a, “…Hold on.” Is escaping his lips.

The beach.

Skies on cotton candy, water the beginning of day. There’s two figures standing at the edge of the ocean, side by side, a man that towers over a small toddler dressed in a denim sun hat and floral yellow swimwear. Teddy frowns stepping closer to the painting while Twila giggles, standing in front of him, head tilted all the way back, hands in his as she peers up at him, smiley.

“Twhy and daddy.” She speaks in her tiny raspy voice.

Then he sees the little red scribble at the bottom along with a hand print across from where the artist’s signature rests on the left.

One D and T with what he makes out to be is a little star at the end.

Classic Tilly.

His eyes goes to the tag that explains the painting.

Water color.

Inspiration from a Daddy and Daughter’s time at the beach.

Teddy can’t lie…his eyes start to burn.

He holds on tighter to Tilly’s little hands.

“Happy Father’s Day.” You announce from behind him.

It now made sense why you managed to get pulled off into a hushed conversation with the host, (who Teddy would later find out is the actual artist of these paintings) telling him to start exploring without you, that you’d catch up.

He runs a knuckle over his nose, sniffing before turning to face you with a soft smile, “Thank you. To both of you.”

Teddy picks up Tilly again, then looks at you, who shifts their gaze back to his.

“You like them?”

“Look at that sh—work.” He catches himself, “They’re masterpieces!”

A laugh leaves you as you move to stand beside him, “Can you appreciate art now?”

“Oh hell yeah! They’re all coming home with me.” His hand slips around your waist, tugging you closer, “You guys didn’t have to do all this.”

“Yeah we did.” Your head tilts to meet his burning stare and that says enough.

BabyDaddyTeddy! Who gets the call from his recruiter that he’s allowed to give the academy a second try. The three of you are on family vacation. It’s August. The Sunday of summer. Of course Teddy’s considering New Jersey now, based on how much time he lost—which would take less time than CT but that’s a conversation he’ll have as soon as you all get back to Southport. Right now? He was with two of his favorite people in the world. At a resort in the Bahamas. His safe space. From private chef’s, sharing rum cake in bed when Tilly’s down for the night while watching RHOA & Beyond the Villa, to watching Tilly make a mess of the chocolates she demanded to try, to tours around Nassau, to getting dragged by a man on a Segway (which was more funny to you now after a few piña coladas—Teddy still ain’t find that shit funny. He was ready to go to jail over it tbh), shopping at markets for souvenirs, hanging at the beach that you noticed Teddy was a little leery of when you brought your water-loving baby over to the waves—y’all were never bored and definitely made the most of the end of summer.

BabyDaddyTeddy! Who got vulnerable after getting half way through a Goombay Smash. He didn’t drink much on the trip, thankfully. Cause a drunk teddy was x1000 of the energy he’s usually on. Since the accident on the rowing team, his feeling towards water shifted a bit—whether he vocally said it or not. You could tell. It was in the way he watched like a hawk when he found you and Tilly out by your own private pool in the mornings. How he called you two back from the ocean when an unexpected wave nearly pushed you over as soon as you put your back to the ocean, while you carried Tilly away, ready to build sandcastles. You could see it. And on the last day here together he voiced he wasn’t sure if he was cut out for being a coast guard after all.

the doubts were understandable.

Life was brutal like that.

You could aspire to be something and as soon as you get it into your hands…sometimes something knocks you all the way back. Makes you look at things sideways and makes you wonder if you really had the big picture.

“I don’t wanna be looked at as no quitter.” Teddy grumbled as you both stood in the kitchen after two am, “I already had some assholes that we went to school with, who are in the military, talking shit about me choosing this path instead of the marines or whatever their dicks get hard for. And normally you know I can take it. But losing feeling in my body like that? Even if it was only temporary? Damn…This was something I thought I always wanted.”

You hum, “It was scary. As hell. I saw it in your eyes even when you tried to hide it. Through the PT sessions. It doesn’t matter what anyone says or wants. It’s what you want. If you want to walk away from this…you can. But it’s gotta be something you thought long and hard about. On your terms. It’s gotta be a decision you’re happy and comfortable with. Your life is in your own hands.”

“…yeah but like…you and Tillz are a huge part of it. My life. I know you’ve been holding things down and supporting even when we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.”

“Does anybody?” You gently smile around the rim of Saratoga you bring to your lips.

Teddy snorted, moving closer to you, resting his warm hands against your thighs, his fingertips damp from the cocktail he once held into, while you sit on the kitchen island, “Some are better at faking it than others.”

“Thought we were done with that.”

His blue-green hues darken at your words, leaving no trace of green in them as he pulls his bottom lip into his mouth nodding as he makes space between your legs, “I’m on whatever time you’re on, sweetheart.”

You give him a look, “We’ve been good…I even tolerated you playing Drake’s dumbass trilogy albums nobody asked for every time you got ready since we got out here.”

“Then maybe I should be on my worst behavior. Hm,” the pads of his thumbs rub at your waist, scooting you closer to the edge of the island.

You scoff, hand going to his shoulder so you don’t slide off, “You’re tipsy. Only you can go from talking about your concerns in life to being horny.”

“You complaining?” He presses his face first against your crop top covered chest, breathing you in before peering up at you from underneath his lashes.

“I…didn’t say that.” You respond as he lifts you off the counter, you hold on until he sets you back on your feet, “I’m just saying…we can still talk it through if you want?”

Teddy hums, playing with the strings to your skirt coverup, “This ain’t about to turn into, ‘in this fucking essay I will,’ type shit…but maybe over breakfast when things settle. Right now? I just need a tasty night cap…if you let me?”

And he’s down on his knees, tossing your crochet wrap-around coverup to the side.

You sharply inhale at the exposure.

It slides across the tile floor.

You never knew how he did it.

One of your legs is hitched up over his shoulder.

Making you balance on the other, lower back pressing into the counter, elbows supporting you from behind.

This time spent together as a…family was eye-opening. Any chance you could get away from Southport, you were jumping at the opportunity. A place where no one knew your history, just saw you all as one union. A family. It was complimented on. Earned genuine smiles from both of you as you carried on with Tilly in her stroller, giving as much walking as you were gonna get out of her. You even asked a stranger to take a picture with your digital of you three at the market.

Teddy wanted it sent to him ASAP.

And as he shifted your bikini to the side, testing the waters on his tongue, you have to remind yourself how to breathe.

To realize, maybe there never was going to be anyone else but Teddy Spencer for you.

“So I send her the email right? And I clearly said if she needed help or don’t understand to tell me. I didn’t hear nothing so I’m thinking everything cool. My coworker decides to check in with her and she claims ‘oh I didn’t see it’.”

Aaron just shakes his head with a sigh, “I’m not surprised. Ma I’m tellin you, she just there collecting a check.”

This should’ve been the first sign to Aaron he was in love. Actively listening to you complain about work - lowkey wanting to know the tea himself - and the fact he’d been ready to pop up at your job and handle anybody that stressed you out. Patients, co-workers, your manager. Any and everyone could get it.

“Then she said she don’t know how to move stuff to the different folders!,” you add pausing from your pacing in front of your man as he sat wide legged on your couch. He wasn’t complaining at the view though, watching your hips sway in your black scrub bottoms that gripped your ass and thighs so nice he had to silently thank God for such a creation and having the sight to witness it. “You right though, she just there to be lazy and get paid. Oh! And I ain’t tell you how she was bragging about her little connections with the manager so now she feel invincible. But he caused this. She had two other positions she kept messing up but rather than fire her, like anyone else would, he puts her somewhere else!”

“Far as I’m concerned they both dumb as hell,” he responds pulling you down to sit on his thigh. “I told you bae anytime you finally get sick of them people, quit. I got us.”

The second sign: him wanting to take care of you, and not as part of some ego boost showing off to everyone around how he was the man. Because he was eager to learn what made you happy and willing to do whatever he needed to keep you happy. He wanted to be your peace unlike in his past relationships where his needs were his only concern.

“Aw thank you baby,” you smile lightly gripping his chin to kiss his puckered lips, “but I’m not putting all that stress on you.”

“Ain’t no stress when it come to my baby.” Interrupting what would be an overdue, heavy make out is the extended vibrations from Aaron’s phone signaling an incoming call. Begrudgingly pulling his iPhone from his pocket, he rolls his bluish-green eyes as he lets his head fall back against your cream loveseat with phone pressed to his ear.

“Sup? Yea I’m still coming just gimme a few minutes. Alright..alright I’ll see yall.”

“Shoot I forgot you had boys night,” you hurriedly stand looking at your watch. Already Aaron misses the warmth of your body against him nearly making him pout like a spoiled child. “You gotta get ready.”

He just shrugs as he stands, “Honestly been thinkin about staying in. Meet up with Buck another time.”

To celebrate Buck’s release from jail, the rest of the boys wanted to get together, which of course included the hottest club, drinks until somebody fell out, women, the works as he’d call it. However, Aaron wasn’t in the mood to deal with sweaty, drunk people bumping into him all night in a cramped space. Strobe lights hurting his eyes and speakers giving him a headache as he had to practically scream to be heard over the thumping bass. He just wanted you, in bed, comforter and blankets nearly suffocating the both of you while one of your shows played on the tv.

The final nail in the ‘locked in’ coffin.

“It’s up to you, but I wouldn’t want him to feel a way because all his boys there and not you. Plus with all yall together I know it’s gonna be a time.”

“Yea them boys somethin’ else,” he lightly chuckles bringing you close with firm hands on your hips. “You uh mind if I come back after?”

“I’ll probably be sleep by then though.”

“That’s fine. I’ll just crash here.”

An amused tilt finds its way to your perfectly arched brow and the corner of your mouth looking up at the man holding you like he didn’t want to let go. “So you’re gonna pass your place to come back here? And when I’ll most likely be sleep?”

“Cmon ma you gon’ make me beg?,” he chuckles. “You know I wanna see you.”

“I know you do, but I don’t mind a little beg here and there,” you respond with a playful tug to his thin, gold Cuban. Since day one you’d been getting onto him about saying what he meant.

“I don’t know why you playing like this,” he’d said at the house party of a mutual friend months ago. That famous dimpled smirk on his face finally having gotten you alone in the hallway. He saw you see him multiple times throughout the night, but rather than come to him - like he expected - you continued taking turns between being with your girls or working the room. “You know I’m feelin’ you.”

“I have an idea, yea, but I don’t know for sure,” you retorted. “When have you told me ‘I like you’ or ‘I wanna take you out’? I’m not a mind reader I can’t tell what’s going on in that big head of yours.”

It had been a couple weeks of this back and forth between the two of you. Flirting as he walked with you throughout the store - much to his supervisor’s dismay - turned into exchanging numbers that later lead to texts throughout the day and late night calls. Yet nothing ever outwardly spoken sealing what you already felt to be true.

“Oh so you flirt with other dudes like how you flirt with me?”

“If what we have is so obvious, you should know I’m not. Plus are we gonna ignore the four girls I saw you ‘kiki’ with?,” you smirk back taking a sip from your bottle of water. Aaron kisses his teeth as he playfully rolls his eyes, but he knows you have a point.

“Aight touché ma.”

“I’m into you Aaron, but come correct or watch someone else do it.” Those few words shifted something in Aaron he’d never experienced before. And when you moved to walk away, his arm was quickly reaching out to stop you hating the mere thought of you leaving with someone else that night. Dating someone that wasn’t him.

“Hi, I’m Aaron,” he begins as your soft eyes look up at him. “I haven’t been able to keep my eyes off you all night and would love if you’d give me the chance to take you out sometime. Preferably tomorrow if you free?”

Try as you might, it’s hard to hide the smile beginning to spread across your glossy, peach flavored lips. The dimly set lights fail to shield you from Aaron’s incoming teasing feeling his index finger tap under your chin and stop you from turning your head.

“Don’t try to hide, I see you cheesin’,” he smirks making you playfully roll your eyes. “If only I could see it every day.”

Heart like melted ice cream and cheeks burning, you reach up to peck his cheek leaving a glossy print of your lips. “Depending how tomorrow goes, maybe you can.”

…

Clear, plastic cup in hand as he stood against the wall, Aaron was already overstimulated and ready to go. There was a dull ache in his temple that started from the moment he entered YaYa’s. Apparently everyone else in the city came out wanting to celebrate too from how packed the dark space was on each floor. His crew was lucky enough to find the little corner booth next to him where Buck, and a couple of their other boys, sat nodding along to the rap mix thumping from the speakers overhead.

“Looks like you need some company.” Light skin with straightened brown hair highlighted with blonde, the unknown woman no doubt was interested in Aaron from the way her sultry eyes took in his standing form. Denim mini skirt with a red lace tank top and matching stilettos, she was undoubtedly attractive, but no longer what Aaron was looking for. “What’s in your cup?”

“Crown,” he shouted to be heard over the newest song beginning to play, “and I’m good. My boy in the green tee could use some though.”

“What if I wanna stay here instead?,” she asked smirking as she gently rested her hand on his chest leaning closer to his ear to be heard. A simple twist of his upper body and her hand is falling back to her side causing her features to twist in confusion.

“My girl waiting for me at home.”

He loved how that felt leaving his lips. His girl. He wondered what you were doing right now. If you were waiting up for him or already sleep. Hopefully in one of his shirts he strategically left in your pajama drawer since beginning to stay over at your place.

Blonde highlights simply pouts before sighing, “too bad,” and retreating to her friends at the bar. Meanwhile Aaron’s friend, Mike, is taking her place surprising Aaron with a firm clap of his shoulders and a brief shake.

“Aight that’s the second baddie you denied tonight. What’s wrong with you man?!”

“I’m good on all that. Just tryin’ to vibe tonight.” For anyone else, that answer would be enough. It wouldn’t be Mike though if he didn’t keep running his mouth.

“Don’t tell me you scared bruh. You need a wingman? Need big Mike to help you?,” Mike teases in a baby like voice making Aaron roll his eyes as he removes his friend’s hands from his shoulders.

“Like I said I’m good bruh.”

Mike kisses his teeth, “Don’t tell me you done let one of these hoes tie you down?”

Aaron could tell Mike about himself for that. Go off loud enough that everything in the club would probably stop. Lights coming on while security manhandled his whole crew outside to the busy street. Even fight him for daring to call you a hoe when he knew nothing about you. But he kept calm. Simply sipped from his cup as the man in front of him observed his quiet demeanor and shook his head with a chuckle.

“Nahh bruh, not my boy!”

“Mike chill.”

“Why waste time on one when you can have ‘em all? I mean they got they own rosters and shit too, they don’t give a damn about us.”

Aaron really was trying to hold on for the sake of Buck, but he could feel his skin getting hotter with annoyance and frustration.

“I can’t believe you let one trap you. Can’t be the best p-,”

Mike couldn’t finish his sentence with Aaron quickly grabbing the front of his shirt and pinning him to the wall he once stood against. His bluish eyes nearly seagreen now with how angry he was. The rest of his boys were quickly surrounding him urging him to let go, but Aaron was past a point of reasoning.

“Finish the sentence. I promise you won’t be talking again.”

“Aye chill man, he not worth it,” Buck spoke near his ear. “Let him go.”

“Nah he talk to fuckin’ much!,” Aaron replied still not keeping his eyes on an unapologetic Mike trying to loosen his hand from his shirt.

“I know, I know. But you wanna go back to your girl tonight right?”

That seemed to straighten him up eventually loosening his grip enough that the couple other men of their group could pull Mike back towards the booth while Buck grabbed Aaron with an arm around his shoulder leading him outside.

“Nigga really letting a girl come in between the boys!,” Mike called after them. Buck’s strong grip on his shoulder wouldn’t let him turn around though and didn’t loosen until they were finally on the sidewalk outside. Humid, Atlanta summer air hitting both their faces as they passed the line of people waiting to get in. With every step, Aaron could feel his heartbeat slowing to its natural rhythm. Unfortunately, his headache increased in its pounding by the time they stopped to sit on a nearby bench.

A puff of air leaving his lungs, Buck gently rolls his neck back and forth before retrieving a cigarette and lighter from his pocket. “You alright man?”

“Yea I’m good. Mike just don’t know how to shut up.”

Buck chuckles lifting the white stick to rest between his lips as he lit the opposite end and eventually blew out a white stream of smoke. “Yep…that’s Mike for you.” He takes another drag before blowing out another stream, “so who’s the mystery lady? Or you hiding her from everybody?”

A small smile spreads across Aaron’s lips - as it tended to whenever you were mentioned - “Nah ain’t no hiding.” Shifting so he could get his phone from his back pocket. Easily he opens his phone showing all the pictures he had so far. Some were selfies of you at work while others were of the both of you from your various dates.

“Okayy I see you my boy,” Buck smiles clapping Aaron on the shoulder. “Y’all look good together.”

There goes the giddy flutters he tended to get when thinking about you again. Unknowingly, a flush of pink appears on his cheeks as well making Buck smile even harder as he shook his friend’s shoulder. The two looking every bit like teenage boys geeked about getting noticed by the prettiest girl in school.

“She even got you blushin’ and shit?! My boy in love forreal!”

“She different man. Make me wanna be better you know?”

“I feel like that’s how it’s supposed be when you love somebody and really wanna make it work. Do what you can and supposed to for that relationship to grow. I’m happy for you Ron.”

Aaron could always depend on Buck for talks like this. Even solid advice when he needed it. Although he never took that advice for himself, getting mixed up with the wrong people and the wrong things, he was always good people. One of the few Aaron could truly call a friend - unlike the rest of their crew only around for a good time.

“Thanks Buck.”

“Now why you out here in these streets with these fools and not with her, I don’t know.”

“Nigga we supposed to be celebrating you that’s why,” Aaron chuckles smacking him on his upper arm.

