The hardest part was Melo.
My twin had known something was off with me for months before I got shot. We had been in each other’s space our whole lives and there wasn’t a part of me that he couldn’t read even when I was doing everything right to hide it.
He had asked me straight up twice what I was into and both times I had given him enough to get him off my back without giving him the real answer. Both times I had felt the shift when I lied, like something that didn’t even happen between us, it was happening now.We’d always been one another’s keeper, but I immediately felt a shift when he saw me changing.
Me and Melo didn’t keep secrets from each other. That was just the truth of how we had always been. We covered for each other with Street, covered for each other with our moms, covered foreach other with coaches, teachers and everybody else who came through our lives. But between us there had never been a wall. Building one now was costing me something I didn’t wanna lose. That was a bond with my brother.
He deserved to know.
I knew that. I had known it since the night I sat in Legal’s office and read those files. Melo deserved to know what happened to our father the same way I deserved to know. He deserved to make his own decision about what to do with that information.
But if I told Melo I had to tell him everything. And if I told him everything, the he was going to tell Street, and if Street found out he was going to try to handle it himself. Street had a world title fight coming and a temper that could put him away if he acted impulsively. I was not about to be the reason my brother’s whole future went sideways.
So I kept the wall up.
And I laid here in my room at three in the morning with my arm throbbing, my heart heavy and the dream still sitting behind my eyes. I made myself say what I had been avoiding saying since I got out of that hospital.
I was going to find Veteran.
Not for me. But for that five year old boy in the parking lot who never got to stop being five years old nor could he erase the tragedy he witnessed. For the man who left a voicemail saying he was getting with some guys and he thought it was just going to be a conversation and never came home.
For Hood. For my father’s legacy. The nigga responsible needed to die that same way. Me and my twin never got to experience having a father.My mother never got to experience a soft life with her husband being the provider for his family.
I picked up my phone off the nightstand.
Opened the thread with the unsaved number.
Typed four words.
I’m still in. Talk.
Put the phone face down, laid back, closed my eyes and waited for whatever was coming next. I had school in the fall, so this shit needed to be dead, asap. Literally.
Ihad the food ordered, the snacks and popcorn on the counter, my place looking like I actually lived in it instead of just sleeping there between training sessions. I had even lit a couple of candles that I found in the back of a cabinet somewhere which I was never going to admit to Gutta. Anytime that nigga came over and I’d have candles lit, he’d always talk shit.
Forbid a nigga just wanted his crib to actually smell good,
My driver was twenty minutes out with Kyla.
I had enough time to shower and get right. I did both in record time. The same way I did everything before a fight — focused, no wasted movement, get it done. I wanted to be ready to start ournight when she walked through the door, I couldn’t afford to be playing around.
I came out the bathroom and threw on something simple. Dark jeans, a clean fitted shirt. Nothing extra.
I wasn’t trying to show off tonight. I just wanted to be comfortable in my own house with somebody who made that feel easy.
But my mind wasn’t cooperating.
Everything Brielle had said in that parking lot was sitting on me heavy and I had been pushing it back all afternoon so I could get through training and get through Kyla’s visit without letting it fuck up the whole night. It wasn’t working the way I needed it to work. The details kept coming back no matter what I was doing.
Marcus knowing Mazi got grazed before Brielle told him anything. Talking about making him scared and wondering.
Saying neither me nor Brielle knew. Talking about my title fight like it was something he had a stake in.
And underneath all of that two letters that had been living in my head since I was five years old in a cold parking lot.
BJ. And whoever this nigga was, Marcus had tied to him. That alone was enough to get Marcus killed, but I knew that I had to play this smart and not impulse. Cause if I went to Bri crib and smoked Marcus tonight, I still wouldn’t have the answers I needed on top of risking my life and everything that I had worked so hard for. This shit was tough.
I sat down on the couch and picked up my phone and stared at it for a minute. Legal was heavy on my mind, and I needed to talk to somebody. I had twenty minutes before Kyla got here.
