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“Nah.” He scratched his head, visibly uneasy.Good. So was I. “I was hoping she was busy getting ready for bed so I could kick it with you.”
Oh…
“She is. You know Ines fights me for that particular duty amongst others.” I motioned him farther into the apartment. “I was just in the living room.” Smoothly cutting in front of Jas, I bypassed his big frame to lead him. “Is this about the family vacation for Chi-Chi? If it is, I was just reading over the email.”
“Ummm… Yeah. That and some other shit. But I did wanna know if you’re backing out.”
His gaze held me intently, curiously. Did Jas think I’d renege?
I shook my head. “No. Have you changed your mind about us doing it together?” Jas shook his head, answering no. “Well,” My attention swept over to the laptop. “I see your suggestions are all generous. Yachting in Europe? I guess that’s right up your alley. Think you can stand me for that many days?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Ashira.” Jas pulled at the side of his coat, a gray bubbled goose. With his eyes locked on me, he shook his head. “Man, I don’t even know how we got here. I’ve been trying to go at your pace all these years. Been trying to support you and be the best father I can to Chivon. I knew having a baby wasn’t the best idea, but it was the only way for me. I was not going to abort my child. I don’t regret doing this—”
“Neither do I,” I spat defensively. “Jas, I was not dating orthinkingabout dating Austin.”
“I ain’t say you was. Matter of fact, that wasn’t aboutthat.”
Really?
“Then what was that about?”
His eyes fell away, and Jas didn’t respond right away. “Part of it was my ego, not me trying to bully the guy. Truly, it ain’t that.”
“Then what about your ego could it be to humiliate him like that and then in front of me?”
Jas’ eyes trailed up to me when he murmured, “Because I never forgot how hurt you were when he fucked around on you. I remember how broken your spirit was for days. I ain’t even know at first what had happened, but knew it fucked you up.” My belly flipped, lungs seized. “That shit ain’t never sit well with me.”
I swallowed hard, trying to work around the sudden dryness in my mouth. “I would have never asked you to beat a man brutally because he betrayed me.”
“I know that. I do.”
“Listen… Jas…” My hands went to my head, fingering my scalp as I closed my eyes and exhaled harshly. “I’ve been working through this in therapy. Here are the facts: you are Chi-Chi’s father. This will never change. Like you said, it may not have been the wisest idea to have a child under our circumstances back then, but we did. I, too, refused to abort my baby. And because of this decision, I have to maintain a healthy relationship with you for the best development of our daughter. We’ve been so touch and go since she was born, yet I’ve never felt so disconnected from you as I do now.
“I will say this,” I continued with a tongue thick from anxiety. “Thank you for feeling as though you had to enact some revenge on my behalf with Austin. However, please never use violence to avenge wrongdoing for me. I’m not into violence. I’d like to embark on a healthy relationship with you. Being friends soundsimpossi—” Jas scoffed, rubbing the side of his jaw again. “—yeah, I know. But we need something as close as we can get to that for the sake of our daughter. In doing that, we need to build boundaries, and by doing that, we’re not infusing toxicity into our relationship. If that’s what we produce, that’s what gets injected into Chi-Chi.” I shook my head. “I don’t want that for her, and I know you don’t either.”
He shrugged with his brows and a quick flicking of his neck. “Yeah,” he exhaled. “Me either.”
Jas resembled a block boy tonight in the bubbled goose, black thermal shirt exposing the contour of his broad chest and carved abdominal muscles, dark jeans framing his spaced thighs, and blackTimberlandboots. A rapid wave of intoxication washed over me. Clean construction boots caused a sudden flashback of how I met him. He was dangerously understated, ruggedly gorgeous, and otherworldly to me. Apparently, I’d been taken by a thug. Jas code switched a lot. His delivery ranged from Harlem World proper to a dialect that didn’t alarm his corporate contemporaries. But at the end of each day, he’d always been…Jas. What had that said about me, the promising girl from Milburn armed with degrees from the incomparableBlakewood StateandNYU? My nipples tingled from the embarrassment of the countless possibilities.
Rubbing the back of my head with building anxiety, I blurted, “I will date…other men.Well—not Austin, but other men.” The dryness of my mouth returned when I forged ahead, voicing my boundaries. “And I will not be shadowed by your security when doing so. It’s a bit intrusive.”
And there it was again. That crocodile flip in his eyes. The veil had been applied, but not before I could catch the brewing storm in the recesses of his irises. The sight of it pinched my already tingling nipples, caused flips in my belly, and stroked my clit implausibly all at once. My breath hiked, rendering me speechless.
“Daddy!” screeched from a distance, followed by echoing pitter-patters. “Daddy!” Chi-Chi was upon us within seconds, breaking the tension. She leaped into his arms when he reached down to receive her. “You here?”
I took a step back, calming myself with crossed arms and a fidgety hand at the nape of my neck. Ines appeared in my peripheral, fighting a smile, which was the norm for her when observing this pair.
“Daddy’s here,” Jas’ voice was soothingly calm before he graced her cheek with a kiss.
“You come get me?” Chi-Chi pointed to her chest with wild eyes. “I at Mommy house.”
Mommy’s house?
That “FYI” stung. This was Chi-Chi’s house, not just mine.
“No, Blueberry. Daddy didn’t come to get you.” Jas answered, pulling a box from the pocket of his coat. A long one, clearly jewelry. “I brought you this.”
It dawned on me how deft my daughter was at opening jewelry boxes. Chi-Chi didn’t fumble the box at all, and she knew to place the lid under the bottom portion and remove the cotton strip in order to observe the jewelry.