“I’ll be honest man, I been sleeping on what felt like sticks and stones for months. I want my bed! Hell I’ll take a blow up mattress at this point!”

Different shades of skin tone aside, you’d think the two were brothers how similar their laughs are, “I feel you. That short time I had in juvie was enough for me.”

“I appreciate you coming out though; yall trying to do this for me, but you know we can always meet up later and do something. Get to your girl man. I already know you itchin to get back,” Buck winks making Aaron chuckle once more.

“You gonna be alright out here?,” Aaron asks as he stands. Their hands meeting with a loud slap.

“Yea I’m cool. Like it better out here really,” he answers making eye contact with a passing group of women. One with butt length, black boho braids and brown skin like his eyeing him longer with a very interested smirk and small wave directed towards him. Aaron took that as his sign to give the two some time together, telling his friend goodbye one last time before ordering his uber.

…

Locking the door behind him, Aaron’s immediately met with the sight of you curled on the couch under your pink Hello Kitty blanket. Your phone on the floor - probably from being dropped when you fell asleep Aaron guessed - and the re-run of some Law and Order episode long forgotten. The closer he got, he could see you were wearing his old Braves shirt only making the dimples in his cheeks deepen.

“Cmon sleeping beauty, time for bed.” His lips pressing softly on your forehead and then your cheek causes you to stir. Your eyes peeking open to find your boyfriend cutting off your tv and retrieving your phone from the floor.

“You’re back,” you sleepily smile stretching your arms over your head. “You have fun?”

“Yea it was alright,” he answers effortlessly lifting you and your blanket in his arms to journey to your dimly lit bedroom. Once close enough to your side of the bed, he’s gently dropping you on top of the multi-colored comforter leaning down to meet your lips. “Glad to be back with my baby though.”

“Aww you missed me!”

The fact you apparently couldn’t tell by now that he wanted to be with you every waking moment, practically living in your skin, genuinely baffled Aaron. Nonetheless, he nods kissing you once more before walking towards your clothes basket to remove his socks, jeans, and top leaving him in his black boxer briefs. “You miss me?”

You playfully tap your chin as if you’re thinking before lifting your hand to show your index finger and thumb maybe a centimeter apart. “A little.”

“Mm…yet you walking round in my shirt,” he teases sliding into bed beside you. His hand instantly finding your thigh to drape over his hip as your arms wrap around his neck.

“God forbid a girl wanna be comfortable,” you innocently shrug causing both of you to laugh.

“Whatever, you know you crazy about me.”

In that moment, he can feel a shift in your mood. No longer joking and playful, but nervous as your attention went from his eyes to his chain reflecting the warm light from the small lamp on your dresser. His knuckles trace against the smooth skin of your thigh attempting to comfort you, but you still won’t meet his eyes. “What’s wrong bae?”

How close you’re pressed against each other, Aaron feels your heart thump against your chest. “I promise it’s nothing just…I’m more than crazy about you. I love you.”

It’s a weight off your chest, yet waiting for his response is like a block to your oxygen. Was it too soon? Much more serious than he wanted? Although it seemed longer, it was only a few seconds before Aaron was tilting your chin giving himself all the access he wanted to your full lips. Hopefully allowing you to feel his love for you as your lips moved in perfect sync. Like they were made for each other.

“I know you wasn’t nervous to tell me that,” he smiles against your lips. “I’ve been in love with you since you got me straight at that party.”

“Nuh uh,” you smile.

“Uh huh,” he replied matching your childish tone before turning serious again. “It’s always gonna be you for me ma.”

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy He always had his own set of rules and didn’t care that you lived in a dorm your first two years in, making space for himself right at yours that your roommates at each time just considered him the third one. He got real friendly with the RA’s thinking that would work in his favor and sometimes it did.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy you’d be lying if you said you didn’t find comfort in him being here. knowing at least one person—who would later become your person —besides his friends: Danica and Milo from back home who also attended this institution, made being forty-five minutes away from home a little easier. It took time for you to warm up to people, whereas with an extroverted Teddy? He didn’t mind being known. Even considered trying out for one of the frats, until they tricked him into eating a small portion of rat poison, which was “supposed” to be laced brownies while pledging. Let’s just tell it—that resulted in hands being thrown, investigations, and campus suspension. It was also safe to say Teddy wasn’t putting up with any hazing bs and was only cool with two fraternities by the end of college.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy He’d always encourage you to party instead of studying for exams and doing homework. - “It’s Friday night and you want to spend the night in the library writing an essay? Don’t be a fucken square.” - “You stress me out more than 11:59, big foot. Shush. Let me work.” — “I’m just gonna annoy you until you cave. You know I love a challenge.” He grins a dimpled smile at you from across the table and you groan, knowing you’re not going to get anything done fooling around with this guy.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy He liked showing up to your places of employment: whether it was on campus or off. If you worked at the bookstore, he’d show up just to hang out and socialize with the rest of the students that also worked there part-time.

Would even hop on the computer and act like he was working there too cause he always had to have his hands on something until the manager, who favored Terry Crews yanked him off. - “Don’t you have books past your due date, Mr. Spencer? You know there’s fees for that?” - “Damn bro, did your big ass have to grab me like that?” - you elbow him as you walk by, face buried in a clipboard as you came from the back aisles checking inventory, just to wince when the manager calls your name. You already knew another warning was coming. Ultimately you didn’t end up working there the next semester, part of it being that you wanted experience from somewhere else. - “Fuck that bookshop! You’re too good for that lame place anyway. Mr. Malik always walking around the place like a bodyguard with coconut oil dripping down his bald head. And what do you want to work for? You’re too cute for that.” And ofc he’s saying this to you as you’re sitting in the cafeteria across from him, applying more lip balm to your lips, flat expression on your face, tempted to throw it at him.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy He was just the same as you’ve always known him. The loud friend. Looping an arm over your shoulder to keep you close if you’re walking around campus together, allowed you to be his personal alarm clock to get to class on time and would actually wake up if you called but didn’t budge if it was anyone else, partier who always included you and tried to bring you out of your shell to mingle, and you even started having personal conversations with one another. At first, the heart to hearts started when he had some liquid courage in him and you considered leaving to get Milo for that but it was YOU he wanted to be vulnerable with so…you stayed.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy He clocked any dude that peaked your interest and immediately became protective. Didn’t think twice about it. One of the guys on the football team was persistent on asking you out. Which was basically harassment and close to stalking once you felt the vibe was off. Teddy wasn’t with it. Knew the type. Found out about his rep. Had a feeling what that prick wanted. Was at the right place at the right time. You had it handled for the most part. Bruising to the wrist. Mace sprayed. Knuckles split. Him on the ground holding his bleeding mouth. Alarm blurting and flashing in your fingers. Reports were made. Gossip was spilled but Teddy Spencer had your back.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy He entertained other ladies up until mid-junior year. Didn’t necessarily get into a serious relationship much to both Danica and Milo’s surprise. Teddy Spencer didn’t plan to find his college sweetheart like Milo who often talked about his own lack of a love life—it was obvious him and Ava were meant to be but she went to college out on the east coast—Rhode Island or some shit. And it’s not like Teddy didn’t want to find his person…he just liked hanging out with pretty faces and hooking up was fun. It wasn’t that deep to him. it was mainly mindless—like something to pass the time. He had to make his intentions clear before anything went down ofc. One girl specifically even questioned if there was anything going on between you two when you sent over a text and Teddy couldn’t help but to laugh looking up from his phone. - “What? Why would you say something like that? We’re friends. I’m here with you.” - She shrugs, “Yeah but where is most of your time spent when you’re not hooking up with me? You’re jumping onto your phone right after we just had bomb sex. That should tell you something right?”

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy you decided to take Teddy by surprise and kissed him junior year in your apartment strictly made for college students. It was a stormy weekend, you were babysitting your friend’s (met her at the beginning of the semester and been locked in since! You geninuely found a friendship in Kimaya, whereas all the other faces throughout the years were just temporary friendly classmates. This felt different. A true sisterhood.) scary ragdoll cat who was hiding somewhere in the apartment, and you were ready to stream a new release on Amazon. Teddy got caught in the rain on his way to yours, completely drenched and you forced him to go take a shower and get dry before he caught a cold. snacks, tea, and throw blankets were ready for when he joined. You’re sitting shoulder to shoulder. Action/mystery film filling the screen while the thunder rumbled on outside. The way it happened was so cliche. You hated thinking about it now. So you tried not to.

A strike of lightning hit followed by thunder that felt like it was shaking the apartment. The power went out for at least five minutes but it was enough to clearly spook you into Teddy’s lap—who was also alarmed himself. You both were so zoned into the movie that Teddy didn’t have to give his obnoxious commentary of what was happening. His hands found your hips, eyes glaring at the huge living room window that was decorated with curtains at its side, annoyed he was caught slipping. - “…you good?” - “Yeah. Sorry. You?” - your face gets hot once you both make eye contact and you scramble to get off his lap, picking at the thread coming undone from your crochet blanket. His shoulder bumps against yours again and you know the teasing is coming. - “No need to fear. Big daddy is here—and you’re scowling, pulling him by the face to bring his lips to yours.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy He was not very discreet on wanting that to happen again. The seducing was humorous at times—you’ll give him that but it was expected since you didn’t really want to talk about it. - “Hey seriously, I’ll take you on a date. A real one if it means I get another kiss…if you’re interested.” - “So you only want to wine and dine me so we can swap spit again?” - “Not necessarily but it would be a plus. I think it’s pretty clear to everyone but us—well except for the other night—that there’s something there. What’s the worst that can happen if we just try?”

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy Your…friendship? Was a push and pull kind of thing for a while. When school was out? Feelings were still in. You both grew up in the same city so it’s not like you could really avoid Teddy…until you got the chance to go on a family cruise with Granny Maple and your mom. You didn’t view it as ghosting…you just had to figure out if this was for real or just another girl to be checked off the list. Part of you knew it wouldn’t be but you often got in your head about relationships.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy senior year was the year that you both stopped skipping around each other. Your stomach twisted seeing another girl in one of your classes wear one of Teddy’s crew neck sweaters that you just knew was his. Only confirmed it when he was waiting outside for her. - “Hey.” He started, but you just scoffed brushing by him. You didn’t really have a reason to be upset, you two weren’t a thing and it wasn’t like you wanted him to chase you or anything…but you also didn’t like the idea that he was back to pointless flings. Kimaya and even Danica were on your side but you didn’t want them enabling you. It wasn’t about sides. - “Let’s go key his car if it’ll make you feel better. Just tell me what you want to do and we’ll do it.” — Danica breathes out this tension as she sat on your couch, “Are you a fire sign?” She questions Kimaya who gives her a nasty side eye, “Cause Teddy is also an Aries so…maybe we should not do that? What if we just lock you two in a room together and see what happens? Hopefully peace.” Kimaya rolls her eyes, “Girl, screw that. We don’t need this live laugh love caca energy. We need to show this boy to be deadass about her. And only her.” So you don’t wait around, sending Teddy a “we need to talk,” text. He left you on read but you definitely saw him the next morning.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy you two were like rabbits once you both confessed to each other that feelings were there at the cafe you became assistant manager at. - “I knew you couldn’t resist me.” He kissed on your face, “I’ll be back to pick you up.” ? And he did, like most afternoons if he didn’t have class himself. It’s not like the apartment was far from the cafe since it was still near the university and the only time you worked until the sun went down was around the holidays. Stressed about shitty customers? Teddy knew a way to bring you relief ;) First time was two rounds. It was scary how much you couldn’t get enough of him. When it became public? A tough phone conversation Teddy got off with his dad. Something about him missing an interview for his internship. He was pissed! He went off in the drivers seat. You listened. Offered gentle advice. Found the shared rage playlist to play in the background. Massaged his neck. He asked you to get in the backseat. Cars seemed to be his favorite place to get cracked after that. His apartment—scarring Milo. Yours. Empty classrooms. You name it. The bed chem was very much there.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy He was calling to see what you’ve been up to since he hadn’t heard from you all day. He already knew with finals it would be that serious, yet the lack of time spent together was not it. He knew he was mainly at fault with that since whenever you tried to help him study? Nothing was accomplished, besides swollen lips and shed clothes. It had to be after eight when he finally got a hold of you.

“What’s up? You hidin’ from me now?” - “Huh? I’m doing my hair. Graduation is next week so it’s better I take the time to do it now. I wasn’t purposely ignoring you, I promise.” - teddy hums, “How long you been at it then?” - “Four hours. If it takes more than six I’ll finish this shit tomorrow.” - “Got damn! Guess that means you won’t be hooking mine up either.” - He’s joking of course, as he shakes his longer hair at the camera. - “I’m already at risk for arthritis thanks to these marley twists, which is only my second time doing and now I see why. I won’t subject myself to more aggravation by dealing with your slip and slide texture.” - Teddy huffs, “Relax, alright? Did you eat?” You shrug on FaceTime, “Um yeah, earlier. But Tyson just postmates me cook out.” Teddy’s face visibly drops. “Run that back.” - “Hm?” - “Don’t act like you can’t hear me.” - “K, sooo…what’s the tone for?” - “Why is another man ordering you food?” - “He’s not just another man, tho. He’s cool. Y’all met. That’s literally Kimaya’s boo.” - “I don’t give a shit if he was Solange Knowles’ man. I didn’t even know y’all talked in private.” - “okay now you’re turning it into something it isn’t. It was a whole ass groupchat.” - “why wasn’t I apart of it?” - “Cause you cussed Ty’s friend out at that one party and we didn’t need a repeat of it in the chat.” - “He spilled jungle juice on my bottega kicks.” They were ugly anyway but you didn’t dare say that. “He apologized, Derek’s not an asshole. A air-headed himbo but not an asshole.” - “oh you in love with him now too?” - “Too?! No dumbass. Foolishly that spot is reserved for you!” !!! Did you just admit that to Teddy’s face? Oh he ate that up. “…Feelings definitely mutual babe. But I’m not foolish.” - “And the lie detector determined…that was a lie.” - Teddy laughs, “Alright. Tell Tyson, thanks but no thanks. Get his refund back or let the driver enjoy it instead. I’m sliding through with your favorite, with some real food from that mediterranean spot you also love.” He winks, kissing at the camera before ending the call so you don’t have the chance to argue. You’d be lying if you didn’t have a shit eating grin on your face and tried not to kick yourself over it.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy it was very clear that you went together real bad. Officially asked you that night he arrived with food and an overnight bag. The rest of your things were being driven back to Southport this weekend but the last thing this apartment felt was empty. And when the graduation commencement came around, there was nothing but pride for yourself and watching Teddy walk across that stage. It was never a stroll in the park at university and he learned that for himself too. You still had the photo your mom snapped somewhere in your closet—photography once was something she wanted to go to school for—of you two, holding up your degrees, side by side, smiling with his head pressed down on top of yours.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy became just that—your mom and granny just had to throw you a cookout back in Malnola. You were completely fine just going out to dinner or something considering the memorial’s day party at your granny’s already happened. but any excuse for adults to throw a party? They were going to. Being celebrated just before life was really about to kick off? You didn’t mind giving in for that. Little did you know. Teddy just had to roll in looking like that. Buzzed his hair not long after graduation but not before his own grad party and was sending thirst traps to really amplify his new look. It was the last week of May, warm but not like August hot ya know? Who was he feeling like?! This was your first time seeing the new do in person and you were a fan of it, “something new. something lite.” And he knew it too by how many times your fingers ran over his head. Granny Maple was all smirks when she caught you two sneaking back into your mama’s house.

BEFORE!BabyDaddy!Teddy he didn’t think nothing of you being sick. Just figured it was a bad stomach bug. Actually kept his distance like you asked. Missed how his mother was sending him looks every time she overhead you saying you couldn’t hang out with him because you still weren’t feeling the best. He didn’t really keep track of it—he’s just a guy.

So when you finally called him saying you felt a little better, enough to go to BusyBean he was there. You were too quiet for his liking. He definitely picked up on that and liked the track suit set you sported. Which he tugged the strings of to bring you into his arms, embracing you, his chin resting on top of the hood that framed your hair as you stood outside the small coffee shop. You settled for a smoothie.

- “What’s wrong? and don’t say nothing because I know that’s not true.” - You sunk into him, face muffled by his own hoodie as he felt you taking deep breaths against him. Then he felt his hoodie getting damp, followed by sniffles you tried to cover up. That’s when he pulled back in worry. “hey, hey! What is it? Somebody do or say something to you? Was it my big mouth again? I know I can be a lot sometimes. But you know I got you, whatever it is.” - you shake your head stepping back to wipe at your face, almost angrily trying to push the tears back. “I’m pregnant.” You blurted out, voice croaky. Teddy blinks, brows then digging together, before staring at your face to see if you’re bullshitting him. “…with a child?” - “No, with the seed of Chucky. Yes a child! Yours. Ours.” - “Okay but like…when?” - “My graduation party according to how many weeks I am. the doctor confirmed.” - “You already went to the doctor?” - “Yes. My period’s never late and I’ve been sick but not period is coming sick.” - the realization passes over his face now and he hunches over, his hands on his knees, head dropping before looking up at you. “FUCK!” He yells out into the night, almost silencing the damn fireflies but stops as he notices you flinch. He can’t apologize cause he’s trying to figure out his emotions right now. This was big. Life changing. It definitely only took one time. Impulsive. His dad was gonna give him SO MUCH shit for this. He clasps his hands on top of his head as he thinks this over. “…Are you okay?” He finally asks you. “I…know I’m scared. Are you?” - “Hell yeah. Did you tell your mom?” - You nod. “she’s gonna drop kick me in the chest next time she sees me, right? You know her and my mom just started going to kick boxing classes together every Tuesday.” - that earns a laugh from you before you whack him repeatedly, more tears spreading down your cheeks as it turns into frustration and he takes it. He gets it. Until he’s tired of being whacked and just holds you tightly. “I don’t know how we’re gonna do this but…I’m not going anywhere.” And that right there? Is all you need to know that you were safe with Teddy Spencer.

