“You’re a start. I should’ve fucking listened to you, Lovey. I was too heated, and I let that shit consume me. I been going back and forth with shorty for a minute now, and I lost my fucking cool the one time I should’ve kept it.” I wrapped my arms around her. My little tactic wasn’t working for me as well as I thought it would. She kept her mean mug on her face and brushed my hands off her.
Her face screwed up in disgust. “You smell like jail.”
“Ain’t nobody said that shit to you when I picked you up from your bid.” I screwed my face up right back at her.
“I went to jail for popping a nigga, and I’ll do it the fuck again if you keep on being stupid.”
I took heed to her threat ‘cause I really couldn’t put much past her. She was sporadic as fuck and really would bust a cap off in my ass. “My fault, Lovey. I’ll listen to my wife from now on.”
She smirked. “Forever?”
“Forever.”
I leaned in for a kiss, and she pulled away. “Not too motherfuckin’ fast, you hot breath jail bird.”
“Damn! It’s like that now?”
“Very much so. Go clean up.”
I got up. “Blue still sleep?”
“Yes, and I would love for you to let him sleep. He’s been up all night worried sick about you. You really scared him, Ahk.”
“I know that. We probably won’t have him for a while after this. Brooke gone do whatever to hurt me.”
“It shouldn’t be like that.” She shook her head. “You guys gotta get it together. Blue shouldn’t witness all this shit go down between you two. Y’all don’t have to be friends, but at least have some sort of respect for each other and enough decency to not let shit go down in front of him. You can’t point the finger only at her. You played a part in this as well. She may be petty a lot of the times, but I think she was genuinely concerned about Blue yesterday. She had to find out her son was in a drive-by from his guidance counselor. Same way you want her to be transparent with you about everything involving him, you have to do the same. It’s only right.”
Hearing the shit my wife was telling me was rough, but I knew I deserved it. She was keeping it real, and I needed to hear that shit. Not having a solid-ass woman in your corner coulddefinitely be a nigga’s downfall. Luckily for me, I had that. I just needed to fucking listen when she spoke.
“I hear you, Lovey. I’m gone make shit right with Brooke.”
“You better before she files for full custody. I love Blue like I made him. I can’t imagine not being able to see him.”
She wasn’t one of them evil-ass stepmoms who was mean and unfair. I watched her love on and accept Blue like he was hers. From the outside looking in, people always assumed that she was Blue’s mother based off the way they interacted. I was forever grateful for that.
Knowing Brooke, her ass had already hit up her lawyer and was looking into disputing the current terms of custody—the same lawyer she had on payroll because I was shooting her mad money and assuming she was using it for my son. It was no secret that once I found out Saphir was mine, Brooke’s whole life upgraded. Jazzy and I lived a certain type of lifestyle that I didn’t want to deprive my son of when he went over to his mother’s house. I got her a nice brownstone and even gave her a Mercedes fresh off my dealership’s lot. She was living good off my son and still found it in her spirit to be an evil-ass bitch.
I thanked my wife for holding it down with our son while I was in jail. I did as she told me and got cleaned up. That jailhouse smell wasn’t nothing to fucking play with. Even after I showered and got dressed, Blue was still sleep, which meant he went to bed late as hell worried about me. I went into his room and gazed at him for a little minute. I loved him with everything in me, and there wasn’t shit I wouldn’t do to keep him happy and safe.
I appreciated the fact that we skipped the whole toddler-bed phase and got him a queen-sized bed. I got in next to him and pulled him into my arms. He shuffled around a little bit before growing comfortable in my arms. I kissed all over his face, andhe managed to wake up. Upon seeing me, his eyes widened, and he threw his arms around me.
“Daddy!” He squeezed me as tight as he could.
I chuckled. “What’s good, Blue?”
“Are you okay? You’re not mad anymore, right?”
“Nah, man. I’m good. I wanted to apologize to you.”
“Okay.” The fact that he didn’t ask why I wanted to apologize let me know that he knew what I did was dead-ass wrong.
I sighed deeply before maneuvering him so he was laying on my chest just like he used to when he was a baby. “Me putting my hands on your mother was and will always be unacceptable. I was angry, but there are better ways to communicate than getting physical. I don’t want you thinking what I did was okay just because I’m your dad. What I did was wrong, which is why I went to jail.”
“Was it scary?”
“It’s a place I don’t ever wanna see you go, so hell yeah, it was scary.” Whatever I had to say to get him to pick a path better than mine was what I was gonna do. “But it ain’t about that right now, Blue. I want you to be better than me, and that means you can never do the same stuff I did. I promise you I’m gonna work on the way I treat your mother and talk to her. At the end of the day, I want you to have the utmost respect for her. She loves you, and despite our differences, she’s a good mom.”
“I love Mommy too.”
