I shrugged. “Help yourself.”
I had cooked the eggs for Shya, but she pulled the left-right headshake while pushing the plate away. As her little face assessed the plate of cheese eggs, I assessed her and decided to try something. Now that she was eating the eggs without cheese with no problem, I had some questions.
My eyes followed Bahati as she stood across from me. The elbow of her free arm was firmly planted on the counter as the shorts that barely covered her ass looked like they were cutting off her thigh’s circulation. Instead of pivoting to warm the plate of food in the microwave, she stabbed the fork into the eggs.
The fork disappeared inside her mouth, and when she slid it out, melted cheese rested on her full lips. She licked it away with her eyes on me. Bahati was sexythen,and she was sexynow. Motherhood looked good on her, and although I should have killed her ass during our last encounter, God saw fit that she lived to tell the story.
And have my baby.
It was challenging coming home to soft legs every night and not breaking dick off in her, but I’d done it with Solana and damn sure could do it with Bahati. I still had time to pick my wife between the two, but I was no closer to making a decision than I was when Don gave me the ultimatum.
“Why didn’t you tell me Shya doesn’t like cheese?”
The little display of cheese seduction she was doing ended as her face crumpled in confusion. “Hunh? She eats cheese. She eats everything.”
“Nah. She acts as if she’s lactose intolerant or some shit.” I paused to study Bahati, and when she shrugged, I sneered a little.
“Shyla’s not lactose intolerant, Shio. She probably just didn’t want the cheese eggs.”
“And the milk the other day?”
Bahati rolled her eyes and sighed. “Maybe she didn’t want the milk either. I get you’re trying to get to know her, but questioning me about the very child I’ve raised for the last three years is off-putting.”
“Almost as off-putting as you calling herShylainstead of Shya. But you got it, Bahati.”
Not giving her a chance to respond, I picked up Shya since she was done eating. We went back to the half bath and washed her syrupy hands. I wasn’t about to go back and forth with Bahati. I may have missed the signs of Solana being coked out, but I wasn’t letting up from my gut telling me Bahati had some shit to her. I felt bad about her and Shya being caught up in my shit with the Rodríguezes, but her shit wasn’t clean enough for me to choose her as my wife yet. I wasn’t sure if my feelings were based on our past or my current intuition, and I would need to sort through all of that first before deciding to make this situation permanent.
Once baby girl’s hands were dry, she looked up at me with sleepy eyes. Pulling her back into my arms, her head found my chest, and I could see her long lashes constantly tapping her cheeks. Her lips were glossed with maple syrup, but I didn’t bother with it.
“You can use the card to get you a phone, Bahati.”
I kept my voice low since Shya was headed to the land of the dreamers. I could tell by the way her breathing pattern had changed. I needed the phone back that I’d given her since I wasn’t about to go grab the one from Solana at Jisei’s spot. I hadgone from three phones and two burners to one phone and two burners, plus Solana’s phone.
I looked up to see worry etched across Bahati’s face as she pushed the plate away from her. “I… I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’ve been toying with getting another phone, but…theytook my phone. If I get another with the same account, that could be a way for them to track me here.”
It was like a fucking light switch had gone off in my head. I was usually the nigga to think everything through thoroughly when I was in the midst of putting a plan in motion, but my thoughts had been cloudy as of late. Bahati and the events surrounding her kidnapping had taken a back seat to the shit happening in Jagoda Bay, and it was my fault for missing the obvious piece on figuring out where them bitch-ass niggas were hiding. I’d been so busy trying to get at them niggas using Solana’s phone that I hadn’t even thought about them niggas having Bahati’s. My tech guy had told me that if I had a phone number that was connected to them, I’d have better luck with getting their location. I knew he would be able to track them now as long as they still had her shit.
Shya had fallen asleep on my chest, so as I reached into my pocket to retrieve my main phone, I was careful not to wake her. I didn’t want her to go back into a screaming spell before I had a chance to finish my workout. I swiped past notifications from Vello and Ezio. Those twins had been keeping Vello up for forty days and forty nights, and since I was the only person he knew who was up before the sun, I had become his go-to person to call in the morning. I hadn’t been answering the last few days because I didn’t want to talk about my bullshit or hear them loud-ass twins. Those infants had lungs that were just as strong asShya’s. I didn’t mind her cries, but them little niggas sounded like stray cats.
“What’s the number?” I asked while my eyes shifted from the phone to Bahati.
“Um… About that.”
My eyes slanted at her as she wore a look on her face that said she was about to say some shit to piss me off. She straightened, and one side of her shorts became caught in her crotch, but she made no moves to fix it.
“I don’t know the number?”
I ran my tongue across my teeth. “Bahati…”
She rushed in front of me. The smell of shea butter and the sprays she used back then knocked me in the face. She’d ordered every damn thing she wanted and needed, down to the body butters she had imported from her homeland. Some shit had never changed, and Bahati was a creature of habit. Just like then, she still had a badass habit of throwing me all the fucking way off.
“I know that sounds crazy but hear me out. I’d been getting so many spam phone calls that it drove me mad. So I changed the number when I upgraded my phone. I’d done all of that a day before. That wasn’t nearly enough time to memorize it.”
She searched my eyes. With only Shya’s light snores filling the tense air, I took a step back.
“Aite, let’s run this shit back from the beginning.” I kept my voice even. “Tell me everything.”
Her chest rose and fell as her eyes watered, and I cringed internally. I wasn’t falling for that white woman shit. The kidnapping may have shaken her up, but Bahati wasn’t green to this life. Her dad was in the streets heavy, so she’d been privy to a lot of shit.