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“What do you mean?!” A blonde reporter shrieks, “Football is a violent sport.”

The male with long locs defends, “His interaction with her was not violent and I really wish you would stop alluding the situation to that.”

“You’re right. It’s not okay to do that. I’m just saying from those that actually witnessed it, Cameron came in like he was trying to make a touchdown with her.”

“And who’s to say he already hasn’t?” A salt and pepper haired man argues, “There’s been rumors about them for months now. It’s clear he wants something permanent with the two. He always talks highly of them. SHE has even gone on podcasts and interviews, teasing that she thinks she’s in love again. And we hardly know anything about her love life besides with Cameron. Who has she really taken the time to be in a meaningful relationship with? She’s been known to flirt for fun in her past time.”

The same blonde yells, “And what does that mean?! A girl can’t flirt?”

A near-by woman adds, scribbling in her notebook, “And men say women are the emotional ones.”

Another man in the room jumps in, “It means she shouldn’t play around with people that are serious about them. Especially not with a guy who got wrapped up into a cult.”

The man with locs rolls his eyes followed by a shake of his head.

“Oh please! Most athletes don’t have the best representation when it comes to women either.”

“This conversation isn’t that.”

“Yes it is! You’re making it about that. Guys get to screw around and get stamps of approval for it. But when a woman casually does it? Automatic: WHORE, SLUT, HOE. Ohhh, ‘She shouldn’t have done that to them!’”

The eldest and owner speaks up, “I think we’re all just speculating here. Does anyone know what the true nature of the disagreement was about?”

“We are. But they’ve been seen together numerous of times! Parties, her attending his games once or twice, traveling to where the other is—him specifically for a role she was filming for out of the country, vacationed together in freaking Iceland for New Years, dinner dates—they even went to the met gala TOGETHER a few weeks ago! They look hot next to each other, no doubts about it. It’s just giving more than casual. And that’s probably what Cameron was pissed about. I know I would be with a girl like that.”

“Like what? You can’t even afford half of the things they’ve done together! The most you’ll do is order some Vietnamese food from the spot by your house for a girl. And you probably wouldn’t even bring it to her.”

The room laughs.

He weakly replies, “…they make tasty rice paper rolls.”

A woman with brown hair and deep dimples brings the conversation back, “Well clearly something shifted if it escalated to what it did.”

“A intense conversation.” The locs wearing man states with a nod of his head.

“Poor guy.”

“He’ll get over it.”

The men mostly gasp or scoff under their breaths.

“Damn. No wonder you’re single.”

He earns a high-five from a co-worker working on a computer, his back to the cameras.

“Single by choice. I don’t care, I love her. That’s my girl! She can do no wrong in my eyes. And Cameron’s fine and everything but—

“So you’re being bias, just like you are over the whole Rihanna and Tyla situation.”

“Call it what you want.” The journalist with French curls shrugs, “Ciara and Russell unfortunately didn’t eat with this one. People are allowed to change their minds.”

“And THAT! Is the scariest thing about dating.”

The room seems to agree.

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Across Los Angeles…

Beverly Hills Hotel was not where Cameron Cade wanted to be.

It felt artificial to him, too manufactured for his taste but if he needed to be somewhere, he wasn’t afraid to pull up.

The white lightning at his back from the paparazzi’s flicked off his loose attire along with the questions of you as soon as he hopped out of his black lavish car.

He’s all painted golden smiles, small waves, and quick steps as the valet thankfully keeps his car as a shield long enough for Cameron to head towards the entrance.

While Los Angeles had their own boxing match over what the status of your relationship is, you sat poolside at the hotel, having your own personal round over the black truffle and roasted mushroom omelette or the smoked salmon eggs benedict.

An Arnold Palmer sweated beside your spring polka dotted manicured fingertips and you look up just as a chair is scrapped back.

Before your eyes even make contact, you get a whiff of his aroma first. You sit up straighter since you easily recognize it. Better than the other you complimented on your way out here. Expensive but he’ll down play it. Icy like mint, fresh like green apple, hearty like Vetiver—one thing Cameron Cade always had is heart, a hint of spice like saffron, and a linger effect of warm amber.

A combo that could be intoxicating.

His eyes were more on the teal side today, especially with the way his eyes settled on you.

He sat slouched in the chair, loose pale blue stripped blouse lightly blowing back from the turquoise pool water—a contrast to the dark denim dress you sported. He had a white tank underneath, exposing his chest and gold chain while his elbows dug into the arms of the wired chair.

“Hey, CC.” You greet first, tone playful, along with your lips threatening to twitch a little at the sight of him.

Cameron puffs out a breath at the nickname, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Say hello? C’mon, I’m pretty well-mannered.” You lean forward against the hands you folded flat against the table.

His eyes roll then, “You know what you’re doing and you know exactly that I’d be the one to find you.”

“Who says I’m looking to be found?” Your head tilts to the side, your picked fro gently floats like wind passing through the leaves of a tree.

He scoffs out a breath at that before rubbing at his jaw in annoyance, “See the problem is, you think this is game. And baby, you got the right one.”

“Is this you being threatening?” You quiz as you tap your nails against the table for a bit, “Cause I’ve never been scared of you, Camy.”

“Now you’re trying to be funny.” Cameron points at you from across the table, “You also doing that fuck ass Lil Kim dance and posting it on your story was enough to get me riled up and you know it.”

A laugh can’t help but to escape your lips that you actually fight to cover it, “Not my fault you’re so easily weak in the knees.”

“And you’re not?” Cameron nearly hissed out, challenging, “Last I checked, I had to hold your knees up over my shoulders for you, on that couch in the hotel room weeks ago.”

Oop.

Your deadly glossed lip combo of the day forms into a pout, Cameron’s eyes flick down to them momentarily before watching you lean back from the table, taking your drink with you.

So what.

That happened.

The night of met gala if you want to be specific.

Once you left the after party…to have your own private after-AFTER party.

He had to pay for the damage.

It really was a spacious, comfy, and pretty bonfire colored couch.

You tried to warn him but when Cameron Cade gets so wrapped up in something, it’s like a whole new world.

Not like you were complaining.

Just like when he was on the field and when he was inside you.

But the world didn’t need to know that.

The silence was charged between you two and he may have gotten the point for that last reminder but Cameron Cade also knew who he was dealing with.

He studies your movements, you placing the drink back down softly onto the table. Poised posture, fixing the inspired early 2000’s sunnies that he loved on you that rested to the right of you, and then your gaze turns back to his.

“You should get the iron man.” You suggest with a nudge of your head towards the singular menu that sat in front of you, “Has activated charcoal in it or something. Much like what you’re on right now.”

That earns a clenched jaw.

A grin appears on your face.

He runs a hand over his hair that he was letting grow out some, throwing his head back to peer up at the inside of the umbrella as he mutters, “Why are you doing this right now?”

“I’m not doing anything.” You lightly shake your head, “You’re the one here, up in my face uninvited because I didn’t call you back. Cause that’s definitely why you’re mad right?”

“Are you forreal?” His head drops down, peering over at you from underneath his lashes, “This is more than a dumbass phone call. This is feeling like you’re tryna break my heart and I’m not goin’ for it.”

Humming at that, you don’t respond as the waiter finds their way back.

A true professional who greets a seething Cameron, who struggles to fix his face but in true fashion remains as polite as he can be.

“He’ll have the Iron man to start,” You tell the waiter who nods with his hands clasped behind him, “I’m still trying to decide between two dishes—what would you recommend out of these two?”

When that’s settled you let out a long sigh, brushing the end of a coil from falling into your sight.

“Look…Cameron. We had fun,” you admit, “It is what is and what if I say…I’m over it? Us.”

A dark glare appears over his features in an instant, that it was enough to send a chill of…excitement raising up your spine?

His fist knocks against the table, loud enough to make the utensils clatter, and you scramble to catch your half-finished drink from tumbling to the ground.

He leans over the table now, despite the curious eyes that also sat poolside, glancing over, “Then I’d say you’re a fucken lie.”

You hold his stormy stare, sandstorms in his eyes centered on nothing but you, a grin spreads back over your lips but you bite it, your back hits the inside of your chair.

It’s not only his eyes you feel on you, you also wouldn’t be shocked if someone was recording right now, you noticed a group of women pointing Cameron out as soon as you started chatting—but maybe his eyes are only ones that matter.

“I guess we’ll have to see then.” You tell, stretching your leg out underneath the table, trailing your bare toe up from his lower leg.

He doesn’t give you time to rest it in his lap because he’s out of his chair.

It felt like most breaths hitched in the courtyard and he probably muttered something along the lines of, ‘Fuck this. Get up.’

Yet it mostly felt like slow motion…until he started collecting your things for you, holding his hand out towards you.

“Where are we going?” You quiz, laughter still in your throat.

Cameron gritted, “Somewhere where everyone isn’t in our damn business. I’m not gonna tell you again,” he says your name, urging you to move.

And you do.

Gradually.

Sitting at the edge of your chair, you grab your drink once more and sip it slow to finish it off, further testing your…situationship’s patience.

Then he’s snatching the drink from you as soon as he picks up on the sound of slurping.

Gasps fill the courtyard but Cameron Cade can’t seem to care.

He grabs at your wrist, firm but not enough to ever hurt, getting you to your feet.

“But I didn’t even get to eat lunch.”

“I’ll get you whatever you want at home.” Cameron grumbles, shifting your things to tuck under his arm, before searching his pocket to throw bills onto the table, that definitely said he overpaid, then he intertwines his fingers with yours, leading you from wondering eyes.

You can’t help but to catch those same eyes of gossiping girls that were trying to act like they weren’t recording.

Uh oh.

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JEZEBEL 

Tyriq sighed as he leaned back in the leather chair opposite his agent’s desk, manspreading with the lazy entitlement of a man who had long ago stopped being aware of how much space the world allowed him to take up, one arm draped across the side of the chair, the other resting against his thigh while his thumb worried absently at the edge of his phone, a light frown pulling at his face as Jacksonville daylight came spilling through the tall office windows and painted gold across the hard line of his jaw, the bridge of his nose, the slight crease between his brows, and the mouth that had made photographers rich and women unreasonable.

Outside, the humidity pressed its wet hands against the glass like Florida itself was trying to get in, all heavy air and palm shadows and traffic moving slow beneath a bruised-blue sky, and even inside the chilled polish of his agent’s office, with its framed magazine covers, expensive candles, acrylic awards, and one ridiculous fiddle-leaf fig that had no business surviving in a room full of egos, Tyriq could still feel that old heat sitting on his skin.

Jacksonville heat was different.

It remembered him.

It clung to him the same way the past did, slipping under collars, behind ears, beneath rings that were not wedding rings but still came with expectations, beneath the name of a woman he had been with for years and still somehow had never fully learned how to belong to.

Across from him, his agent, Darlene Baptiste, stood behind her desk with both hands braced on the glass top, looking at him over the rim of her glasses like she was two seconds away from either cursing him out or calling his mother, which was a dangerous look on a Southern woman because it meant she had already done both spiritually.

“And you’re sure I was cast in this role?” Tyriq asked, his voice low and slow, threaded with disbelief he was trying to disguise as boredom.

Darlene blinked at him once.

Then twice.

Then she leaned back, pressed her tongue to the inside of her cheek, and exhaled through her nose in that tired, church-lady way that made a man feel like he had disappointed every woman who had ever packed him a lunch.

“Tyriq,” she said, dragging his name out until it sounded like both a warning and a prayer, “you’re fixin’ to get off my nerves.”

He lifted a brow.

“I’m asking a question.”

“No, you’re asking the same question with different seasoning.”

“I’m trying to understand.”

“You understand just fine,” Darlene said, circling the desk in heels sharp enough to puncture foolishness, a cream blazer sitting crisp over her shoulders, her locs swept back from a face too composed for how irritated she clearly was. “You just don’t like that the answer stayed the same after the fifth time you asked.”

Tyriq’s jaw moved, but no words came out immediately, because the truth was that he had understood her the first time, had understood perfectly well when she told him the studio had moved forward, the contracts were being finalised, the announcement was being timed, and his name was attached to Lorenzo Anders like it had always belonged there, but understanding a thing and letting it enter his body were not the same, and this particular truth had been standing at the door of him for twenty minutes, knocking politely while he pretended not to be home.

Lorenzo Anders.

Even the name bothered him.

Not because it was ugly, because it was not, but because it touched too many old things at once, dragging knuckles along the underside of memory with the confidence of someone who knew where all the bruises lived.

Lorenzo was his middle name.

Anders was the street he had grown up on.

And Karnation Noel James, because God apparently had a flair for cruelty and dramatic structure, was the woman who had written him.

Not literally, Darlene kept saying.

Not provably, his lawyer would probably say.

Not according to any interview Karnation had ever given, where she smiled that clean, elegant, media-trained smile and said Lorenzo was an amalgamation of men, myth, and imagination, which was the kind of answer that sounded beautiful on camera and dishonest to anybody who had once stood with her beneath Florida rain while she traced his palm and told him she could always tell when he was lying.

Tyriq stared at the glossy packet on the desk between them.

The title sat bold across the first page.

RUIN ME GENTLY

Beneath it, in smaller letters, the adaptation details, production timeline, studio attachments, casting confirmation, and Karnation’s name sitting there in black print like it had not once been written in the margins of his notebooks, on birthday cards, on the inside of his wrist in blue ink because she had gotten bored during church and decided his skin needed decorating.

Karnation Noel James.

The name had weight.

It had always had weight.

Even when they were kids and she was just Karnation from two houses down, all knees and braids and bossy little mouth, yelling at him because he ran too fast and never waited for her even though he always slowed down eventually; even when they were teenagers and she started becoming beautiful in a way that made him angry at everybody who noticed; even when they got older and crossed that invisible line between friendship and something too hungry to be innocent, her name had always done something to him.

Now it sat on a film packet.

On a publishing empire.

On bestsellers and award lists and interviews where she wore silk and spoke like every sentence had been edited by God.

And she had not spoken to him in years.

Tyriq shifted in the chair, widening his knees a little more as if his body could physically push the discomfort out of the room, but the leather only creaked beneath him, and Darlene, who had known him too long to be impressed by posture, watched him with her arms folded.

“You’re acting like you didn’t campaign for this role,” she said.

“I didn’t campaign.”

“You called me at eleven at night after reading the script.”

“I had notes.”

“You had feelings.”

“I had professional interest.”

“You read the bathroom scene three times and went quiet for ten minutes.”

Tyriq’s eyes cut to her.

Darlene lifted one manicured hand.

“Don’t look at me like that. I was on the phone.”

“That scene was good.”

“That scene was personal.”

He looked away first, and that irritated him more than anything she had said, because Tyriq had built an entire public life out of not looking away first.

He had learned early, long before cameras and stylists and women screaming his name from barricades, that confidence was a kind of currency, that men who looked sure of themselves could get away with not knowing what they were doing, and over the years he had sharpened that lesson into armour, wearing arrogance so well people mistook it for personality.

But Darlene had known him before the luxury watches, before the security detail, before the red carpets and the interviews where hosts leaned in too far and asked him about his type like there was not a woman at home who checked his phone whenever his shower ran too long.

Darlene had known him when Velma still showed up to events in dresses too tight and smiles too sweet, holding his hand like she was not afraid of losing him because she had already lost him once and decided never again.

Velma.

His phone lit up against his thigh, and, as if summoned by the mere thought of her, her name appeared across the screen with three red heart emojis and one location pin she had started using in his contact because she said it was “cute” but Tyriq knew better.

VELMA ❤️❤️❤️📍: Where are you?

A second later.

VELMA ❤️❤️❤️📍: You been in that meeting long.

Then.

VELMA ❤️❤️❤️📍: Is Darlene in there by herself with you?

Tyriq stared at the messages without opening them, his mouth tightening slightly before he turned the phone face down on his thigh.

Darlene saw it anyway.

Of course she did.

Darlene saw everything except mercy, which she considered optional.

“She still tracking your breathing?” she asked.

Tyriq gave her a look.

“Don’t start.”

“I didn’t start. Velma started years ago and never stopped.”

“That’s my girl.”

“I know who she is,” Darlene said, her voice flattening just enough to make the sentence mean more than it said.

Tyriq’s shoulders stiffened.

Velma had been his girl before Karnation, which was the part of the story everybody conveniently remembered when they wanted to make his life sound cleaner than it was, but the truth was never clean where the three of them were concerned.

Velma had been first in the technical sense, first girl he claimed loudly enough for people to repeat it, first girl who wore his letterman jacket like a warning label, first girl who learned how to hold his hand in public and tighten her nails into his palm whenever Karnation walked by, but Karnation had been first in the way that mattered, first in the marrow, first in the place men like him spent years pretending did not exist because admitting a woman had reached it meant she could ruin you without touching you.

When he and Velma broke up the first time, people said he moved on with Karnation.

They said it like Karnation had been an interruption.

A mistake.

A rebound with pretty eyes and too much pride.

They did not know that Karnation had been there long before Velma ever learned how to say his name like possession, long before kissing became a public matter, long before Tyriq understood that sometimes your best friend could become the love of your life so slowly that by the time you noticed, she had already rearranged the furniture inside your chest.

And then he lost her.

Or she left him.

Depending on who told it.

Depending on whose mother was crying.

Depending on which side of the street you stood on.

The part that made him look worst, the part Darlene knew because Darlene knew too damn much, was that Velma had come back the day after Karnation was gone.

One day.

Twenty-four hours, if that.

