Chapter 9
Eternity
The moment Malik walked through the door, I felt it. Something was off with him. It didn’t matter that he didn’t say anything was bothering him. Or that he didn’t slam the front door behind him. Or even that he didn’t look at me long. I knew that man inside and out. We had this weird way of reading each other, and we didn’t even need words to do it. Something was sitting on him. And it was heavy. For the past couple of days, he has been coming in late and barely speaking when he is here. The kids had just finished eating dinner and were off in their own spaces in the house. I was at the kitchen counter, wiping my hands on a towel because I had just finished cleaning the entire kitchen. I didn’t even bother asking Malik if he was hungry because on nights when he had come home this late, he usually ate before he came home. I watched him as he dropped his keys into the dish on the counter. He was trying his best to move like everything was normal. But I knew him, so I knew better. It was the way his shoulders looked tight and how his posture was slightly off.
“Hey,” I said, trying to lighten his mood.
“Hey,” he answered while leaning in to kiss me.
It was quick. Too quick. My eyes followed him as he kept walking. He was heading straight toward the stairs.Yeah, something is definitely off,I thought as I tossed the towel on the counter and went after him.
“Malik,” I called out softer this time when I reached the bottom of the stairs.
He didn’t stop moving up the stairs. He just glanced back at me.
“I’m about to hop in the shower,” he said lowly.
“Okay,” I said, already following behind him, “me too.”
That earned me a small look, but he didn’t question it. And his facial expression didn’t show that he was against my request either.
When we made it to our bathroom, he undressed and turned on the water to the shower so quickly that I couldn’t keep up. Steam started to build as the water ran. Fog slowly crept across the glass as I undressed. The bathroom always felt like a different world. We had put a lot of money into this room for the atmosphere to feel this way. There was stone along the back wall and glass everywhere else. I wanted a clean spa kind of look when we were renovating the space. I stepped in behind him and closed the glass door behind me. I let the heat wrap around me as I watched his shoulders for a second.
They were still tense. Even under the double shower head jet, they were still carrying whatever it was that he was holding in. It had to be something big, too. I slid my hands lightly along his back before resting my cheek there.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” I murmured.
For a second, all I heard was the water hitting the stone on the side and beneath us. Then, after he sighed, he finally spoke.
“One of the smaller auto shops got hit.”
I lifted my head slightly.
“Hit how?”
“Car parts, money,” he paused, and as I looked up at him, I could see his jaw tightening just a little. “…and some work.”
That made me alert as hell.
There were no secrets between my husband and me. I was just shocked at something like that being at one of his auto shops, when he had a whole manufacturing basement for it placed in the lower level of his biggest auto shop.
“Work?” I repeated.
He nodded once, confirming things. There was a moment of silence after his statement. I tilted my frame around his body so that I could see his face.
“Are you going to be the one to handle that?”
This is what I worried about. My husband, stepping back into the field, gave me an ache in my stomach. He had survived in the game for over twenty years unharmed and unsentenced. That kind of shit was unheard of. But he quickly eased away the unsettling feeling with his response. He started to shake his head.
“Nah. Sha got it.”
I was glad that my husband wasn’t the one handling things, but momentarily, I did worry about my younger sister because her husband would be the one who was. And if Malik was letting Sha take charge of things, then it was already in motion. Sha never played when it came to handling business in the street. That’s how Tori and I had met him many moons ago. I nodded slowly as I turned back to stand behind him. I gently kissed the middle of his back while we let the water run over us. I could feel the tension leaving his body with every kiss I placed.
I could tell that even with him telling me, it eased something in him a bit. But my mind didn’t stay there in the bathroom with us for long. It drifted back to earlier. Back to Maylee on the bed, talking about school like it was the biggest thing in the world. Back to Maliah, trying to keep a straight face but still laughingat her. Shit, even MJ rushed in the house earlier, telling me all about his date with his little girlfriend. I smiled to myself as I rested against Malik’s back again. Our kids were growing. Right in front of me. Right in front of us. And for the first time in a long time, I felt it. That space. That missing piece I hadn’t really said out loud before.
I lifted my head and looked up at him.
“Babe…”
