“Okay. I’m sorry to have bothered you, I was just nervous.”
“You good. We’ll talk later.”
I ended that call feeling fucked up for Sandra. She had to know what kind of nigga she married though. I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her, so I had to lie to her to protect myself.
After I dropped Mazi off, I sat there and sent a text to Simone.
Me: I know you don’t want to talk to me. I know I hurt you and I know you have every right to feel everything you’re feeling. I’m not asking you to forgive me tonight. I’m just asking you to know that I love you and I’m not going anywhere. Whenever you’re ready I’ll be here.
I put the phone down and waited a few minutes.
She didn’t respond.
But I meant every word and I was willing to wait as long as it took because Simone was worth waiting for. I had never been more sure of that than I was right now. After experiencing what it feels like to be without her, I knew that this is not what I wanted for me.
I was going to be a better man in all aspects moving forward.
Not just for Simone, but for Amara too. They deserved the best me.
Two weeks had passed since the fight and Kyla still wasn’t answering any of my calls.
I had called everyday those two weeks. Left voicemails. Sent invitations to two press conferences and a sponsor dinner that she never showed up to. The last text I sent her she left on read for four days and then nothing.
I understood why she was hurt. I did. Standing outside that arena watching me close a car door and signal the driver to pull off while she was inside it — that was cold and she hadn’t deserved it. I had cared about her genuinely and I still did and I wanted her to know that even if I couldn’t be what she needed me to be.
I just wanted to know she was okay.
Instead I had silence and it sat on me in a way I couldn’t fully shake.
Brielle had been at my place since the night of her father’s arrest. We hadn’t talked about what we were doing yet. Hadn’t put anything into words. We had just been existing in the same space and letting that be enough for now.
She cooked sometimes. I trained. We watched movies and fell asleep on the couch and neither one of us pushed for more than that.
It was the most peace I had felt in years.
But underneath the peace something was still unresolved and we both knew it.
—
I was in my workout room when she called me into the bedroom.
I found her sitting on the bed with her legs pulled up and her hands in her lap. Her eyes were red in a way that told me she was dealing with something heavy for a while before she called me in.
I sat down across from her and waited.
“I need to say some things to you,” she said. “And I need you to just let me say them before you respond.”
“Go ahead.”
She looked at me and took a breath and started talking.
She told me she was sorry. Not the kind of faking that people did when they knew they’d done wrong, it seemed sincere.
She told me I had always been good enough. That it was never about me not being worthy of her. It was about her being too scared of losing her family to choose what she actually wanted.She said that she had let that fear cost her years with me and she knew she couldn’t take any of that back but she needed me to know it was never about me.
She told me she never stopped loving me. Not through Marcus, not through any of the years in between, not through any of the nights she had laid next to somebody else pretending that comfortable was enough for her.
By the time she finished her face was wet and her voice was barely holding together and she was looking at me like everything depended on what came out of my mouth next.