Tyriq had been so deep in heartbreak he could barely eat, though he never admitted that to anyone, not even himself, just moved through the world mean and quiet and reckless, acting like anger was easier than grief because for men like him it usually was, and Velma had shown up with soft hands, wet eyes, and a voice that told him he did not have to be alone if he did not want to be.

He had let her in because he was hurt.

Because he was proud.

Because Karnation had vanished and he needed somebody, anybody, to look at him like he had not been abandoned.

Because Velma loved like a locked door and he was too broken at the time to notice the difference between being held and being trapped.

Now years had passed, and Velma was still there, threaded through his life like a ribbon pulled too tight around a gift nobody had asked for, smiling beside him at premieres, correcting women who called him single, telling interviewers they were private, calling his mother more often than he did, and slipping into every empty space Karnation had left behind like filling a vacancy could make her the rightful owner of the house.

His phone buzzed again.

Darlene looked down at it, then back at him.

“You answering that?”

“No.”

“Growth,” she said dryly.

“It’s a meeting.”

“Since when has that stopped her?”

Tyriq’s eyes narrowed. “Darlene.”

She held up both hands. “Fine. We’ll talk about the job before your girlfriend sends a search party through the lobby.”

“She’s not that bad.”

Darlene’s mouth did something complicated.

Not quite a smile.

Not quite agreement.

“She once called my office pretending to be your dermatologist so she could confirm whether you were in a meeting with me.”

Tyriq rubbed a hand over his mouth.

“That was one time.”

“That was Wednesday.”

He said nothing.

“She also tried to get your assistant fired because the girl wrote ‘safe flight’ with a heart emoji.”

“It was unprofessional.”

“It was a yellow heart, Tyriq. That’s barely a heart. That’s a customer service heart.”

Despite himself, his mouth twitched, but the almost-smile died quickly because the packet still sat there, Karnation’s name still staring up at him, Velma’s texts still warming his phone like a small electrical fire.

Darlene sat on the edge of her desk, her irritation softening into something more careful.

“You need to understand what you’re stepping into,” she said.

Tyriq leaned back again, eyes lifting to hers.

“I understand the job.”

“No, you understand acting. You understand the camera, the schedule, the physical work, the press junkets, the interviews where people ask the same six questions and pretend they’re original. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

He said nothing.

Darlene picked up the packet and tapped it once against her palm.

“This book is not just a book to people. Women have built whole personalities around this man. They got quotes tattooed on ribs. They argue about him online like he owes them rent. Lorenzo Anders is a monster, a fantasy, a wound, and a warning sign wearing good cologne, and now you’re the face of him.”

Tyriq’s eyes stayed on the packet.

“And?”

“And the woman who created him is Karnation Noel James.”

The room seemed to settle around her name.

Tyriq looked toward the window, jaw flexing as the Florida sun shifted slightly, catching the side of his face in a way that made him look carved and cornered at the same time.

Darlene lowered her voice.

“I know you two got history.”

He gave a humourless laugh.

“Everybody thinks they know that.”

“I know enough.”

“No, you know what folks said.”

“Then tell me what they got wrong.”

Tyriq looked at her then, and for one second there was something almost dangerous in his eyes, not violence, not anger exactly, but the defensive flash of a man standing too close to a place he had spent years fencing off.

Darlene, being Darlene, did not flinch.

The silence stretched.

Outside the office, someone laughed near reception, bright and distant, and the sound felt obscene in a room where the past had pulled up a chair.

Tyriq’s fingers tapped once against the armrest.

Then stopped.

“We were kids,” he said finally.

Darlene’s expression did not change.

“You were in college.”

“We grew up together.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I got.”

But it was not.

That was the lie.

He had thousands of answers, too many answers, answers that had lived under his tongue for years and turned bitter from being swallowed.

He could have told Darlene about Karnation at seven, marching into his yard because he had broken the head off her doll and swearing she would never speak to him again before coming back an hour later with two popsicles and a demand that he apologise properly.

He could have told her about Karnation at thirteen, elbowing him in the ribs at the movies because he was breathing too loud, then falling asleep against his shoulder ten minutes later with her hand curled in his hoodie.

He could have told her about Karnation at eighteen, standing in his dorm room with tears in her eyes and rage in her voice, asking him why loving him felt like trying to hold water in both hands.

He could have told her about the breakup.

The real one.

Not the version people passed around with missing pieces and convenient blame, but the ugly, unfinished thing with too much pride, too many people in their ears, too many half-truths, and one final argument that had left him certain she would come back because Karnation always came back, until she didn’t.

Until her phone stopped ringing.

Until her mother stopped answering the door the same way.

Until the James family stopped sitting near his at church.

Until Anders Street, which had once belonged to both of them, split itself down the middle like a cracked plate nobody knew how to glue back together.

And then Velma had been there.

Sweet at first.

Too sweet, maybe.

The kind of sweetness that stuck.

The kind that made it hard to breathe if you let it sit too long.

Darlene watched him carefully, and her voice softened further.

“Have you spoken to Karnation since?”

His gaze cut away.

“No.”

“Not once?”

“No.”

“In all these years?”

“Darlene.”

“I’m asking because if this becomes an issue, I need to know before it becomes my issue.”

“It won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“It won’t,” he repeated, though the words sounded more like a command to the universe than an assessment of reality.

Darlene stared at him for a long moment, then stood and walked back around her desk, opening a drawer with the kind of deliberate calm that told him she was about to produce something unpleasant.

When she pulled out the paperback, his chest tightened before his face could stop it.

He had seen the cover before, of course.

Everybody had.

It had been in airports, bookstores, grocery aisles, TikTok edits, Instagram stories, women’s hands on beaches, nightstands, coffee tables, and once, painfully, in Velma’s tote bag, though she had claimed she bought it “just to see what all the hype was about” before spending three days in a mood and asking him if he had ever loved somebody enough to let them ruin him.

The cover was elegant, dark, expensive-looking, all deep shadows and soft gold lettering, the kind of book that knew exactly what it was doing.

Darlene placed it on the desk in front of him.

Tyriq did not touch it.

“You read it?” she asked.

“Parts.”

“That’s a lie.”

His jaw tightened.

“I read enough.”

“You read enough to call me at eleven at night.”

“I read the script.”

“You read the book too.”

He stayed quiet.

Darlene tapped the author name with one nail.

“Karnation is an executive producer.”

“I know.”

“She will be involved.”

“I know.”

“She may be in rooms.”

“I know.”

“You may have to sit across from her and discuss Lorenzo Anders like he is not wearing pieces of your face.”

Tyriq’s eyes lifted sharply.

Darlene did not blink.

“There it is,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“That look.”

“I don’t have a look.”

“Baby, I have represented you for six years. You have exactly five looks and three of them are bad decisions in different fonts.”

He huffed once, despite himself, but his attention dropped back to the book like gravity had changed.

Lorenzo Anders.

Karnation had taken his middle name and their street and made a man out of them.

A man women loved.

A man critics called beautifully destructive.

A man readers forgave for things they would have told their friends to leave.

A man who, according to the lines Tyriq had read at two in the morning with the house dark and Velma asleep beside him, knew how to love a woman with both hands and still somehow leave her bleeding.

It had pissed him off how familiar it felt.

It had pissed him off more that it was good.

“Why me?” he asked, quieter this time.

Darlene’s face shifted, and the answer was in her expression before she spoke.

“Because you’re right for it.”

“That’s the agent answer.”

“That’s the truth.”

“No,” he said, leaning forward now, elbows coming to his knees, all that careless sprawl folding into something sharper, more focused, more unsettled. “The truth is there are a hundred men who could play this role. Younger men. Men without history attached. Men who don’t come with—”

“With what?” Darlene asked.

He stopped.

Her eyes narrowed, not unkindly.

“With Karnation?”

Tyriq looked away.

His phone buzzed again.

Then again.

Velma.

He ignored it.

Darlene noticed that too, and for once she did not comment.

He stared down at his hands, at the faint scar near his knuckle from where he had punched a locker after Karnation left and told everybody it was from training, at the watch Velma had bought him for his last birthday because she liked expensive proof, at the empty space where no ring sat because even Velma, for all her determination, had not managed to force that particular surrender out of him yet.

“She know?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Karnation.”

“That you were being considered?”

“That I’m cast.”

Darlene hesitated.

It was tiny.

Barely anything.

But Tyriq had made a career out of reading pauses, and this one told him enough.

His eyes lifted slowly.

“She doesn’t know.”

“The official announcement hasn’t gone out yet.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Darlene sighed.

“She may have been informed by production. She may not have. These things move fast.”

“Darlene.”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, and for the first time all meeting, she sounded genuinely tired. “I don’t know what Karnation knows.”

The answer sat badly in his chest.

Not because he owed Karnation comfort, though maybe he did, maybe he owed her a thousand things and had spent years pretending the debt disappeared because she never came to collect, but because some part of him, old and stupid and still loyal to the girl from Anders Street, hated the idea of her finding out from the internet.

He could see it too clearly.

Karnation somewhere elegant, somewhere controlled, her face composed while her eyes went unreadable, that little inhale she took when something hurt her but she refused to let it show, the way her chin lifted when she decided she would rather die standing than ask anybody to hold her.

He wondered if she still did that.

He wondered too much.

Darlene placed both hands flat on the desk.

“Tyriq, I need you to be honest with me.”

He gave her a look that said honesty was expensive.

She ignored it.

“Can you do this role without making it personal?”

The office went still.

Even the air conditioning seemed to quiet down, leaving nothing but the damp shine of Jacksonville beyond the windows and Velma’s unanswered messages gathering on his phone like tiny accusations.

Tyriq looked down at the book again.

At Karnation’s name.

At the title.

At the character he already knew too well for comfort.

Then he leaned back in the chair, slow and deliberate, spreading his knees again, letting the old confidence settle over him because it was easier than admitting that a woman he had not touched in years could still reach across a room through paper and make him feel seventeen, foolish, and unfinished.

“It’s acting,” he said.

Darlene stared at him.

She did not believe him.

He did not fully believe himself.

But the lie looked good on him, and that had always been half the problem.

His phone buzzed again.

This time, Velma called.

Her name lit up the screen, bright and possessive, vibrating against his thigh while Karnation’s name sat printed on the desk in front of him, and Tyriq, caught between the woman who had claimed the years and the woman who had haunted them, let the call ring.

Darlene’s eyes flicked to the phone.

Then to him.

“Well,” she said quietly, pushing the contract packet toward him, “then prove it.”

Tyriq stared at the pages, daylight cutting across his hands as he reached for the pen.

For a second, just one, his fingers hovered above the signature line.

And in that second, he was not famous, not grown, not anybody’s boyfriend, not Lorenzo Anders, not the man the studio wanted, not the man Velma guarded like property, but a boy from Florida who had loved his best friend too badly, lost her too completely, and somehow, years later, found her name waiting for him in ink.

Then he signed.

Later that evening, the condo was too quiet when Tyriq walked in, and that was how he knew he was in trouble.

Not because Velma was a quiet woman, because she was not, not in temperament, not in spirit, not in the way she loved, argued, cooked, laughed, prayed, cried, or breathed through any room she believed had even briefly belonged to her; Velma did not do silence naturally, she wielded it, sharpened it, set it in the middle of a room like a mousetrap and waited for a man to step wrong.

The place smelled like her perfume and something sweet burning low in a candle near the kitchen island, vanilla, amber, and a little smoke, the kind of scent that clung to the back of his throat and made the air feel decorated, and from the moment Tyriq shut the door behind him, keys still in one hand, contract packet tucked beneath his arm, phone heavy in his pocket from all the calls and texts he had not answered, he felt her presence before he saw her.

She was sitting in the living room with one leg crossed over the other, back straight against the couch cushion, robe slipping slightly off one shoulder, hair pinned up in a loose knot that did not look nearly as careless as she wanted it to, her nails tapping against the wineglass in her hand while the television played on mute, throwing blue-white light over her face and making her eyes look colder than they actually were.

Or maybe they were that cold.

Tyriq paused just inside the doorway, took her in, then exhaled through his nose.

“Tyriq,” Velma said, without looking at him, “what I say about you not texting me back?”

Her voice was too calm.

He almost preferred when she started loud, when she came at him already blazing, because at least then he knew where to put his hands, what tone to use, how close to stand, how much softness to pour over the fire before it reached the curtains, but this quiet, this smooth, waiting thing, always made something in him brace.

“You know I was working, V,” he said, dropping his keys into the dish by the door, his own voice lower than hers, careful without sounding afraid, because fear was something Velma could smell and he had learned a long time ago not to feed the parts of her that got hungry for it. “What was I supposed to do? Interrupt Darlene?”

Velma finally turned her head.

Slowly.

Like she wanted him to feel every inch of her attention arrive.

“So you was with Darlene all day?” she asked, one brow lifting while her mouth curved in a smile that had no sweetness in it. “That’s what you’re telling me, nigga?”

Tyriq sighed as he raked a hand over his face, the day pressing into him all at once, Darlene’s office, Karnation’s name on that packet, the pen in his hand, Velma’s unanswered calls, the Jacksonville sun, the way his middle name had looked disguised as another man’s destiny, all of it gathering behind his eyes until a frown pulled at his lips before he concealed it, smoothing his expression as he moved toward her with the lazy, deliberate confidence of a man who knew that sometimes walking slowly toward a problem made the problem remember it liked being wanted.

“C’mere,” he murmured, reaching for her as he stopped in front of the couch. “What you tripping over, ma?”

Velma’s eyes narrowed, but she let him take the glass from her hand and set it on the coffee table, and that was the first answer, the first little inch of surrender hidden beneath all that attitude, because Velma could rage all she wanted, could text him six times in twelve minutes, could call Darlene’s assistant with a fake customer service voice and pretend she had boundaries, but when Tyriq stood close enough for his cologne to settle between them and called her ma in that low, worn-out voice, her body almost always betrayed her before her pride could object.

Almost.

Not tonight.

Tonight, she leaned back before he could pull her up, her eyes dragging over him with surgical precision, taking inventory of his hoodie, his watch, the crease in his trousers, the tiredness around his mouth, the packet tucked beneath his arm, the phone still in his pocket, probably imagining women in every empty space he had occupied without her supervision.

“I’m tripping over you acting brand new,” she said. “That’s what I’m tripping over.”

“I’m not acting brand new.”

“You ain’t answer me all afternoon.”

“I was in meetings.”

“Meetings plural now?”

“Velma.”

“No, don’t Velma me,” she said, standing then, quick enough that the robe shifted again and the fabric whispered down the smooth line of her arm before she yanked it back up like modesty had suddenly become a weapon. “I asked you a question.”

Tyriq looked down at her, and even though he had height, even though he had weight, even though most rooms bent around him without being asked, Velma had never been intimidated by the size of him, had never looked at him like he was too much to challenge, because Velma loved him like she was always fighting another woman for the right to breathe near him, even when there was no woman in the room.

The problem was, tonight, there was.

Not physically.

Worse.

Karnation was in the room because her name was in the packet tucked beneath his arm, because her voice lived inside the script he had read until two in the morning, because her past with him was old enough to have roots, because even after all these years Velma could feel when Tyriq’s silence belonged to somebody else.

He set the packet on the coffee table, face down.

A mistake.

Velma’s eyes dropped to it immediately.

“What’s that?”

“Work.”

“What work?”

“The role.”

“The role Darlene had you locked in that office about all day?”

He rubbed his tongue along the inside of his cheek, then nodded once.

“Yeah.”

Velma looked from him to the packet again, and there it was, that flicker, sharp and fast, the tiny piece of suspicion catching flame before either of them had said the name.

“What’s the movie?”

Tyriq held her gaze.

“It’s the adaptation I told you about.”

“You told me about three adaptations.”

“This the big one.”

Her face changed, and because Tyriq knew her too well, because he had spent years learning the storms of Velma in order to survive them, he saw the exact second the memory landed.

The book.

The one she had bought and pretended not to finish.

The one she had left on the kitchen counter with a bookmark halfway through the spine, though he knew damn well she had read it to the end because Velma did not abandon anything that threatened her.

The one she had brought up at midnight months ago, sitting on their bed with narrowed eyes, asking him real casual whether his middle name had ever meant anything to anybody besides his mama.

Tyriq’s chest tightened.

Velma stepped closer to the coffee table but did not touch the packet.

“Ruin Me Gently?” she asked.

He said nothing.

Her laugh came out once, dry and humourless.

“Ain’t that cute.”

“V—”

“No, that’s real cute, Tyriq.”

“It’s work.”

“You keep saying that like I’m stupid.”

“I ain’t say you stupid.”

“But you talk to me like I am.”

He blew out a breath and glanced toward the ceiling for half a second, because this was the part where the floor always shifted beneath them, where any sentence could become evidence, where trying to calm her could sound like confession if he used the wrong word, the wrong tone, the wrong pause.

“I’m not doing this with you tonight.”

Velma’s head snapped back.

“Oh, you’re not doing this with me?”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“No, say what you mean then,” she said, closing the distance between them until she had to tip her chin back to look up at him, her eyes glossy now but hard, always both with her, always hurt dressed up as accusation. “You ain’t doing this with me because you already did enough today, right? Sat up in that office with Darlene talking about Karnation’s book, Karnation’s movie, Karnation’s little fake man that everybody with eyes knows is about you.”

His jaw tightened at the sound of her name.

Velma saw it.

Of course she did.

Her smile widened, but it shook at the edges.

“There it go.”

“Velma.”

“There it go,” she repeated, pointing at his face like she had found blood on his collar. “I say that girl name and you get that look.”

“What look?”

“That same stupid look you got when somebody played that interview of hers and she said she don’t believe first love ever leaves the body.”

He remembered that interview.

