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“Necessary travel companion.”
“How would you know? You don’t travel.”
I turned to her. “Can I keep it a bean with you?”
“If a ‘bean’ is honesty, you keep me thirsty for that.” Witherspoon tried to smile, but even I saw her raw vulnerability through that.
“I was nervous. Actually hella anxious.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “About what?”
My eyes gestured the setting. “About all of this. Leading up to takeoff, I questioned if I should even go through with it. My first time out of the country, leaving work for days and without leaving my deputy behind to keep an eye on things. Truthfully, even traveling with my cousins made me uneasy. Jonathan and his shit. Didn’t want him bringing nothing illegal and getting us caught up. And just my family in general.” I scratched the back of my head, trying to explain. “They know me, but don’t really know me.”
She eyed me warily for a long while before walking my way. Witherspoon stood directly in front of me. “Who really knows you? Juggy? Man?”
My damn chest tightened. I shook my head. “They’re conversed with the old me.”
“The one before eleven years of incarceration.” I nodded, wanting to get off the topic.
“Does Ezra know you? Azmir?”
“E knows the new creature. The one who’s chosen to follow Christ. Divine comes closest in knowing both, but he don’t know me, know me either.”
“So, no one knows Jas?”
My eyes met her pretty sun-bronzed face. “I want you to know me.”
She scoffed, “You must be joking. I don’t even knowyour—”
“Name.” I swung my head from ear to ear, left to right, mocking her. “I know. But I told you why. I don’t want you looking up my past.”
“Then how am I supposed to know you, Jas? Your family is even good at keeping your basic identity away. I asked Chrissy your first name and she basically ran out of the room today.”
Yeah. That was another piece of my damn anxiety. I had Chels drill their asses about what not to say in front of her back before Sean’s birthday party. I had her and Jug do it again before we boarded for here, and I made sure to repeat it while on the plane. I didn’t care if they were drunk. If they opened their mouths, they had to see me.
“Because I want to tell you myself.”
“Okay.” She folded her arms. “When?”
“When I think I can trust you to hold it. To carry it like the crosswithme.” I shrugged. “When you say you’ll be mine.”
Her head reared back. “As in the three-month trial period?”
My eyes rolled over her head as I processed that. “Nah. No.”Hell no. “I mean like mine.”
“As in marriage?”
“I mean…we’re adults. What else would the goal be?”
“But, Jas, you want me married in thirty days, barefoot and pregnant every eleven months, and baking cakes for the children’s ministry at your church in between. That vision is depressing to me. It’s stifling and reminiscent of what I’m going through with my father. I don’t want to live anyone’s vision for my destiny. I want to build my own.”
“And if ol’ boy was going to propose to you, you would’ve said no because you haven’t lived out your dreams?”
“I would’ve said no because I wasn’t ready for such a commitment with him.”
“And when you got ready?”
“And when I got or get ready for marriage, it’ll be with a man I’ve set a vision of unity together, not just applying his narrative for ‘happily ever after Shi.’ It would be a joint venture.”
