Medical documentation. A abortion clinic in Kansas. A date from eight days ago.
I looked at the screen.
Then I looked at her.
“I handled it,” she said. Her voice was flat. “It’s done. You can go be with whoever you’re in love with and leave me alone. Don’t call me. Don’t show up at my events. Don’t send invitations to shit of yours! We are done.”
She walked away.
I stood there in that corridor and didn’t move for a long time.
I hadn’t been ready for a baby. I knew that. But somewhere in the two weeks since she told me I had gotten used to the idea. I had told my family. Had started to make room for it in the way I was thinking about my future. Had started to feel something about it that surprised me.
And now it was gone.
This shit hurt me bad. I felt like something had been taken from me, and I couldn’t do shit about it. The admiration that I had for Kyla was starting to turn into something else.
And I was standing in a hallway understanding for the first time what Kyla had meant about having to have everything her way.About not being able to handle things not going according to her plan.
This was the version of her she had warned me about when I asked her flaws.
I just hadn’t known what it would look like when it arrived.
I walked out of that building and got in my car and sat there.
Then I drove home.
Brielle was on the couch when I came in, she looked at my face and put the remote down and didn’t say anything. She just motioned for me to come over to her.
I sat down beside her and she pulled me in. I let her and we stayed like that in the quiet of my living room.
I had won the heavyweight title.
My father finally had his justice.
My family was safe.
And the woman I had loved since I was fourteen years old was sitting in my living room with her arms around me. She was finally choosing me the way that I had always needed her to choose me.
Life was going to keep being complicated.
It always was.
But for the first time in as long as I could remember I wasn’t carrying any of it alone.
Two Years Later
Idon’t know if Brielle and Simone planned this together or if God just has a sense of humor. But, both of them were due in March and standing right next to each other at our joint gender reveal that was being filmed and live-streamed. It was catered like a wedding reception.
Knowing those two, it was absolutely planned for them to have babies at the same time.
The venue was packed. Family, close friends, people who had been riding with us since before any of this looked like what it looked like now. My mama was somewhere near the desserttable with my Aunt. They had been laughing and crying on and off all afternoon both of their boys were having babies and their excitement couldn’t be contained. Thats just what those two did when they were happy and today they were very happy.
I stood back for a minute and just watched it all.
Two years ago Mazi had a bullet in his arm, Gutta had a target on his back and Brielle’s father was still sitting at dinner tables pretending to be something he wasn’t. Two years ago Legal was still carrying twenty years of a secret he had promised to take all the way.
Now Veteran was doing life. BJ was doing life. Marcus had taken a plea deal and was gone. Tavarus had disappeared and nobody was looking too hard for him. I wasn’t asking questions I didn’t need the answers to.
