The room went still. My eyes shifted back to Tahari slowly, a different kind of weight settling in my chest now.
“Explain,” I said, quieter this time, but no less serious.
Maliah took a breath, her voice still unsteady as she spoke, but she pushed through it.
“He… he tried to force himself on me,” she admitted, the words heavy, real, and hard to hear no matter how controlled I tried to stay.
MJ cursed under his breath behind me. Eternity’s arms tightened around her. My hands clenched at my sides so tight I could feel the tension running up my arms.
“But Tahari,” she continued, her eyes flicking toward him for a second before coming back to me, “he saw it. He pulled him out of the car. He… he helped me.”
Silence fell over the room again, but it wasn’t the same kind as before. My gaze stayed on Tahari. I was really looking at him now and taking in the way he stood there. Both his knuckles were bloody. He stood there tense and quiet, like he didn’t care about explaining himself as long as she was okay. I stared at him, and he met my gaze. I made a noise like I was cleaning food out of my teeth. I couldn’t stand anything about this little nigga, but no matter what I felt about him… He brought my daughter home. He stepped in when it mattered. And that wasn’t something I could ignore.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
My attention went right back to Maliah. She nodded slightly, even though I could still see the tremble in her.
“I’m here,” I told her with my tone softener now, “you’re safe.”
Maliah went from Eternity’s arms and into mine. As I hugged my daughter, I stared at her knight in shining armor for the evening.
“You’re okay,” I said to Maliah as I kissed her forehead repeatedly and rubbed her back.
Eternity had taken Mali upstairs so that she could clean up. In the living room, MJ, Tahari, and I stood around in silence. I should have been telling his ass thank you or something, but this is what the fuck you were supposed to do for the woman that you love. I still don’t even know why he had broken up with my daughter to begin with, and that wasn’t something that I wasgoing to get to the bottom of tonight. MJ was pacing. I could tell that his mind was racing just by the way his brows were bunched in anger.
“Pops, I gotta touch that nigga. He came in here all primped and proper on some nerdy shit, and this is what he does.”
“He’s already been touched,” Tahari finally spoke for the night.
MJ spun so quickly on his heels that if I blinked, I would have missed it.
“But he is still breathing, right?”
I don’t even think MJ meant to yell, but he was angry, and he had every right to be. Tahari stood there with his chest poked out. He seemed unfazed by MJ’s shouting, but I could tell that he was getting frustrated by the way his jaw was flexing.
“Exactly.” MJ was crossing the room to get closer to Tahari, but I rushed over and stood in between the two.
If this were any other time, I would have loved to see it, but right now, it wasn’t. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Eternity leaning over the banister of the stairs from the second level.
“What happened, Ma?”
I asked while I stood between the two boys.
“She wants to say goodnight to Tahari.”
I cut eyes at his ass and then nodded toward the stairs. When he made it to the base of them, he came out of his sneakers, and I took notice of that. Our entire house had hardwood flooring except for upstairs.
“Pops, we need to find that nigga that touched Mali.”
“Oh, we will,” I said without hesitation.
To touch my daughter without her permission was punishable by death in my eyes. Shit, even if you did it with her permission, a little nigga might be liable to get put in the ground. I let MJ pace the floors and vent. He told me that Corneliuswas a football player at the school. I told him to fall back until I gathered more information, but I knew my son. He was every bit of me, the younger version, so when he gave me a look like he was half listening, I already knew that he had all intent on taking things into his own hands.
When Tahari was taking too long to bring his ass back downstairs, I went to see what the fuck was going on. Slowly, I walked toward Maliah’s room. I stood on the side of the wall right before you reached her door so that I could hear what was going on.
“Don’t cry, baby girl. Look, he isn’t going to hurt you ever again.”
“I know I’m just,” my baby girl was crying to him.
