Dropping my head, I felt tears streaming from my eyes as my shoulders shook. Before I could inhale, I was being lifted from the chair and pulled into the arms of the man who had been my first everything. My first crush, my first male friend, my first love, my first lover, my first heartbreak, and the father of my first child. His arms wrapped around my waist as I buried my face in the scruff of his jumpsuit.
“I missed you, Pretty Mama.”
I choked out a sob that was not only embarrassing but also expressive for the pent-up emotions I’d been holding inside. Before I gave birth, I was hurting over my first love spending ten years behind bars, and I cried myself to sleep many nights after the judge handed down his sentence. Before that, I had beencrying because he’d broken my heart into a thousand pieces. The only reason I’d gotten through it was because Blayke’s trauma was identical to my own, and we sulked in heartbreak together. However, Blayke’s trauma was possibly worse because she had decided to abort her child. If I had known I was also pregnant, I would’ve thought to do the same.
Since the day I arrived at the hospital, I had been crying silently at the thought of my plans being altered and having to raise a fatherless child. I hadn’t been honest with my sister when we made up this week. During those days she had been locked in her room, I nearly lost my mind. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with my daughter, and there weren’t enough YouTube or TikTok videos in the world to guide me. I was drowning, and seeing Leader like this—having him hold me—gave me the comfort I sought, which was crazy because he was the root of all my problems.
“Aye…” He gently held me back at arm’s length so he could inspect me from head to toe. His eyes, filled with admiration now, traveled from my face to my neck to my breasts, where they lingered a moment. When they got to my stomach, they rested even longer before moving down the rest of my curvy frame.
“Freshman fifteen,” I said in a teasing way, while rubbing my damp face with my hands.
Just tell him.
“Shit, you look good as fuck. At this point, you can do a sophomore sixty and still be the prettiest baby.” He squeezed my waist.
“If you say so…” I continued to sniffle and wipe my eyes.
The Leader before me wasn’t the man I was used to. Gone were the designer threads, the bulging pockets stuffed with what made the world go round, and the look of destruction I used to see in his eyes. Leader had always been his own worst enemy. He had allowed this, which was proving to be his biggest downfall.As pissed off as I was at Amaya for being so careless and spiteful with her actions, jail for Leader was inevitable. It was inevitable because he believed it to be the rightful place for him. He believed it was the only way out for a man of his caliber.
Jail or Hell, he would say.
I’d told him time and time again that the tongue was powerful, but it had gone in one ear and out the other. He’d broken my heart, no doubt, but I was grateful that jail had come up on the docket instead of a pine box. Still, his eyes held a glint of something different that I couldn’t quite read. Instead of leaning into it, because I knew my emotions were all out of whack, I blinked slowly before meeting his gaze.
He towered over me, legs chained, with crisp white sneakers on his feet, contrasting the green jumpsuit that looked as if he’d had it pressed at the cleaners. I’d caught a glimpse of a few inmates while being escorted back here, and none of their uniforms or shoes were as sharp and clean as Leader’s. His glare was beginning to make me uncomfortable. My thoughts jumped all over, the first being if he could tell I’d had a baby. My heart hadn’t slowed down since I made the turn to come to Iron Kinser Federal Prison, and I had no clue what I was doing here.
When I made my decision to come instead of going to BU, I hadn’t thought about what a visit with Leader would be like. In my mind, we’d be in a visitation room, filled with people and guards posted around, watching. I had a four-by-six picture of the baby—one of her hospital photos—that arrived in the mail some days ago, but I’d left the photo in my bag. I would’ve been more open and prepared to tell him he had a daughter if I’d known we would have this alone time together.
Baby Leader was the cutest baby, and I was so happy with how the pictures had turned out. She wore a crochet, fairy outfit in mint green—a gift from Pearla—with a matching hat and booties. Her silky, straight hair framed her forehead, andshe smiled for the camera, even in her sleep. The photographer said the photo was award-worthy, and after getting the prints, I agreed. I paid a pretty penny for them, but they were worth it for my baby girl.
I knew Leader would’ve appreciated the photo of his newborn, but I couldn’t form the words to say the picture existed. I couldn’t form the words to say he had another child now. And since I didn’t have the photo, I coward and let the silence linger.
“I half expected you to walk in here with a big-ass belly.”
Leader’s words brought me back to the present. Stepping back out of his embrace, his facial expression neutralized, while I felt like I was about to pass out. My palms grew clammy, and my stomach churned. I didn’t need a mirror to know that my skin was flushed bright red.
“Hunh? Wh…Why you say that?” I stuttered.
My breasts had grown two to three cup sizes, and the only bras that fit were the nursing ones. They were the most comfortable, too, being that the breast milk came and went. My face was still obnoxiously round, and my lips remained slightly puffy. In the months I’d spent with Leader, I’d learned how observant he was. However, his being able to sense childbirth would be another level of awareness.
I met his eyes, waiting for his response, and when he shrugged as a smile stretched across his handsome face, my chest deflated with relief.
“You’ve been dodging my people, baby. I thought maybe it was because you were hiding something, but I knew I’d just seen you in court a few months ago, so I don’t know why that was even a thought now that you’re here.” He rubbed his chin as if he were piecing something together. He didn’t know how right he was, and I wasn’t in my right mind to tell him.
“Leader… Everything was just a lot. I had to pack up the apartment to move back home, and then I got really sick?—”
“Sick?”
Shit, Glee.
Concern was etched in his tone as he closed the small gap between us and gently grabbed my chin to lift my face. I shuddered, not bothering to hold it back. His touch was electrifying—magnetic. Just like that night on my balcony where we shared a platter of overpriced seafood, he had me.
I paused, searching for a plausible illness. “Y-yeah. A, uhh… summer cold.”
He tilted my head ever so slightly so that he was able to inspect every crease of my face. His thumb swiped across my chin, and my breathing heightened.
“You good now?”
Blinking, I nodded.
