Page 117 of The Wright Man

Angel : Because I'm doing everything and nothing all at once.

Angel : ( I'm spiraling and trying not to cry in my facial steamer, why?)

I smiled.

Me: We're doing an open house at GhostFit. Soft launch type shit.

Me: You should come through.

A beat passed.

Angel : You inviting me as your friend or your marketing director?

Me: As someone who knows you're about to feel that sister-shaped hole when they leave and figured you could use a distraction.

Me: And also as your friend. Who misses you.

Me: And who also needs someone to give feedback on the vending machine because Riq only buys orange Gatorade and it's concerning.

Another pause. Then:

Angel : You had me at "misses you."

Angel : Also orange Gatorade is serial killer behavior. I'll be there.

I leaned back against the headboard, phone resting on my chest, her message warming me in ways I didn't have the courage to name.

She'd come. She always did.

Even when I didn't deserve her.

Especially then.

And I had a feeling she'd need GhostFit next weekend for the same reason I needed it all those years ago.

Not for the weights or the routines.

But because it gave her something to believe in again.

Even if just for a day.

Chapter Nineteen

Maleek

I was running.

Not the emotional kind I'd mastered in my teens—where I pushed people away or buried myself in silence just to keep the grief from swallowing me whole. Nah, this was the kind of running I'd learned to love. The kind that came with discipline. Precision. Control. The kind that started when the world was still asleep, with nothing but my breath and the rhythmic slap of my feet against the pavement keeping time.

I needed this today.

I was coming off a high I hadn't felt in damn near a decade. Not since before Mama died. Not since before the night Kareem's whole life got snatched from under him. Not since hope was something we didn't have to borrow on credit.

Because today—we got it back.

I'd been up on a ladder at GhostFit finishing the last of the merch display—lining up hoodies and shaker bottles just right—when my phone rang. My lawyer. The one Kareem jokingly called Judge Judy Jr. every time he got that fire in his tone.

"I found her," he said. Just like that. Three words that cracked my whole world open.