He hated that he remembered that interview.

Darlene had sent it to him months ago when the casting conversations first started to get serious, and he had watched Karnation sit across from some glossy host in a cream suit, legs crossed, hair falling over one shoulder, face calm, voice softer than he expected when she said, I don’t think first love leaves the body. I think it learns how to be quiet.

He had played it once.

Then again.

Then he had closed the laptop so hard Velma had looked up from her phone.

“I don’t have a look,” he said.

Velma scoffed, stepping away from him now because distance helped her rage better. “You got a whole face for that girl.”

“That girl?” he repeated, and the correction came quicker than it should have, rougher than he intended.

Velma froze.

Tyriq did too.

There was the mistake.

The room inhaled around them.

Velma’s eyes filled, but not with sadness first.

With fury.

“Oh,” she said softly. “So she not that girl now?”

“Don’t twist my words.”

“I don’t gotta twist nothing. You straighten them out just fine by yourself.”

Tyriq dragged a hand over his mouth, trying to catch his patience before it ran from him completely, because the last thing he needed was to fight with Velma over Karnation when he had not even spoken to Karnation in years, had not heard her laugh outside an interview clip, had not seen her face outside photographs, had not touched anything belonging to her except the pages she had written and somehow that still felt more intimate than it had any right to.

Velma stared at him, chest rising and falling faster now.

“You took the role?”

“It’s a good role.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“Yes,” he said, because lying would have been foolish and Tyriq had made enough foolish choices in his life to recognise one before stepping in it. “I signed.”

Velma went still.

There were different kinds of quiet with her, and this one was the kind that made the hair on the back of his neck rise.

“You signed,” she repeated.

“I signed.”

“Without talking to me.”

Tyriq’s brows pulled together. “Talking to you about what?”

Her mouth fell open slightly, not from surprise but from insult.

“Are you serious?”

“It’s my job.”

“It’s her.”

His eyes flashed.

“It’s a movie.”

“It’s Karnation.”

There it was again, the name splitting the room clean open.

Karnation.

Not baby, not ex, not old friend, not childhood sweetheart, not the woman whose family used to eat barbecue in his parents’ backyard on Sundays, not the girl whose mother had stopped hugging him after the breakup, not the ghost everyone learned to step around because saying her name in the Withers house had once been enough to change the weather.

Just Karnation.

And somehow that was worse.

Velma folded her arms over her chest, robe belted tight now, as if she could hold herself together through force alone.

“You remember what happened last time with her?”

Tyriq’s face hardened.

“Don’t.”

“No, you remember?”

“I said don’t.”

“Because I remember,” Velma snapped, voice cracking through the calm at last. “I remember you not eating, not sleeping, walking around here looking like somebody died, punching walls, ignoring everybody, acting like the whole world had done you dirty because Miss Perfect packed up and left your ass.”

Tyriq’s eyes went cold.

“She didn’t just leave.”

Velma laughed, sharp and ugly.

“No? Then what she do, Tyriq? Since you know so much and tell so little.”

He looked away.

The problem was that he did not know.

Not enough.

Not the parts that mattered.

For years he had built anger around the missing pieces because anger was stronger than confusion, because it was easier to say Karnation left than admit there had been a gap in the story so wide he could still fall through it if he looked down too long.

Velma watched him not answer and nodded like she had won something.

“Exactly.”

Tyriq turned back to her slowly.

“Careful.”

The word came out low.

Velma’s nostrils flared, and for one second he saw fear flicker behind her eyes, not fear of him hurting her, never that, but fear of losing the version of him she had spent years trying to secure, fear that one name, one book, one movie, one woman from Anders Street could undo what she had been sewing around him since the day after Karnation disappeared.

Then she stepped into him again, smaller than him but bold as sin, pressing one finger against his chest.

“No, you be careful,” she whispered. “Because I was there after she left. Me. I was the one who picked up them pieces while she went off and turned you into some paperback demon for white women with tote bags.”

Despite everything, Tyriq nearly laughed at that.

Velma saw it and smacked his chest once, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to accuse.

“Don’t laugh.”

“I wasn’t laughing.”

“You was about to.”

“Paperback demon was wild.”

“This ain’t funny.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, and now the tears were winning, making her lashes shine beneath the television glow. “You don’t know what it felt like watching you grieve another woman while I was laying right next to you.”

That landed.

Harder than he wanted it to.

His expression shifted before he could stop it, and Velma’s face softened for half a second because that was the ugly bind of them, the reason they never fully left each other alone, because beneath all her surveillance and suspicion and theatrics, beneath his avoidance and half-truths and talent for making women feel chosen without ever handing them the whole of him, there was real hurt between them too.

Velma had loved him badly.

Possessively, maybe.

Selfishly, often.

But badly loved was still loved, and Tyriq, who had once been too heartbroken to notice the difference between comfort and control, had let that love become a house around him.

Now he was standing in it with another woman’s name on the coffee table.

He reached for Velma again, slower this time, one hand settling at her waist while the other lifted to her jaw, his thumb brushing beneath the corner of her eye before the tear could fall properly.

“C’mere,” he said again, softer now. “Look at me.”

She tried not to.

He tipped her chin up anyway, gently, with the kind of practiced tenderness that made her angry because it worked.

“I’m here,” he said.

Velma’s lips trembled, but her eyes stayed sharp.

“For now.”

“Velma.”

“For now,” she repeated. “Until you get on that set and she look at you with them sad author eyes and start acting like y’all got unfinished business.”

Tyriq’s thumb stilled against her cheek.

Velma gave a small, wounded laugh.

“See?”

“There ain’t no unfinished business.”

The lie came out clean.

Too clean.

Velma searched his face like she was trying to find the seam in it.

“You sure?”

He should have said yes immediately.

He knew that.

A smarter man would have.

A kinder man might have told the truth.

Tyriq, unfortunately, was neither smart nor kind when cornered by feelings he did not know where to put.

So he leaned down and kissed her instead.

Not rough.

Not at first.

Just enough pressure to interrupt the question, enough warmth to move the conversation from language into something he could manage, because Tyriq had always been better with his mouth when he was not using it to explain himself. Velma made a small sound against him, angry even as she softened, her hands going to his hoodie, fingers curling into the fabric like she was deciding whether to pull him closer or push him away.

He let her choose.

She pulled.

Of course she did.

His hand slid from her jaw to the back of her neck, holding her there while he kissed her deeper, not because desire had vanished but because distraction was an old, reliable sin, and Velma kissed like she fought, like if she could get enough of him in her hands, enough of him under her nails, enough of him breathing hard against her mouth, she could prove he belonged to her in a way no book, no memory, no woman from Florida ever could.

When he pulled back, her eyes were wet and furious.

“That’s not an answer,” she whispered.

Tyriq rested his forehead against hers.

“I know.”

“Then answer me.”

He closed his eyes for one second.

Behind his lids, against his will, he saw Karnation’s name.

Not Velma’s face.

Not the condo.

Not the life he had been living.

Karnation Noel James in black ink.

Karnation at seventeen with lip gloss shining in summer heat.

Karnation at twenty, walking away in a memory he still could not finish properly.

Karnation’s voice in an interview saying first love learned how to be quiet.

His phone buzzed again in his pocket, probably some email from production or Darlene or a calendar alert he did not care about, and Velma stiffened immediately because every vibration in his life was apparently a potential enemy.

Tyriq opened his eyes.

“I’m not leaving you,” he said.

Velma stared at him.

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

No.

It wasn’t.

But it was the answer he could give.

Her face changed as she realised that too, and the hurt that moved across it was almost enough to make him cruel again just so he would not have to feel guilty.

She pulled away from him, wiping beneath her eye with the side of her finger before any mascara could betray her.

“You hungry?” she asked suddenly, voice flat.

The pivot was so sharp he almost missed it.

“What?”

“I said, you hungry?”

He watched her walk toward the kitchen, spine straight, robe swaying around her thighs, pride carrying her like a second skeleton.

“Nah.”

“You ain’t eat.”

“I’m good.”

“You always say that when you’re not.”

The sentence hit too close to Karnation, too close to everything old, because Karnation used to say the same thing, standing in front of him with her arms crossed and that little crease between her brows, telling him he always lied about hunger like food was a weakness.

He hated how many women in his life knew pieces of him.

He hated more that none of them had ever had all of him.

Velma opened the fridge, stared inside without seeing anything, then shut it again.

“You going back out?”

Tyriq looked at her.

“What makes you say that?”

“You got that restless look.”

“I got five looks, apparently.”

She did not smile.

Damn.

Wrong audience.

He sighed and picked up the packet from the coffee table, tucking it under his arm again because leaving Karnation’s name face down in the middle of Velma’s living room felt crueler than carrying it.

“I might go for a drive.”

Velma turned slowly.

“A drive.”

“Clear my head.”

“Clear it from what?”

He did not answer.

Her mouth tightened.

“From me?”

“No.”

“From her?”

“Velma, stop.”

“Then stay.”

The word landed between them stripped of attitude, bare and desperate enough to make him look at her fully.

Stay.

Not because she wanted dinner.

Not because she wanted company.

Because some part of her knew that if he left with Karnation’s name under his arm and old memories in his chest, the night might take him somewhere she could not follow.

Tyriq stood there, tall and tired in the middle of a beautiful condo that suddenly felt too small for all the ghosts inside it.

“I just need air,” he said.

Velma laughed under her breath, but this time it sounded broken.

“Florida got the thickest air in the country and you still need some?”

He almost smiled.

Almost.

She walked toward him again, slower now, anger drained enough to leave the fear visible.

“You took the role,” she said quietly.

He nodded.

“You gon’ see her.”

He said nothing.

“You gon’ talk to her.”

Still nothing.

Velma looked up at him, eyes shining.

“And you gon’ remember.”

Tyriq swallowed.

The cruelest thing would have been to deny it.

The truest thing would have been to admit he had never stopped.

So he did what he had always done best.

He chose the middle and called it mercy.

“I remember a lot of things, V.”

Her face crumpled for half a second before she repaired it.

Then she stepped back.

“Go take your drive then.”

“Velma—”

“No, go,” she said, lifting her chin, voice cold again because softness embarrassed her when it failed to get what it asked for. “You grown, right? Big movie star. Big Lorenzo Anders. Go clear your head.”

Tyriq stared at her for a long moment.

He wanted to say something that would fix it.

He did not know if such a thing existed.

Instead, he moved toward her, kissed her forehead because he could feel her shaking even when she tried to hide it, and she let him, which somehow made it worse.

“I’ll be back,” he murmured.

Velma’s eyes closed.

“For now,” she whispered again.

He did not answer that time.

He grabbed his keys, his phone, and the packet with Karnation’s name on it, then walked out before the guilt could hook into him deep enough to make him stay.

The hallway was cool and empty, the elevator mirrored and too bright, and when he stepped outside, Jacksonville hit him full in the chest, humid and warm and familiar, wrapping around him like a city that knew all his secrets and had been waiting years for him to come home careless enough to drop one.

His phone lit up as he got into the SUV.

A message from Darlene.

DARLENE: Announcement goes live tonight. Try not to do anything stupid.

Tyriq stared at the text.

Then at the packet in the passenger seat.

Then out through the windshield, where the evening had deepened into a purple-black kind of heat and the road ahead looked slick beneath the streetlights.

He huffed once, humourless.

“Too late,” he muttered.

And pulled out of the lot.

The world blurred as he moved through the motions, one hand loose on the steering wheel, the other resting near the gear shift, Jacksonville sliding past him in streaks of streetlight and shadow while the packet on the passenger seat sat there like a living thing, Karnation’s name hidden beneath the flap and still somehow louder than anything playing low through the speakers.

He drove with no real destination, only that old, restless instinct carrying him through familiar roads his body remembered before his mind could approve them, past corner stores with faded signs, churches with lit-up crosses, gas stations where boys leaned against cars pretending they were men, palm trees bending slightly in the heavy evening air, and neighbourhood streets that looked too much like the ones he used to haunt barefoot and laughing, back when his life had been simple enough to fit between two houses on Anders Street.

Memories came through him without permission.

Them.

Who they were.

Who they had been before pride, before silence, before Velma, before fame, before contracts, before the whole world learned Karnation Noel James’s name and he had to sit in an office pretending it did not make his chest ache to see it printed in black ink.

Karnation at eight, bossing him around in his own backyard because she had decided he was playing tag incorrectly and needed supervision.

Karnation at twelve, sitting on the curb outside his mama’s house with a scraped knee and a dramatic pout, refusing to cry because he had laughed when she fell off his bike, and him feeling so guilty he gave her the last red freeze pop and let her call him stupid for twenty straight minutes.

Karnation at fifteen, walking into church late with her mother, white dress brushing her knees, braids swinging down her back, smelling faintly like cocoa butter and vanilla, and him sitting two rows behind her trying not to stare because Velma was beside him at the time and had pinched the inside of his wrist hard enough to leave a crescent-shaped warning in his skin.

Karnation at seventeen, storming across Anders Street barefoot because he had ignored her text for two hours after football practice, standing beneath the porch light with her arms crossed and her mouth sharp, telling him if he ever made her look stupid again she was going to throw a brick through his window, and him laughing because even angry, especially angry, she had looked like home had learned how to fuss.

Karnation at nineteen.

Karnation in his dorm room.

Karnation with tears on her face.

Karnation saying his name like she was trying to make him understand something he had been too young, too proud, too surrounded by noise to hear.

His grip tightened around the wheel.

He hated that part of the memory because it never came cleanly, never arrived with beginning, middle, and end, never let him hold the full shape of what happened without something missing from the centre; it came instead in fragments, all heat and raised voices and her eyes gone glossy with a hurt so deep it had frightened him into anger, because Tyriq had not known what to do with a woman’s pain when he was the one who had caused it, had not known how to kneel before it, had not known how to say, Tell me where I hurt you so I can stop touching the wound.

Back then, he only knew how to defend himself.

Back then, he only knew how to make himself look untouchable.

Back then, he thought if Karnation loved him enough, she would come back after the argument the way she always had, because she had been coming back to him since they were children, across grass, across streets, across classrooms, across parties, across every ridiculous fight that ended with one of them laughing before the other could finish being mad.

But that time, she did not come back.

That time, she disappeared so completely it felt like somebody had reached into his life and erased her with a wet thumb.

His phone rang just as he turned onto a quieter road, the sound cutting clean through the car, and when he glanced at the screen mounted near the dash, his mother’s contact came up with the old picture she had never let him change: her smiling at one of his early premieres, hand on his chest, eyes bright with the kind of pride that made him feel smaller and bigger at the same time.

MAMA

Tyriq stared at it for half a second too long.

Something in him already knew.

His thumb hovered near the button before he answered, and her voice filled the car before he had even finished saying hello.

“Boy.”

He closed his eyes for one beat.

“Hey, Ma.”

“Don’t you hey Ma me like you don’t know why I’m calling.”

Tyriq exhaled slowly through his nose, the corner of his mouth twitching despite the exhaustion sitting heavy behind his eyes, because his mother’s voice could still pull him back into himself faster than any publicist, agent, girlfriend, or therapist-adjacent motivational quote Darlene tried to send him when she got bored.

“I don’t know why you calling,” he lied.

His mother sucked her teeth so loudly he could hear the whole ancestry of her disappointment through the speakers.

“Mhm. You know good and damn well.”

He turned the wheel with one hand, letting the SUV glide past a stretch of closed shops, neon signs, and one little beauty supply store Karnation’s mother used to drag her into on Saturdays while his mama and Miss James stood in the aisle talking like they had nowhere else in the world to be.

The sight hit him harder than he expected.

“You saw it?” he asked.

“I saw it,” his mother said, and the softness that entered her voice made his stomach tighten. “Everybody saw it, Tyriq.”

He said nothing.

The silence stretched, thick with years.

“Karnation’s book,” she said, like he needed clarification, like the name alone was something that still required care in their family, something fragile enough to cut if handled wrong. “They saying you playing the man in Karnation’s book.”

“It’s a role.”

“Don’t insult me.”

His jaw shifted.

“Mama—”

“No,” she said, not loudly, but firmly enough that he shut up the way he had when he was young and she caught him trying to sneak back into the house after curfew. “I raised you. I know when you making something sound smaller than it is so you don’t have to tell the truth about how heavy it feels.”

Tyriq looked toward the road, headlights dragging pale gold across his face.

“It’s acting.”

His mother gave a short, humourless laugh.

“Baby, you can act for them people, not for me.”

The words landed with a tenderness that irritated him because it slipped past every defence he had put up since leaving the condo, and for a moment he could not answer, could only drive through the humid dark while the city folded around him and his mother breathed on the other end of the line with the patience of a woman who had spent years waiting for her son to admit he was still bleeding from something he refused to name.

“I signed today,” he said finally.

“I figured.”

“Darlene thinks it’s good for me.”

“Darlene think breathing near a camera is good for you if the cheque got enough commas.”

He huffed softly.

“She ain’t wrong.”

“She also ain’t your mama.”

“No, she reminds me every day.”

“As she should,” his mother said, then paused, and when she spoke again her voice had shifted into something quieter, something that made him sit a little straighter without knowing why. “Does Karnation know?”

Tyriq’s eyes flicked to the packet on the passenger seat.

“I don’t know.”

His mother went silent.

That silence was worse than an argument.

It carried too much, all those summers and cookouts and church services and birthday parties, all those years when their families had been so tangled together that people stopped asking who belonged to who, because the answer had always been everybody belonged to everybody until suddenly they did not.

“You don’t know,” she repeated.

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“Who was I supposed to ask, Ma?”

“Somebody,” she said. “Anybody. Your agent. The studio. Jesus. I don’t care who. That girl should not have to find out from the internet that you about to play a man she wrote.”

Tyriq’s mouth tightened.

