—
The host called everybody together for the reveal.
Gutta and I stood next to each other with our women beside us and the smoke bombs in our hands. The whole room had their phones up recording.
I looked at Brielle beside me. She was bouncing slightly on her heels the way she did when she was trying to contain excitement and couldn’t fully hide it. Her stomach was just starting to show and she was the most beautiful I had ever seen her. I had been thinking she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen since I was thirteen years old.
Someone counted down from three.
We let them off at the same time.
Gutta’s side exploded blue.
Mine exploded pink.
The room went insane.
Gutta dropped to his knees on the floor right there in the middle of the venue and put his face in his hands. His shoulders were shaking and Simone crouched down beside him and held him. Amara ran over and climbed on his back not knowing why her daddy was on the floor but wanting to be part of whatever it was.
A son. After everything. Gutta was finally getting his son.
Brielle was jumping, screaming and hugging Simone. I stood there watching my girl be happy and felt something settle in me that had been unsettled my whole life.
A daughter.
My mom was getting a granddaughter.
I let that sit on me for a second.
Then I reached into my jacket pocket.
Brielle turned around from hugging Simone and I was already on one knee.
The room went from loud to a completely different kind of loud.
She put both hands over her mouth.
I looked up at her and said what I had been waiting my whole life to be in a position to say.
“I have loved you since I was a kid and I am not interested in loving anybody else for the rest of my life. I know some will never understand the bond, the love or my addiction to loving you, but I do. It’s always been you, and nobody else. You complete me, and the fact that you’re having my baby, that completes my wildest dreams. I never thought we’d be here, and I want this forever. Marry me please baby, and make me the happiest man on earth.”
She was crying before I finished the sentence.
“Of course,” she said. “Yes. Of course. I love you so much and I thank you for choosing me. For always choosing me even when we both know that I ain’t deserve you. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life showing you how much you mean to me and have always meant to me.”
I put the ring on her finger, stood up and picked her up. She wrapped her legs around me. I held her in the middle of that room with everybody we loved surrounding us. In that moment, I thought about the little boy I was after seeing my father be murdered, carrying something that had finally been put to rest.
Long live Hood.
Without Hood, there never would have been a Street.
Everything I was, I was because of who he was.
All my life I had huge shoes to fill, but I walked in those muthafuckas proudly.
And I was going to spend the rest of my life making sure his legacy meant something and that the world wouldn’t forget it.
—
