Was she pregnant?
The thought had been living in the back of her mind for days now. Her cycle was beyond late and nausea was kicking her ass and she didn’t even factor in the exhaustion and hunger pains.
“What if...”
She leaned her head back against the tub and closed her eyes.
Whatever God had planned, she was going to have to trust Him.
An hour later, she emerged wrapped in one of Jio’s oversized white bathrobes, in search of a snack from the kitchen. On her way there, Nina remembered that the perfume samples had arrived today.
They were in a shipping box on the dining table. After removing the taping, she opened the package. She slowly peeled back the tissue paper that protected the bottles before lining them beside one another. She was shocked at how heavy the glass felt in her hand.
The labels were perfect and the gold embossing caught the light perfectly. Nina carefully held one of the four bottles into her hands. It looked better than her bootleg drawings. The bottle screamed luxury.
For this to be her first time doing this, her vision matched reality.
Her fingers brushed across theMarcelle & Co.logo.
“I wish you could see this Papa,” she said aloud.
She looked toward the ceiling as if he were there. He would’ve critiqued every detail before quietly buying enough inventory to make her first launch sell out.
She snapped a few pictures with her phone.
Her thumb hovered over Davie’s name. If she sent the pics tonight, he would call instead of responding like normal people. Nina loved him dearly but she'd talked enough for one day. She decided to wait to send them in the morning.
She wandered back toward the bathroom to rinse the drying clay mask from her face.
As she reached for a towel, her eyes landed on the unopened box that controlled her fate. The test haunted her every day as it rested beside the sink.
Jio hadn’t asked about it in days because he was trying not to pressure her.
She couldn’t keep avoiding the inevitable. Nina took a deep breath before finally deciding to just take the stupid test.
η
The city lights blurred together as Jio guided the truck through familiar streets, one hand resting lazily against the steering wheel, the other tapped quietly against the center console. The small black ring box sat in the cup holder beside him. Every few minutes, his eyes drifted toward it and a slow smile would fall on his face. “Damn...”
He couldn’t believe he’d actually bought it.
The truck filled with the smooth sounds of old-school R&B.
Tonight, he rode in silence. Well, as close to silence as Luther Vandross could give him. He wasn’t taking any calls. Any money on his line would have to wait until tomorrow.
His phone vibrated against the console and the screen lit up. It was an unknown caller and he definitely wasn’t answering that shit.
Jio looked at it for half a second before pressing the button on his steering wheel, sending the call straight to voicemail.
He leaned farther back in the driver's seat.
For once, if anyone needed anything from him, it wasn’t happening, and that went for anything and everybody. His family. His goons. The club. The streets. The constructionprojects. Everything was on pause. Jio just wanted to go home and hold his lady.
He wondered what Nina was doing. He knew by now her hair was wrapped up and she was in one of his t-shirts, bare feet and talking to herself like she did when she didn’t think he was listening. A laugh escaped him because she thought she was slick. She’d mumble entire conversations under her breath while putting dishes away.
He’d spent years trying to build an empire and to his surprise the only thing that he ever needed in life to be genuinely happy was a home, a family, and both of those things featured her.
He glanced at the ring box again.