“You saying that like she wrote him about me.”

His mother did not answer right away.

That was answer enough.

He laughed once, low and bitter, shaking his head as he changed lanes.

“Damn, you too?”

“Tyriq.”

“What?”

“You know.”

He hated those two words.

They were too simple for something so complicated, too clean for something that had spent years rotting in the dark.

“I don’t know anything,” he said, and there was more heat in his voice now, not at her, not really, but at the whole impossible shape of the night, at Darlene, at Velma, at Karnation, at himself, at the book he had read in pieces because reading it whole had felt too much like letting Karnation put her hands inside his chest and rearrange what she found there. “I know she wrote a character with my middle name and our old street. I know everybody online got theories. I know she been doing interviews smiling like she don’t know me from Adam. I know she left and never looked back. That’s what I know.”

His mother inhaled.

Long.

Careful.

“Oh, son.”

He hated that even more.

Not disappointment.

Not scolding.

Pity.

“Mama, don’t.”

“You still angry with her.”

“I ain’t angry.”

“You are.”

“I’m not.”

“You sound like your daddy when he say he don’t want dessert and then eat half my peach cobbler standing at the fridge.”

Despite himself, Tyriq’s lips twitched.

“I’m not angry.”

“You hurt, then.”

His throat moved.

The road ahead blurred for one strange second, not enough for tears, not that, never that, not while he was driving through the city with his mama listening and Karnation’s name lying beside him like a dare, but enough that he had to blink once and tighten his hand around the wheel.

“I was hurt,” he said.

His mother caught the tense immediately.

“That past tense is doing a lot of work.”

He shook his head.

“You and Darlene should start a club.”

“We already in one. It’s called Women Who Know When Tyriq Is Lying.”

“That club got too many members.”

“And whose fault is that?”

He said nothing, but the old rhythm of talking to her settled some of the sharper things inside him, the easy push and pull, the teasing that always carried truth under it, the way she could make him laugh and confess in the same breath if he was not careful.

His mother softened again.

“I saw an interview with Karnation a while back,” she said.

Tyriq’s eyes shifted toward the road.

He knew the one before she described it.

“Which one?”

“The one where she wore that cream suit.”

Of course.

“She looked beautiful,” his mother said, and there was something wistful in it, something that pinched beneath his ribs because his mama had loved Karnation once too, not like a neighbour’s child, not like his little friend, but like a daughter she had half-raised from the other side of the street. “Grown. Polished. Like her mama, but sharper.”

Tyriq’s face stayed still.

“She always looked like that.”

“No, baby,” his mother said gently. “She did not. That girl used to come into my kitchen with one sock on, hair half done, asking if we had cereal because her mama was cooking oatmeal and she was staging a protest.”

He laughed then, unwillingly, because he could see it too clearly.

Karnation at thirteen, standing in his mother’s kitchen wearing pyjama shorts and attitude, announcing that oatmeal was punishment food and she refused to participate in oppression before eating two bowls of cereal and falling asleep on the couch during cartoons.

His mother heard the laugh and went quiet for a second, like she was grieving the sound.

“She was ours for a long time,” she said.

Tyriq swallowed.

“Yeah.”

“And then she wasn’t.”

The car seemed smaller suddenly.

He turned down another road, not because he needed to, but because going straight felt too much like arriving somewhere.

“You ever talk to Miss James?” he asked before he could stop himself.

His mother did not answer immediately.

His chest tightened.

“No,” she said finally. “Not really.”

“Not really?”

“We say hello if we have to. If somebody pass, if somebody marry, if somebody sick and news travel through church folks before a person can sneeze in peace. But no. Not like before.”

Tyriq stared ahead.

He knew that, of course he knew that, but knowing a thing vaguely and hearing his mother say it plainly were different kinds of punishment.

Their mothers had been close once.

Close enough to call each other before storms, close enough to borrow sugar without asking, close enough to sit in folding chairs at cookouts while their husbands argued over ribs and football and Karnation and Tyriq ran between yards like the houses had no borders, because for them, they never had.

Then the breakup happened.

Then Karnation left.

Then Velma came back.

Then everybody chose silence because silence was easier than asking what had really happened.

“I ain’t mean for that to happen,” Tyriq said quietly.

“I know.”

“I didn’t want our families to stop speaking.”

“I know that too.”

“Did she?” he asked, and the question came out smaller than he meant it to.

His mother heard it.

Mothers always did.

“Did who?”

He hated her for making him say it.

“Karnation.”

His mother let the name settle between them.

“I don’t know, son.”

Tyriq’s jaw clenched.

“I called her.”

“I know.”

“I went by the house.”

“I remember.”

“Her mama wouldn’t—” He stopped, because that memory still made something hot crawl up his neck, the humiliation of standing on Miss James’s porch while she looked at him through a cracked door like he was somebody she once trusted and no longer had the strength to hate out loud. “She wouldn’t let me see her.”

His mother’s voice gentled to almost a whisper.

“Maybe she was protecting her.”

“From me?”

“I don’t know.”

He laughed bitterly.

“Everybody keep saying they don’t know.”

“Because we don’t,” she said, and this time there was steel under the softness. “We do not know all of what happened because you two never told us all of what happened, and by the time anybody realised this was not one of y’all little dramatic breakups, she was gone and you were back with Velma.”

Tyriq flinched, though his mother could not see it.

Still, she felt it.

“Mm.”

“Don’t mm me.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said plenty.”

“Tyriq,” she said, and the warning in her voice returned, old and maternal and impossible to outrun. “I’m not going to speak ill of Velma.”

“That means you about to.”

“I said I’m not.”

“You want to.”

“I want many things,” she said. “A quieter house, better knees, your daddy to stop buying fishing equipment he don’t use, and for you to stop acting like sitting in a situation for years means it is the same thing as peace.”

His mouth opened.

Closed.

The SUV rolled to a stop at a red light, and Tyriq sat there in the glow, one hand on the wheel, the other pressed against his mouth as if he could physically hold the truth inside.

Velma had been there.

Velma had loved him.

Velma had held him through the wreckage Karnation left behind, or the wreckage he made, or the wreckage they both stumbled out of depending on the angle.

But Velma had also turned love into surveillance, devotion into possession, comfort into a chain she kept polishing so it looked like jewellery, and Tyriq, because he had been hurt and tired and proud, had let her clasp it around his throat until one day he woke up and could not remember whether he had agreed to be held or had simply stopped pulling away.

The light turned green.

He drove.

“You don’t like her,” he said.

His mother sighed.

“I love you.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is the answer I can give without needing to repent on Sunday.”

He shook his head, but there was no real humour left in him.

“She was there when Karnation wasn’t.”

His mother’s voice softened until it nearly broke him.

“Baby, sometimes a person can be there and still not be the place you supposed to rest.”

The sentence moved through him slowly.

Cruelly.

He did not answer because he could not trust what might come out.

For a few moments, there was only the road, the soft hum of tires over pavement, the distant sound of some late-night radio host laughing through the speakers before he turned the volume all the way down.

Then his mother said, “Have you read the book?”

Tyriq’s eyes flicked again to the passenger seat.

“Parts.”

“Boy.”

“I read it.”

“How much?”

“Enough.”

“How much?”

“All of it,” he snapped, then immediately exhaled, regret pulling at his brow. “I read all of it.”

His mother went very quiet.

Tyriq’s chest felt too tight.

He had not meant to say that.

Not out loud.

Not to anyone.

The book had been something he did in private, at first out of professional curiosity, then suspicion, then anger, then something so close to grief he had nearly thrown it across the room; he had read Lorenzo Anders being cruel and tender and proud and terrified of being loved properly, read him standing in doorways instead of crossing rooms, read him kissing the heroine like apology was something a mouth could perform without ever becoming accountable, read entire passages that felt so much like Karnation speaking from the other side of a locked door that he had to put the book down and walk outside in the dark.

Velma had found him on the balcony that night.

She had not asked the right question.

Maybe because she already knew the answer.

“What did you think?” his mother asked.

Tyriq laughed once, low and empty.

“It was good.”

“That ain’t what I asked.”

He rubbed at his jaw.

“It pissed me off.”

“Because it was wrong?”

He hesitated.

The SUV slowed as he reached a turn near an older part of town, and for a second, the smell of rain on hot concrete slipped through the vents even though the windows were up.

“No,” he said finally.

His mother’s breath caught softly on the other end.

“Because it wasn’t.”

Tyriq stared at the road until the lights smeared.

“I don’t know,” he said, but it came out rougher now, honest in a way he had not meant to be. “Some parts were. Some parts weren’t. Some parts felt like she took the worst thing about me and made it beautiful enough for people to forgive. Some parts felt like she knew me better than I knew myself. Some parts felt like she hated me.”

“And some parts?”

He swallowed.

Some parts felt like she loved him still.

He did not say that.

His mother did not make him.

That was mercy.

The car drifted past a strip of restaurants, and a bright red-and-white sign appeared ahead, familiar enough to hook him before he understood why.

Dairy Queen.

He almost laughed.

Of course.

Of all the places his body could have wandered him toward, of all the roads in Jacksonville, of all the ridiculous symbols his life could have offered on a night like this, it brought him here, to a Dairy Queen glowing under fluorescent light like a memory with a drive-thru.

His mother was still talking, something about not letting Hollywood make a mess of what already hurt, but Tyriq barely heard her because suddenly he was sixteen again, fresh from practice, too broke to buy two Blizzards, stealing bites from Karnation’s cup while she threatened him with bodily harm and still tilted it toward him every time he reached.

He turned into the lot before he fully decided to.

“Where you at?” his mother asked, catching the shift in sound.

“Dairy Queen.”

Silence.

Then, softer than before, “Lord.”

“What?”

“You know what.”

He parked near the edge of the lot, engine still running, and looked at the lit windows, the cars, the little cluster of people near the ordering screen.

“I just wanted something cold.”

“Mm.”

“Mama.”

“I didn’t say nothing.”

“You mm’d.”

“That is not speaking.”

“That is worse than speaking.”

She sighed, and when she spoke again the worry was clear enough that he felt it settle in his lap with the packet.

“Tyriq, listen to me. Whatever this role is, whatever that book is, whatever Karnation is to you now, do not walk into this thing careless.”

His fingers tightened on the wheel.

“I’m not.”

“You are,” she said gently. “You get quiet when you careless. You get smooth when you about to do something stupid. You start acting like nothing can touch you, and that is exactly when everything does.”

He looked down at the packet.

Karnation’s name was not visible, but he felt it anyway.

“I won’t hurt her,” he said.

The words came out before he understood them.

His mother went still.

Then, carefully, “Is that what you’re worried about?”

He did not answer.

Because yes.

Because no.

Because he had already hurt her, maybe worse than he understood, and the possibility that seeing him again might reopen something she had spent years sewing shut sat heavier on him than he wanted to admit.

Because another part of him, the selfish part, the boy part, the part of him still standing on Anders Street waiting for her to come back, wanted to see her face.

Not on a cover.

Not in an interview.

Not in a photograph.

Her.

Real.

In front of him.

Breathing the same air.

Hating him, maybe.

Looking at him, definitely.

His mother’s voice softened.

“Then don’t.”

He closed his eyes.

Simple.

Impossible.

“Yeah,” he said.

A car pulled into the spot two spaces away, headlights briefly washing over his windshield before turning off, and Tyriq opened his eyes, blinking against the light.

He did not look over at first.

He should have.

Maybe if he had, he would have seen the black car, the woman inside, the shape of a life he did not know was already close enough to touch.

Instead, he sat there with his mother on the phone, his past in the passenger seat, his girlfriend’s unanswered fear in his pocket, and a city full of ghosts pressing warm hands against the windows.

“I’m gonna call you back,” he said.

His mother paused.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Tyriq.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, and there was a tremble of love and warning in her voice now. “But you will.”

He frowned.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means some things don’t stay buried just because we got tired of digging.”

The words moved through the car like a draft.

Before he could answer, movement near the trash can caught his eye.

A woman in a black dress, heels bright beneath the parking lot light, bending with visible irritation to catch a runaway napkin before it slid beneath an SUV.

For one strange second, Tyriq’s mind did not accept what his body already knew.

His heart moved first.

Then his breath.

Then the entire night sharpened around her.

He knew the line of her neck.

The set of her shoulders.

The way she stood too straight when embarrassed, as if posture could discipline the world into acting right.

The phone nearly slipped from his hand.

His mother’s voice sounded far away.

“Tyriq?”

He stared through the windshield.

The woman rose slowly, smoothing a hand down the front of her dress, and when she turned just enough for the parking lot light to catch her face, the years between them did not disappear.

They attacked.

Karnation.

Not memory.

Not ink.

Not a name.

Not a character.

Her.

Tyriq opened his door without thinking, his mother still calling his name through the speaker, the warm Florida air rushing in all at once as he stepped out onto the pavement.

“Tyriq?” his mother said again, sharper now. “What happened?”

He could not answer.

He was already walking.

The phone hung useless in his hand, his mother’s voice fading beneath the sound of his pulse as he crossed the space between the cars, every step dragging him through years he had pretended not to count.

Karnation had not seen him yet.

Not fully.

She was still holding the napkin, still frowning down at the bin like it had personally offended her, still so painfully herself that something inside him twisted.

His mouth opened before he knew what he was going to say.

And then her name came out of him, low and disbelieving, carrying every year, every unanswered question, every childhood summer, every ruined prayer, every piece of him that had never learned how to stop looking for her.

“Karnation?”

Lips ghosted over the bare slope of her shoulder with the kind of patience that felt almost cruel, not quite a kiss and not quite restraint, just the warm, deliberate promise of his mouth moving over skin he had learned too well, and Karnation shut her eyes hard enough to see stars behind them, her breath catching somewhere between her throat and her chest as she let her head fall back against him like the sea finally surrendering to the pull of the moon.

She was wearing those little college shorts that barely had the decency to pretend they were doing a job, soft cotton clinging to the generous curve of her hips while the oversized shirt she had stolen from him rode up at her waist, bunched beneath the spread of his hands as if even fabric knew better than to get between them when Tyriq Withers got quiet like this.

And he was quiet in the worst way.

The dangerous way.

The way a storm got quiet over open water before it rolled in and swallowed the whole shore.

His chest was warm and solid against her back, his body wrapped around hers with that easy, arrogant confidence that made it clear he was not simply holding her, he was anchoring her, claiming space around her like a man who knew the earth beneath his feet belonged to him only because she was standing on it.

“Karnation,” he murmured, dragging her name against her shoulder like a match struck slowly against stone, his voice low, roughened by want and amusement, the kind of voice that made her feel like some poor mortal woman in a Greek myth who should have known better than to answer when a god came down from Olympus wearing sweatpants and a crooked smile.

She exhaled his name before she could stop herself.

“Tyriq.”

It slipped out as naturally as air, as naturally as blinking, as naturally as the tide coming home no matter how many times the shore pretended it had learned how to live without it, and when she turned her face toward him, there was already a smile waiting on her lips, soft and wicked and too pleased with itself for a woman who knew exactly what kind of trouble she was inviting.

His eyes dropped to her mouth first, because of course they did, because Tyriq had always looked at her like desire had a language and she was the only book he knew how to read without stumbling, and then his gaze lifted to hers with that devastating half-smile that made him look like sin had gotten a scholarship and a starting position.

“You so fine,” he said, and his hand tightened just slightly at her waist, not enough to hurt, never enough to hurt, but enough to remind her that he was there, that he was real, that he had been trying to behave and clearly resented her for making that impossible. “Shit be pissing me off.”

Karnation let out a quiet laugh, breathless and lazy, her lashes dipping as she leaned back into him with all the smug grace of Aphrodite stepping out of the foam knowing whole wars had been started over less than the curve of her shoulder.

“Mhm,” she hummed, tilting her head just enough for his mouth to find the warm line beneath her jaw, “wha’ you gon’ do ’bout it?”

Tyriq laughed under his breath then, not loud, not boyish, but low and charmed, the sound rolling through his chest and into her back like distant thunder crossing dark water, and that was the problem with him, really, because even when he was being impossible, even when he was being too fine and too smooth and too aware of the effect he had on her, he still had that pull, that heat, that gravity, like Poseidon rising from the sea with salt on his skin and trouble in his smile.

He turned her a little in his arms, slow enough to make her feel every inch of the movement, his hand sliding from her waist to the small of her back while the other lifted to her chin, his thumb brushing there with a tenderness that made the tension sharper instead of softer, because Tyriq had always known how to mix sweetness with danger until she could not tell which one she wanted more.

“How you want it, mama?” he asked, and the question did not land like pressure, it landed like worship, like invitation, like a man kneeling at the edge of a temple with fire in his hands and patience in his mouth. “You want me sweet with you, or you want me honest?”

Karnation’s smile faltered for half a second, only because he had a way of saying things that made the room feel smaller, warmer, charged at the edges, like the whole world had narrowed down to his hands on her and her breath trying not to embarrass her.

“You know how I want it,” she whispered.

His brows lifted, amused, cocky, handsome enough to be offensive.

“Nah,” he said, his mouth brushing the corner of hers without giving her the kiss yet, because he was cruel when he wanted to be and charming enough to make cruelty look like romance. “Use your words, pretty girl.”

And there it was, that awful heat, that slow flood, that mythic unraveling of sense and pride, because Karnation Noel St. Patrick could write men into monsters and lovers into legends, could turn heartbreak into bestselling chapters and make entire audiences ache over a man she had survived in real life, but standing there in his shirt, in his arms, with his breath warm against her lips, she was just a girl again, barefoot at the edge of the ocean, pretending she was not waiting for the wave to take her under.

“Karnation,” he hummed against her neck, her name leaving his mouth like it belonged there, like he had carved it into his tongue years ago and had only been waiting for the right moment to speak it soft enough to ruin her.

