Tears ran down her face, and her breathing was uneven, as if she had been holding it together just long enough to make it home. My eyes scanned her quickly. Her hair was a mess. Her face was wet with tears. And then I saw her shirt was fucking ripped. Something in me turned cold.
“What happened?” My voice came out low and controlled, but there was nothing calm about what I was feeling.
I looked over Maliah’s shoulder and then saw him. Tahari stood right behind her. Everything that had been soft seconds ago hardened instantly. Something jagged settled in my chest as my eyes locked onto him. My jaw tightened as my mind was trying to piece together why he was here and why my daughter looked like that at the same time.
“Maliah,” I said again while stepping closer to her. My voice was steady, but serious in a way that left no room for anything but the truth. “Talk to me.”
Ever since she was a little girl, she would shut down. Especially when she thought she was in trouble for something. This wasn’t that kind of situation. I needed her to tell me what happened so that I could handle the situation. So that I could make whatever happened better. So that I can be a dad, her dad, and handle the person. This wasn’t my little girl who cut up her knee and needed a kiss on the boo-boo. Someone had shattered her spirit, and I needed to know who the fuck was the culprit.
“Maliah, talk to me.”
The second the words left my mouth, Eternity was already moving. Her feet hit the floor as she stepped around me. Her arms opened without hesitation. Maliah went straight into her, collapsing into her chest. And the way she cried wasn’t normal. That wasn’t frustration or attitude or anything small. She was hurt. She was scared.
My jaw stiffened as I watched her cling to Eternity. She was just a little girl again in her mother’s arms. Her fingerswere gripping the shirt Eternity was wearing as she cried. Her shoulders trembled as everything she had been holding in finally started to spill out. Eternity wrapped her up instantly, one arm around her shoulders, the other cradling the back of her head.
“I got you, baby. I got you,” she murmured softly.
Her voice was steady in a way mine couldn’t be right now. But I wasn’t focused on calm. I was focused on him.
My eyes lifted slowly, locking onto Tahari, and whatever was sitting in my chest turned jagged all over again. He stood there like he knew exactly what kind of situation he had just walked into, but that didn’t matter to me. Not with my daughter looking like that.
“What happened?” I asked again, but this time directly to him.
This time, I made sure that my tone carried weight. I was applying pressure. He had about two seconds to answer me, or he was about to touch every fucking wall in this house. And we had plenty. I stepped closer to him, closing the space between us just enough to make it clear this wasn’t a casual conversation.
“You brought her home like this. So, talk.”
For a second, he didn’t say anything. And that silence didn’t sit right with me.
My shoulders squared, my patience was thinning quicker than I liked.
“Little nigga, you got one second to answer before I show you a version of me that I had buried years ago.”
“I…”
His voice barely got out before footsteps sounded from the stairs.
“Yo, what’s going on?”
MJ’s voice cut through the tension as he came down. His tone was laced with confusion that shifted the second he took in the scene. His eyes moved from me to Tahari, then over toMaliah in Eternity’s arms, and just like that, his whole demeanor changed. He was on demon time just like me.
“What the fuck happened to her?” he asked Tahari.
“I’m asking the same thing,” I said, my gaze never leaving him. “So, you better start talking.”
Before he could answer, my baby girl’s broken voice filled the room.
“Daddy, stop.”
I turned my head immediately, my facial expression saddened as I looked at her. She was still holding onto Eternity. Her face was pressed halfway into her shoulder, but she lifted her head just enough to look at me.
“He didn’t do anything,” she said, her voice shaky but firm in a way that made me pause.
My expression hardened slightly, confusion mixed with the anger that was already sitting there. “Then why do you look like that?”
She swallowed, and her grip tightened on Eternity for a second before she spoke again.
“If it wasn’t for him,” her voice wavered, and she shook her head slightly like she was trying to steady herself, “it would’ve been worse.”
