Page 57 of The Cost of Love

Chapter 23

Alex

Iroll over and try to silence the incessant ringing. Looking for the snooze button, determined to get ten more minutes, I instead see her name on the screen.

“Are you okay?” I pull the phone back to see that it is 1 a.m. Sitting up, I ready myself to rush out of bed and to her side.

“I’m downstairs.”

When I open the door to Chanice, I am expecting tears, maybe anger, something to show me what brought her here in the middle of the night. Before I can properly assess her, she pulls my face down and kisses me. The searing passion she throws into the contact has me waking up entirely.

“Get naked,” she says, pulling off her jacket.

All I am in is boxers and a tee. Both come off with little effort, falling to the floor. Her fall layers take a little longer, but soon she is standing there naked, too.

She pushes me back until I am falling onto the sofa. Without pause, she grabs a condom, slides it on and mounts me. The moans are instant. So is the grinding as we push to get as close to each other as we can. Running her hands through my already-tousled hair, she grips on tightly while riding.

My hands grab her sides, guiding her hips, bridging our rhythms. That is what we both need to really get us going, and soon we are climbing to the tip of an orgasm. She tumbles down first, screaming my name, and the tightness of her squeezing around me has me soon following her.

Breathing heavy, we just look at each other for a moment. Then, without a word, she stands up and puts her underwear and shirt back on.

“What was that?” I ask.

Her response is a choked cry.

“Chanice.” I grab her in my arms and press her tightly to my chest. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

“No, I am not crying because of that.”

Clearly, when she showed up here, it was for more than just sex. Some emotion was driving her to try to forget everything in my arms. I throw on my boxers and lead us to sit on the couch. She nestles her head into my shoulder and takes one shuddering breath while I wrap my arm around her.

“What’s going on?”

“Well, let’s see, I have to come up with three hundred and fifty pounds extra a month for rent. I can’t get a better job to save my life, and my mother has somehow proved to Child Services that she is a fit parent. They plan on taking the kids and giving them back to her.”

My surprise is so audible that she lifts her head to look at me. I don’t want to shift her focus, so I close my mouth and continue to stroke her arm. She lays her head back down and, with a heavy exhale, begins to finally open up.

“I don’t understand how they can do this. There is a whole file of times that she has proven to be inadequate, and that’s just the ones on record. Like when I was twelve, before Gabby was even born, and Jamal was just a baby, she left us alone for a week. We ran out of diapers on the third day, and food on the fifth. We were living off of water and biscuits. Jamal was sitting in newspaper diapers.” With a shuddering breath, she wipes at her eyes.

“I tried so hard to get us everything we needed, but I was so scared that if I asked anyone for help, someone would call the cops. When she showed back up, she acted like it was our fault that we were left like that. She didn’t even bother to feel bad. This is just one of the many horrible stories I have of living with her that no one in that department knows about.” She sniffles, and my heart breaks for that little girl.

I pull her tighter against me like that will somehow protect her from her past. She can’t even outrun this pain if she wanted to because it’s still happening.

“I have been taking care of them for as long as I have been alive. I know I didn’t bring them into this world, but these are my kids, and she shouldn’t get them just because she did.”

There are no words to make this better, but there are actions, and I am willing to do whatever it takes.

“How can I help?”

She sits up and tucks her curls behind her ears. It clears her face, allowing me to better see how beaten down she is. This isn’t the type of exhaustion that can be slept off or self-cared away. To her bones, she is tired.

“I don’t want you to do anything yet. I just want to vent. Please just let me talk about it.”

It goes against my instincts to do nothing, but I nod. She falls back into me and begins to let it all out. I don’t know how much time passes, but with every fury-inducing story, I feel her shoulders ease more and more. At some point she stops crying, her breaths evening out. The whole time, she doesn’t look at me as she speaks. Only when she is done does she turn around and face my reaction.

The whole time she was talking, I stayed calm and listened, but every story was like another match to my burning rage. She can see the reflection of the inferno in my eyes, and it seems to ease her even more.

She has been carrying this pain her whole life, and she is blessing me with the opportunity to see it. Lowering her shield, she is showing me all the scars from every battle in her childhood. I don’t know if she expects me to turn away from this kind of suffering, but it only makes me more determined to be there for her. And if possible, to ruin the life of the woman who caused it.