His lips brushed the curve beneath her ear, warm and maddeningly patient, and the whole room around them seemed to melt into something golden and unreal, the edges of the memory softening like sunlight over water, like she was standing waist-deep in some ancient sea while the tide curled around her calves and dragged her backward into a past she had sworn she was done drowning in.

“Karnation,” he murmured again, deeper this time, amused by the way her breath betrayed her before her mouth could form any kind of lie.

She could feel him everywhere.

Not in the obvious ways, not in ways she would ever confess to anyone with a straight face, but in the old ways, the haunting ways, the ways memory made a man larger than life when absence had been given too many years to make a myth out of him. He was behind her, around her, his chest a warm wall at her back, his hands resting at her waist like he knew exactly where he had left them, like time had not passed, like there was no child asleep in a room down the hall with his face getting stronger every year.

“Karnation.”

His voice folded over her like velvet, low and familiar and impossible, the kind of sound that did not simply enter a room but slipped beneath the skin, warm enough to comfort, cruel enough to bruise, dragging with it the ghost of late nights, dorm-room laughter, hands on her waist, promises made with mouths too young to understand the weight of forever.

“Karnation.”

The dream trembled, thin as silk caught on a nail, and for one suspended second she was not sitting beneath amber restaurant lighting with a half-melted ice cube sweating against the rim of her untouched drink, but somewhere years behind herself, somewhere softer and more dangerous, where Tyriq Withers still looked at her like she was the only woman God had ever taken His time with.

“Karnation, you here?” her date asked, and just like that the memory snapped clean down the middle, leaving her blinking across the table at Marcus Hill, who had advertised himself on Hinge as six-foot-five with the confidence of a man who clearly believed numbers were more of a suggestion than a measurable fact, because in person he was, with devastating commitment and no visible shame, an astounding and underwhelming five-foot-four.

Karnation had damn near walked past him when she first entered the restaurant, her eyes searching politely above the crowd for a tall, broad-shouldered man in a black button-down, only to hear her name called from somewhere near her elbow, and although she had been raised better than to let shock settle openly across her face, the Lord Himself must have seen the way her spirit stumbled.

Still, in Marcus’s defence, and she was trying very hard to be fair because therapy had taught her not to punish one man for the sins of another, at least this one had brought his wallet, which was already an improvement from Jamie, who had ordered caviar with the shameless confidence of a man expecting a woman to pay for his seafood-based audacity before “realising” he had left his card in another jacket, and better still than Nicholas, who, to his credit, had pulled out his card at the bar only for the poor thing to decline with a sound so sharp and public that even the bartender had looked embarrassed on his behalf.

“Yeah,” Karnation said, forcing her mouth into something that resembled a smile while her mind quietly packed away the sound of Tyriq’s voice and locked it behind another door, “sorry, long day, what were you saying?”

Marcus leaned forward like he had been waiting all evening for permission to resume performing interest, his forearms settling on the table with an intimacy he had not earned, his eyes making one brief, lazy attempt to meet hers before drifting—again—to the neckline of her dress, where her cleavage had apparently become the most fascinating topic of conversation at the table.

“I was asking what you do for work,” he said, drawing the words out in that slow, syrupy way men used when they wanted to seem thoughtful but had no actual intention of listening to the answer, nodding before she had even responded, as if whatever came out of her mouth would merely be an obstacle between him and the version of the night he had already written in his head.

Ah, yes, Karnation thought, the infuriatingly slow talk, the ceremonial first-date pretending, the ritual in which a man asked a woman about her life not because he was interested in the architecture of it, but because he understood that questions were the social toll one had to pay before attempting to touch what did not belong to him.

Marcus Hill did not care what she did for work, not really, not in any way that mattered beyond the faint curiosity of whether it sounded impressive enough to repeat to his friends or profitable enough to imagine benefiting from later, because Marcus had spent most of the evening speaking to her nipples and cleavage with far more devotion than he had ever offered her face.

She was deleting Hinge tonight.

Not pausing it, not hiding her profile, not giving dating apps one more delusional chance because maybe there were still good men somewhere buried beneath shirtless gym selfies, “just ask” bios, and men who called themselves entrepreneurs because they owned a ring light and three unopened boxes of protein powder.

Deleting.

Burning the bridge.

Letting the algorithm starve.

“I’m an author,” she said, her voice smooth despite the exhaustion sitting behind it, because if there was one thing Karnation Noel James had mastered, it was sounding composed while privately planning an escape route, a skincare routine, and the emotional autopsy of every bad decision that had led her to a man lying about five-foot-four like inches were a state of mind.

Marcus blinked at her as though she had told him she worked in international espionage, his face arranging itself into that uniquely male expression of surprise that always seemed to arrive when a woman turned out to have a life beyond being pretty in dim lighting.

“An author?” he repeated, letting the word sit in his mouth with the same confused caution one might use for a foreign food they did not want to admit they had never heard of. “Like… books?”

Karnation stared at him for a beat longer than grace required.

“No, Marcus,” she said, lifting her glass and taking a slow sip of water because wine would have only encouraged the wickedness in her spirit, “like parking tickets.”

His laugh came too late, too loud, and far too eager, rolling across the table like furniture being dragged over hardwood, and Karnation offered him a polite smile that did not reach her eyes, the kind of smile women learned somewhere between their first bad date and their first real heartbreak, all teeth and restraint, all social mercy and silent violence.

“Nah, nah, I mean, that’s dope,” he said, nodding as if she had just been granted his approval and ought to feel blessed by it. “What kind of books you write?”

“Romance,” she said.

Marcus’s eyebrows lifted.

Of course they did.

There it was, that ugly little spark, that immediate rearrangement of curiosity into assumption, as though the word romance had crawled across the table, unfastened the buttons on her dress, and whispered something obscene into his ear, because men like Marcus heard romance and thought only of bedsheets, red wine, and women writing down fantasies because reality had failed to give them anything worth remembering.

“Romance?” he said, leaning back in his chair now, dragging his gaze over her with a new boldness that made her fingers tighten, almost imperceptibly, around the stem of her glass. “So you be writing all that freaky stuff?”

Karnation exhaled through her nose.

There were several versions of herself inside her at any given moment, and unfortunately for Marcus, the gentlest one had clocked out around the time he had spent six uninterrupted minutes explaining cryptocurrency to her despite knowing nothing about it except the word blockchain, while the tired one had begun gathering her things spiritually, and the mother in her was already calculating how quickly she could get home, wash her makeup off, check on Karter, and crawl into bed beside the warm little body of the only male on earth she was currently interested in tolerating.

“I write love stories,” she said, because explaining the difference between romance and whatever brain-rotted category Marcus had stored it in felt like charity work, and she had already done enough unpaid labour in this lifetime. “Complicated ones.”

Marcus hummed, still looking at her mouth like it had offended him by forming sentences.

“So, like, based on real life or you just be making stuff up?”

Karnation’s fingers stilled.

It was an ordinary question, thrown out carelessly between a half-finished appetiser and Marcus’s second old-fashioned, but it landed in the space between them with the soft, deadly precision of a blade slipping beneath silk, because for all her interviews, for all her rehearsed answers, for all the elegant ways she had learned to dress the truth until it looked like craft instead of confession, there was still a part of her that flinched whenever anyone got too close to the grave she had buried Tyriq in.

Making stuff up.

She almost laughed.

If only.

If only Lorenzo Anders had come to her in a dream, whole and fictional, born from nothing but imagination and discipline and the particular madness of a woman with a deadline, instead of from Tyriq Withers leaning against her dorm room door in grey sweats and a black hoodie, smelling like rain and soap and something expensive he could not afford, smiling at her like he already knew she would forgive him before he even apologised.

If only those blue eyes had been invention.

If only that devastating height, that lazy arrogance, that almost holy mouth, that talent for breaking things without looking surprised at the damage, had been something she had designed instead of something she had survived.

“I make things up,” Karnation said, and the lie came out so beautifully that for a second even she admired it.

Marcus grinned, satisfied by an answer he had not earned the depth to question, and reached for his drink again, ice knocking against glass as he stretched one arm along the back of the empty chair beside him, settling himself into the evening as though there were still a possibility this night might end anywhere other than with Karnation blocking him before dessert.

“That’s cool, though,” he said. “I always thought about writing a book.”

Of course he had.

Karnation watched him with the dead-eyed patience of a woman hearing a man announce a dream he had mistaken for a plan, her earrings catching the restaurant light whenever she tilted her head, her lipstick untouched, her posture flawless, her soul somewhere on a train platform fleeing the scene.

“Oh?” she asked.

“Yeah, like, my life is crazy, you know what I’m saying? I got stories. I just don’t got time to sit down and actually write it.”

A small, cruel smile tugged at the corner of her mouth before she could stop it.

“That does tend to be the writing part.”

Marcus laughed again, still not entirely sure whether he was being teased or insulted, which was perhaps his greatest mercy.

Across the restaurant, a waiter glided past with a silver tray, leaving behind the warm scent of butter, garlic, and seared steak, and Karnation’s stomach turned—not because she was hungry, though she had forgotten to eat properly today between a meeting with her agent, a tantrum over a missing dinosaur sock, and Karter’s determined attempt to feed blueberries to the living room plant—but because something about the evening suddenly felt too rehearsed, too familiar, too much like one of those transitional chapters she hated writing, the kind where the heroine tried to convince herself she was moving on while the narrative quietly prepared to punish her for lying.

Her phone lit up beside her plate.

Once.

Then again.

Then again.

Karnation glanced down, expecting a text from her mother, maybe a picture of Karter asleep with his foot pressed against the wall and his curls stuck damply to his forehead because he fought bedtime like it was a legal accusation, but instead she saw three notifications sitting on her lock screen from Jazmyn, each one more aggressive than the last.

JAZMYN: BITCH.

JAZMYN: ANSWER YOUR PHONE.

JAZMYN: DO NOT OPEN TWITTER IN PUBLIC.

Karnation’s whole body went cold.

Not dramatically, not in the way women went cold in books with trembling hands and fluttering hearts, but with a quiet, internal freeze that started somewhere beneath her ribs and spread outward, turning her fingers careful, her spine rigid, her face composed in the exact way it became when life was about to embarrass her in front of God and strangers.

Marcus was still talking.

Something about discipline now, about how he could write a book if he really locked in, about how people had always told him he was naturally creative, and Karnation nodded at the appropriate intervals while sliding her thumb across her phone beneath the edge of the table.

Another message came through.

JAZMYN: GIRL THEY CAST HIM.

The restaurant noise receded.

Forks against plates, low conversation, laughter from the bar, the hum of soft jazz, Marcus’s voice spreading itself uselessly across the table—all of it pulled back like tidewater, leaving Karnation stranded in the sudden, roaring silence of her own pulse.

For one foolish second she thought Jazmyn meant Lorenzo.

Not him, him.

The character.

The man on the page.

The monster she had turned into art.

The heartbreak she had polished until readers called it romantic.

Her thumb moved before her mind could stop it, opening the message thread, and Jazmyn, clearly having abandoned all restraint, had sent a screenshot from some entertainment account with a caption large enough to be seen even through the blur of Karnation’s disbelief.

TYRIQ WITHERS OFFICIALLY CAST AS LORENZO ANDERS IN THE HIGHLY ANTICIPATED FILM ADAPTATION OF KARNATION NOEL JAMES’S BESTSELLING NOVEL, RUIN ME GENTLY.

For a moment, Karnation did not breathe.

She simply stared.

At the headline.

At his name.

At the picture beneath it.

Tyriq Withers, older now, sharper somehow, his face no longer softened by college-boy arrogance but carved by fame, money, discipline, and the kind of public hunger that made men look untouchable even when you knew exactly how human they could be in the dark. His hair was cut low, his jaw shadowed, his mouth unsmiling, his eyes fixed somewhere past the camera with that same infuriating distance he had always worn when he wanted the world to chase him.

And God, she hated that her first thought was not anger.

It was recognition.

Because time had not made him unfamiliar.

It had only made him worse.

Worse in the way a flame was worse when it had learned patience, worse in the way a storm was worse when the sky went quiet before it split open, worse because the boy who had once ruined her life had become a man the world applauded for being beautiful while she had been left to raise the evidence of him alone.

“Karnation?” Marcus asked, and this time his voice did not fold over her like velvet, did not haunt or ache or reach some buried place in her, because it was only Marcus, poor lying Marcus, who had added an entire foot to his dating profile and still somehow expected honesty from the universe.

She locked her phone.

Too fast.

Not fast enough.

“You good?” he asked.

Karnation lifted her eyes to him, and whatever he saw there must have startled him, because for the first time all evening, his gaze stayed on her face.

“I’m fine,” she said.

It was such a magnificent lie that she almost applauded herself.

Her phone vibrated again beneath her palm, insistent and wicked, Jazmyn no doubt spiralling somewhere with snacks, a bonnet, and enough profanity to season a Sunday dinner, but Karnation did not look down this time, because looking made things real, and if she looked again, she would have to accept that the past had not only found her, it had been cast, announced, photographed, and placed on every entertainment page with her name attached to it.

Tyriq Withers was playing Lorenzo Anders.

Tyriq Withers was going to stand beneath studio lights and say the lines she wrote in the loneliest months of her life.

Tyriq Withers was going to read pages where she had disguised his sins as romance, his absence as mystery, his emotional cowardice as depth, and he would do it with that face, that voice, that mouth, completely unaware that every woman who had ever called Lorenzo fictional had been loving a man who once left Karnation pregnant and heartbroken before she even knew how to tell him she was carrying his child.

Across the table, Marcus frowned.

“Bad news?”

Karnation almost smiled.

Bad news felt too small for what this was.

Bad news was a flat tyre, a missed deadline, a toddler colouring on the wall with permanent marker because silence in a house with a three-year-old was never peace, only warning.

This was not bad news.

This was divine mockery.

This was God clearing His throat.

This was the universe dragging a chair up to her carefully arranged life, sitting down uninvited, and saying, Now, let’s discuss what you thought you buried.

“No,” Karnation said, sliding her phone into her bag with hands that did not shake because she refused to give any man, living or remembered, the satisfaction. “Just work.”

Marcus nodded, relieved to return to territory where he could pretend to understand her.

“Yeah, work be crazy,” he said.

Karnation looked at him then, really looked at him, at the too-tight shirt, the borrowed confidence, the watch that seemed desperate to be noticed, the mouth still shiny from bourbon, and she felt a sudden, almost tender exhaustion wash through her, because Marcus was not the villain here; he was merely the wrong man at the wrong table on the wrong night, caught in the crossfire of a story he would never be important enough to enter.

“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for her clutch. “I need to go.”

His face fell. “For real? We just got here.”

“We’ve been here forty-seven minutes.”

“Damn, you timed it?”

“I’m a writer,” she said, standing with such calm elegance that the chair barely made a sound beneath her. “Details matter.”

Marcus stood too, hurried and confused, his napkin falling from his lap like a surrender flag.

“Wait, did I say something?”

Karnation paused.

There were many answers to that question, several of them unkind, most of them accurate, but she was too tired to teach another man how to recognise the exact moment a woman’s patience left her body.

“No,” she said softly, and because she was not cruel enough to destroy him over a battle he had not started, she added, “I just remembered I have somewhere else to be.”

It was not technically a lie.

She had to be home.

She had to be with Karter.

She had to stand in the doorway of his room and look at her son’s sleeping face, the soft curve of his cheek, the stubborn little line of his brow, the lashes too pretty to be fair, the mouth that pouted exactly like hers when he was upset and smiled exactly like Tyriq when he was getting his way.

She had to remind herself that whatever was coming, whatever door fate had decided to kick open, her life was not a romance novel no matter how many people mistook her pain for entertainment.

Her life was packed lunches and bath toys, dinosaur pyjamas and nursery invoices, small socks in impossible places, bedtime stories read twice because Karter always looked up at her with those devastating eyes and said, “One more, Mama,” like he knew she would give him the moon if he asked sweet enough.

Her life was not Tyriq Withers.

Not anymore.

Marcus opened his mouth as though he might protest, but Karnation was already turning away, already moving through the restaurant with her shoulders back and her chin lifted, every inch of her polished, composed, and immaculate, even as something old and wounded dragged itself awake inside her chest.

Outside, the night air hit her bare arms with a chill sharp enough to feel personal.

She made it three steps from the restaurant doors before her phone rang.

Jazmyn.

Karnation stared at the screen for one second, two, three, then answered and pressed it to her ear.

“Before you start screaming,” she said, her voice quiet and dangerous, “I know.”

On the other end, Jazmyn inhaled like she had been waiting her entire life for permission to lose her mind.

“Karnation Noel James,” she said, each syllable loaded, reverent, and horrified, “please tell me why I just opened my phone and saw your baby daddy cast as the man you wrote because of your baby daddy.”

Karnation closed her eyes.

The city moved around her, cars sliding through wet streets, strangers laughing beneath awnings, some couple arguing softly near the curb like heartbreak was ordinary, like it did not sometimes grow legs, get famous, and walk right back into your life wearing a casting announcement.

“I don’t know,” Karnation whispered.

And she hated that it was true.

Karnation sighed as she shook her head, a frown settling between her brows while she stood there beneath the restaurant’s glowing awning like a woman trying very hard not to let her life turn into a press release, and because panicking in public felt beneath the version of herself she had spent years professionally assembling, she took one slow breath in, held it until her ribs stopped threatening betrayal, then released it through her mouth with the careful discipline of a woman who had once spent an entire book tour answering questions about “female resilience” while actively running on three hours of sleep and emotional duct tape.

Compress, she reminded herself, closing her eyes for half a second.

Remember the seven steps, Karnation.

