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“What did you just say?” I asked.
“Mind your own business,” the brute man said, turning to face me. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
Jeb’s father stepped forward and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Come on, Neil. Calm down.” Then, and only then, did Jeb’s father look at me with a brief sympathetic look before he quickly turned and walked to his table behind Neil.
“Come on, girl. Let’s get out of here,” Kemara said, dragging me out of the restaurant. “That guy with him is with the brotherhood. I remember seeing him at that meeting I followed Channing to when we were dating. He has the tattoo on his neck and everything.”
I knew about the brotherhood tattoo all the men got, but it was something about that tattoo being on his neck that made him look even more sinister.
“The fool acted like he wanted to eat you piece by piece,” Jayne chimed in as if she were reading my thoughts.
“Are you okay?” Alise asked as she came over to hug me, and our hug sparked a group hug where both of my friends and my sister encircled me and shielded me with their love.
“I’m okay,” I assured them, but deep down, I wasn’t. I would never be okay with my fiancé’s father and his friends treating me as if I were subhuman. I would never be okay with the hate.
Chapter 11
Jeb
When I saw Renee walking toward my office door, I thought she was about to tell me Trey was there to see me. Her announcement, however, sent a wave of misunderstanding over me. Father?
“Jeb, your father is here to see you,” she repeated, sending my mind reeling. “Do you want to come to the front to meet him, or do you want me to send him back,” Renee asked.
“Send him back,” I said as I sat back in my chair, sighed deeply, and waited for the old man to enter the doorway. When my father appeared, walking into the room wearing a dark pair of pants and a white button up shirt, he looked relaxed, but something told me this visit would be anything but relaxing.
“Hi,” he said as he walked to the door of my office and stood there waiting for me to invite him in to sit down.
“Hi,” I said curtly.
“Can I come in?”
“What brings you by today, Dad? Well, unless you’re ready to apologize for the way you acted the last time I came to your house, I don’t want to waste your time with pleasantries,” I said as my father walked into the room and stood at the edge of my desk.
The slight scowl on his face let me know this would not be a reconciliation visit, so why did he come to the club?
“I’ll apologize for the way I acted when you apologize for all this talk about bringing this black woman into our family. Son, you weren’t raised this way, ” he began but I cut him off.
“She’s the woman I love, and there will be no apologies for that. The same way you loved mom, I love Tameka. There is no way around it. We’re getting married,” I said firmly.
Rising to my feet so that my father and I were eye to eye, I let it be known with my posturing that I was prepared to fight for the love I had for Tameka.
My father’s eyes fell from mine, and he sighed heavily. “I don’t understand, for the life of me, why you would go and do something like this, son. You need to give this more thought. You just watched this kind of foolishness destroy my brother’s family. Why would you jump up and get you a jigaboo, too! None of this is making sense.” He shook his head in disbelief as if the sheer thought of me marrying my beautiful girlfriend taunted his mind.
“Dad, I—”
“Why are you doing this to me? What did I do to deserve this?” he said, sounding near the brink of tears.
I sank down into my desk chair and absorbed the verbal punches my father had thrown my way. He acted as if I’d dishonored the family name by committing a mass murder that was picked up by both the President of the United States and national news when my only sin was that I’d followed my heart. I became enraged over the insults he’d lobbed at Tameka while playing the victim.
“Dad, it’s simple. I love her, I’m marrying her, end of story. Your feelings about it are your feelings about it. It doesn’t matter how many names you call her. None of them are true, and it just shows how immature you are,” I said.
“So, you’re really going to force my hand like this?” he asked.
“What do you mean, force your hand?”
“You’re forcing me to distance myself from you.”
“All I’m doing is marrying the woman I love. It’s the same thing you did when you married Mom.”