Not because the seven steps had ever actually fixed anything, but because her therapist, a soft-spoken woman named Denise with terrifying cheekbones and the ability to make silence feel like an indictment, had told her that spiralling was not the same thing as processing, and Karnation, unfortunately, loved to spiral with a literary flourish.

“I heavily doubt it,” she said into the phone, her voice still too calm, too polished, too close to the voice she used in interviews when someone asked her whether Lorenzo Anders was inspired by anyone real and she had to smile like she had not built a fictional empire on one man’s emotional negligence. “How is Karter?”

Jazmyn made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a prayer.

“Girl, do not try to mother your way out of this conversation.”

“I’m not mothering my way out of anything,” Karnation said, stepping toward the valet stand with her clutch tucked tight beneath her arm, though they both knew that was exactly what she was doing because Karter was the one subject capable of making her heart unclench even when the universe had just slapped her with a casting announcement and called it fate. “I’m asking about my son.”

“Your son is fine,” Jazmyn said. “He ate half his pasta, refused the broccoli like it personally wronged him, made me read the dinosaur book three times, then told me I skipped a page when I absolutely did not skip a page.”

Karnation’s mouth twitched.

“He always knows.”

“He does not know,” Jazmyn said, offended. “That child cannot read.”

“He can sense betrayal.”

“He can sense vibes, I’ll give him that, because when I told him it was bedtime he looked me dead in my face and said, ‘Mama don’t do it like that,’ like I was some underpaid substitute teacher.”

Despite herself, despite the headline still glowing behind her eyes, despite Tyriq Withers standing in the middle of her life again like a ghost who had found good lighting, Karnation laughed softly, the sound escaping before she could stop it, thin and tired but real enough to loosen something inside her chest.

“That sounds like him.”

“Exactly like him,” Jazmyn muttered, and the pause that followed was so loud Karnation could hear every word her best friend did not say.

Exactly like him.

Karnation’s smile faded.

The valet pulled her car forward, sleek and black beneath the restaurant lights, expensive enough to announce success but practical enough to hold a car seat, loose baby wipes, three forgotten toy cars, and at least one emergency packet of fruit snacks crushed beyond recognition somewhere beneath the passenger seat. She thanked the valet, tipped him, then slid behind the wheel with all the grace she could manage while her emotions crawled around beneath her skin like they were looking for an exit.

“Don’t start,” Karnation said as she shut the door.

“I ain’t said nothing.”

“You breathed judgmentally.”

“I breathed normally.”

“You have never breathed normally a day in your life.”

Jazmyn gasped. “And this is why your son likes me better when you’re not around.”

“My son tried to trade you for a biscuit last week.”

“And I would’ve let him if it was a good biscuit.”

Karnation shook her head, but the humour helped, softening the sharpest edge of the night as she placed her phone in the console, switched the call to Bluetooth, and waited for Jazmyn’s voice to fill the car speakers like a very loud conscience with lip gloss.

The screen blinked, connected, and immediately Jazmyn’s voice boomed through the car.

“Now that I’m in surround sound, let me say this properly: what in the Tyler Perry cinematic universe is going on?”

Karnation dropped her head back against the seat and stared through the windshield at the dark street ahead.

“Jaz.”

“No, because I need answers. Out of every actor in America, every man with cheekbones and unresolved trauma, every six-foot-something light-skinned menace with a SAG card, they chose Tyriq Withers?”

Karnation started the engine.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to say this is a prank.”

“It’s not a prank.”

“I want you to say they got hacked.”

“They didn’t get hacked.”

“I want you to say that man is not about to stand on a film set and recite dialogue you wrote at three in the morning while crying into a bonnet and pretending it was character development.”

Karnation paused with her hand on the gear shift.

“First of all,” she said carefully, “I do not cry into bonnets.”

“You absolutely cry into bonnets.”

“I cry beside bonnets.”

“You cry in the vicinity of bonnets, fine, but the point stands.”

Karnation pulled away from the curb, merging into the slow pulse of evening traffic with the kind of focus one usually reserved for surgery, because if she let her mind drift too far, it would find Tyriq’s face again, older and colder and somehow more beautiful in a way that felt deeply unfair considering she had done the decent thing and become sleep-deprived, emotionally responsible, and permanently responsible for another human being’s packed lunches.

“I’m not thinking about it tonight,” she said.

Jazmyn went quiet.

For two whole seconds.

A record.

Then, “You are literally thinking about it right now.”

“I’m driving.”

“You drive and overthink. That’s your brand.”

“My brand is award-winning contemporary romance.”

“Your brand is pretending you’re fine until your left eye starts twitching.”

“My left eye is not twitching.”

“Karnation.”

“It’s resting.”

“Your eye is having a small seizure.”

Karnation tightened her grip on the steering wheel and tried not to laugh because laughing felt too close to crying, and crying felt like permission, and permission was dangerous on a night like this, when one crack in her composure might split her open wide enough for every buried thing to climb out.

She made it three traffic lights before the glow of a Dairy Queen sign appeared down the road, bright and red and absurdly comforting, like God Himself had decided that if He was going to reintroduce her baby daddy through a Deadline-adjacent casting announcement, He could at least offer her a Blizzard as reparations.

Karnation slowed.

Jazmyn immediately caught it.

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“Why did your indicator just come on?”

“Because I’m an excellent driver.”

“Karnation Noel James.”

“I need something cold.”

“You need therapy.”

“I have therapy on Thursdays.”

“You need emergency therapy.”

“I need a Dairy Queen.”

Jazmyn went silent for half a breath, then sucked her teeth with the weary resignation of a woman who had known Karnation too long to argue with her chosen coping mechanisms.

“You are not about to process the father of your child being cast as the romantic lead inspired by him over a large Oreo Blizzard.”

Karnation turned into the drive-thru.

“I’m not processing. I’m purchasing.”

“That’s worse.”

“It’s not worse if I use Apple Pay.”

“You think capitalism is going to save you?”

“No,” Karnation said, easing her car behind a minivan whose back window was covered in stick-figure family decals and one aggressively cheerful bumper sticker about dance mums. “But it may briefly distract me.”

Jazmyn sighed so hard the Bluetooth crackled.

“You know what? Get me something too.”

“You’re at my house.”

“And you have a freezer.”

Karnation stared at the menu board with the intense concentration of a woman choosing between dessert and a nervous breakdown, her eyes scanning over sundaes, Blizzards, dipped cones, and milkshakes as though one of them might contain divine instruction.

“What does one order when one’s past becomes employed by one’s intellectual property?” she murmured.

“A restraining order,” Jazmyn said.

Karnation snorted.

The speaker crackled.

“Welcome to Dairy Queen, what can I get started for you?”

Karnation leaned toward the window, gathering herself with the same dignity she used on red carpets.

“Hi, can I please get a medium Oreo Blizzard, extra Oreo, and…” She hesitated, because her night had already been ridiculous and moderation seemed like a moral stance she had no interest in taking. “Actually, make that a large.”

Jazmyn cackled.

“That’s my girl.”

“And can I also get a small strawberry sundae with extra sauce?”

“For me?” Jazmyn asked.

“For Karter.”

“Girl, that baby is asleep.”

“For tomorrow.”

“Lies.”

“For me tomorrow.”

“At least tell the Lord the truth.”

Karnation ignored her. “And one dipped cone, please.”

Jazmyn gasped. “Now who is the cone for?”

Karnation stared ahead, deadpan. “The emotional support passenger.”

“You are alone in the car.”

“Exactly.”

The poor Dairy Queen worker, who was almost certainly not being paid enough to witness this woman unravel through dessert logistics, repeated the order in a tone that suggested he had heard stranger things and had chosen peace long ago.

Karnation paid, collected the bag and Blizzard at the window, then pulled into a parking space instead of leaving, because driving while balancing ice cream, suppressed panic, and unresolved romantic trauma seemed like the sort of multitasking that got women featured in cautionary local news stories.

She parked beneath the faint buzz of a streetlight, set the bag carefully in the passenger seat, and took the first spoonful of Oreo Blizzard with the solemnity of communion.

For a moment, neither woman spoke.

Then Jazmyn said, softer this time, “Kar.”

Karnation closed her eyes.

There it was.

Not the jokes, not the yelling, not the dramatic best friend commentary she had needed like air five minutes ago, but the gentler voice beneath it, the one that had sat with her on bathroom floors, held Karter when Karnation was too freshly postpartum to stand without pain, read early drafts of chapters where Karnation swore she had invented everything, and never once asked why Lorenzo sounded like a man they both knew.

“I’m okay,” Karnation said, but it sounded thin even to her.

“No, you’re not.”

The spoon paused halfway to her mouth.

Outside, cars moved through the drive-thru in slow loops of headlights and exhaust, people buying sundaes and chicken strips and pretending the world was ordinary because, for them, it was. For them, Tyriq Withers was just an actor, a handsome man in headlines, a fantasy cast in a role fans were already screaming about online.

For Karnation, he was the boy who had once kissed her like a vow and disappeared like a coward.

He was the man her son resembled when he smiled too wide.

He was the name hidden in the middle of Karter’s like a secret she had never meant to say out loud.

“I can’t do this tonight,” Karnation whispered.

Jazmyn’s voice softened until it almost disappeared beneath the hum of the car.

“Then don’t do it tonight. Eat your ice cream. Come home. Kiss your baby. Take your lashes off before you cry, because you know the glue be fighting for custody. Then tomorrow, we figure out who knew, who approved it, and who needs to be cursed out in alphabetical order.”

Karnation let out a shaky laugh, pressing the back of her hand beneath one eye before anything could fall.

“I’m not crying.”

“Good, because those lashes cost money.”

“They were complimentary from Glam House.”

“Then cry if you want, actually. Free lashes don’t count.”

Karnation laughed again, fuller this time, even though her chest still ached, even though the headline remained lodged behind her ribs, even though somewhere in the world Tyriq Withers might already have the script in his hands, might already be reading Lorenzo Anders without knowing he was reading himself.

She took another bite of ice cream and stared out at the night.

“I should’ve never written that damn book,” she said.

Jazmyn scoffed. “Girl, please. That damn book bought you a house.”

“It also resurrected my baby daddy.”

“It did do that.”

“And now he’s going to be in my face.”

“Probably.”

“Reading my words.”

“Definitely.”

“Playing Lorenzo.”

“Unfortunately.”

Karnation swallowed hard.

“And he doesn’t know.”

This time, Jazmyn said nothing.

The silence was worse than any joke could have been.

Karnation looked down at the Blizzard in her lap, the spoon sinking slowly into softening ice cream, and for one terrible second she saw Karter instead, three years old and warm from sleep, curls crushed against his pillow, one little hand tucked beneath his cheek, breathing easy in a world where his mother had been the whole sky because she had never given him reason to look for another.

“He doesn’t know about Karter,” Karnation said, barely above a whisper.

“No,” Jazmyn said carefully. “He doesn’t.”

Karnation’s throat tightened.

“And now I’m going to have to see him.”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s going to see Karter eventually.”

Another pause.

This one gentler.

“Maybe,” Jazmyn said. “But not tonight.”

Karnation nodded, even though Jazmyn could not see her.

Not tonight.

Tonight, she could sit in a Dairy Queen parking lot like a tragic woman in a suburban opera, eating a Blizzard with one hand and holding the steering wheel with the other, trying not to think about how the past had a body, a voice, a contract, and a call time.

Tonight, she could go home.

Tonight, she could kiss her son.

Tonight, she could pretend for a few more hours that the door had not already opened.

Then her phone buzzed again.

Not a text from Jazmyn this time.

An email.

Her agent.

Subject line: URGENT: CASTING ANNOUNCEMENT / CALL TOMORROW

Karnation stared at it.

Then, very calmly, she reached into the bag, pulled out the dipped cone, unwrapped it, and took a bite so aggressive the chocolate shell cracked down the side.

Jazmyn heard it through the car speakers.

“Was that the cone?”

“Yes.”

“Did it deserve that?”

“No.”

“Do you feel better?”

Karnation chewed, swallowed, and stared at the email until the words blurred slightly.

“No,” she said.

Then she took another bite.

“But it’s helping.”

Karnation decided, with the sort of calm that usually came right before a woman either changed her life or committed a misdemeanor, that she was going to throw everything away.

Not metaphorically, though God knew there were several things she would have liked to toss into a municipal bin with the rest of the evening’s trash, beginning with the casting announcement, Marcus Hill’s fraudulent height, the entire Hinge app, every man who had ever used the phrase I’ve always thought about writing a book, and, if she was being honest in the privacy of her own wicked little mind, the memory of Tyriq Withers standing beneath a Florida porch light at seventeen, smiling at her like he had already decided she was going to ruin him and he was grateful for the privilege.

No, unfortunately, she meant physically.

The Dairy Queen bag in her passenger seat had become a crime scene of emotional eating, collapsed napkins, a spoon licked clean with unnecessary violence, the remains of an Oreo Blizzard she had promised herself she would only take “a few bites” of before somehow reaching the cardboard bottom like a woman possessed, and a chocolate-dipped cone wrapper that looked as though it had survived a natural disaster, and because Karnation Noel James had not spent years carefully cultivating an elegant public image just to be found dead in a rental car surrounded by evidence of a sugar-based breakdown, she pulled into the side of the car park, parked beneath a flickering light that made the entire area look like the opening scene of a low-budget thriller, and gathered the rubbish with all the dignity she had left.

Which was not much.

Jazmyn was still on Bluetooth, still very much in her ear, still making herself at home in Karnation’s panic like it came with snacks and a sectional sofa.

“Girl, where are you now?”

“I’m throwing things away.”

“Emotionally or physically?”

“Both, if God is listening.”

“Karnation.”

“What?”

“You are not about to go digging in a Florida car park bin at night dressed like somebody’s divorced stepmother with publishing money.”

Karnation looked down at herself, offended despite everything, because the dress was black, fitted, expensive, and objectively beautiful, even if the evening had turned her into the human embodiment of a deleted paragraph.

“I do not look like a divorced stepmother.”

“You look like the woman the stepchildren fear respectfully.”

“Good. Fear is underrated.”

“And why are you even in Florida again?” Jazmyn muttered, as if she had not already asked this seven separate times in the past twenty-four hours. “This state has bad energy for you.”

Karnation’s jaw tightened as she leaned across the passenger seat and scooped up the bag, her phone tucked beneath her chin for one second before the Bluetooth stretched Jazmyn’s voice across the car again.

“I’m here because my agent said it was important that I attend the first production meeting in person.”

“Your agent is going to hell.”

“My agent got me a seven-figure adaptation deal.”

“Your agent is going to hell in designer shoes.”

Karnation almost smiled, but it faded before it properly arrived, because Florida sat outside the windshield like an old wound disguised as weather, all warm air, wet pavement, palm shadows, and memories waiting on corners she had spent years refusing to drive past. She had not been back properly since she left, not really, not in the way a person returned home and let the place touch them again; she had flown in for quiet business when she had to, kept to hotels, avoided old neighbourhoods, dodged familiar names like bullets, and made sure every visit was so brief it could not grow teeth.

After Karter was born, she had transferred out so quickly people barely had time to gossip before she was already gone, belly flattened but heart still swollen with the kind of pain nobody could see unless they knew where to look, and the families that had once moved around each other like kin—her mother and his mother trading recipes and church shoes, their fathers talking lawn care like it was national security, Karnation and Tyriq running barefoot through backyards, then hallways, then college campuses, growing from children into something neither family was prepared to survive—had fallen silent with the breakup.

Not all at once.

That would have been cleaner.

It happened the ugly way, by degrees, with missed calls, cancelled dinners, polite excuses, mothers who stopped saying each other’s names, fathers who no longer lingered after service, cousins who chose sides without admitting they had chosen anything at all, and the heavy, humiliating knowledge that one broken love had been strong enough to fracture an entire village.

And Tyriq had never known the worst of it.

He did not know that she had left Florida carrying more than heartbreak.

He did not know that the little boy asleep back at the rental house with Jazmyn had his exact smile and her stubborn mouth and a middle name Karnation had only allowed herself to use because some weak, grieving part of her had still loved him too much to erase him completely.

Tariq.

Not Tyriq.

Close enough to ache.

Different enough to survive.

“Karnation?” Jazmyn asked, softer now, probably hearing the silence change shape.

“I’m fine,” Karnation said, which had become less of a statement and more of a decorative accessory at this point.

“You keep saying that like repetition makes it true.”

“It works in marketing.”

“It does not work on me.”

Karnation grabbed the Dairy Queen bag, her keys, and the little paper receipt that had somehow attached itself to her dress like even the trash wanted emotional closure, then stepped out of the car into the humid Florida night.

The air was thick and warm against her skin, carrying the smell of fried food, rain-soaked asphalt, car exhaust, and something sweet from the drive-thru window, and for one ridiculous second she was sixteen again, standing outside a different Dairy Queen with Tyriq after football practice, both of them too broke to order separate Blizzards, his spoon invading hers every three seconds until she threatened to bite him and he laughed so hard he nearly dropped the cup.

She hated memory.

Memory had no manners.

It just walked into rooms uninvited, sat down on the good furniture, and put its feet up.

“I’m throwing the bag away,” she said, mostly to herself, and marched toward the bin at the edge of the car park with the sharp, purposeful steps of a woman who had decided that if she could not control fate, casting announcements, or the emotional terrorism of nostalgia, she could at least control litter.

The bin was fuller than it had any right to be, overflowing with fast-food bags and drink cups, one cardboard tray balanced on top like it had been placed there by somebody who believed physics was for poor people, and Karnation stared at it with contempt before lifting the Dairy Queen bag by two fingers.

“This is disgusting,” she murmured.

Jazmyn snorted through the speaker. “You ate it.”

“I meant the bin.”

“You also ate from a building attached to the bin.”