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“Fuck you, Thi,” I say, wrathfully, running away until I get to the edge of the ballroom.
I walk sedately back into the crush of people, finding prominent businessmen and whispering, “I think my husband is looking for you.”
By the time I’ve made my way back over to LL, Mathias is practically surrounded.
“I need you to get me out of here,” I tell my cousin.
He takes one look at my face and steers me out of the Shelby Country Club.
ChapterSeventeen
Nikki
WHEN I FIND YOU, I’M GOING TO SPLIT YOUR PUSSY IN TWO.YOU’RE GOING TO LEARN YOU CAN’T RUN FROM ME LITTLE WIFE. THERE IS NOWHERE YOU CAN HIDE.
I rollmy eyes at today’s threat. It’s been a week, and the person they are already calling the senator elect is no closer to finding me. I’ve been getting text from him nonstop. Wasn’t there when he won the election. I thought he’d be mad enough because I left his silly ass to leave me alone but here he is still bothering me.
He’s had less luck than Angel, largely due to the fact he has to keep the fact he’s looking for me under the radar. It wouldn’t do for people to find out his bride of a month left his ass because she caught him kissing his wannabe side-chick, who just so happens to also be his assistant campaign manager. Gross.
All this has played into the peace and serenity I’m forcing on myself this the last week. Nothing to worry about but what food I need to order my way. Most days I don’t want to cook, so delivery has quickly become my mainstay. Drowning myself in my reading addiction has also helped. Anything that keeps me from thinking about him, his silver eyes, waking up in his arms. It doesn’t matter that I cry myself to sleep every night feeling broken. I can’t help but think this is what he meant by that promise when he saw me chatting with Blay. I belong to him irrevocably. I can’t shake him. He’s too much a part of my existence, has been such an integral part of my life for so long.
I don’t let myself think of what he was about to say on that dance floor. It doesn’t matter at this point anyway. Natalie jumping in his arms like that’s where she belongs was enough. You definitely don’t have to tell me. I saw it with my own eyes. If he were choosing me, he would have caught me in the hallway. He’s faster than me, his legs longer, which can only mean he stopped to talk to her, perhaps to tell her to wait for him. He made his choice. That was the last time. He won’t get the chance again. Not that he ever wanted me.
Wretched sobs wrack my frame, and for the hundredth time, I vow to block him, put my phone away. Sometimes I manage to, only to have him email me, claiming I’m his. Sure, I was his, but was he ever really mine? I doubt it.
Grabbing my phone, I shoot a message back to him.
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.
Then I block him for the fifty-eleventh time. Hopefully this time it will stick.
Just as I’m about to toss the phone on the other side of the sofa, it buzzes.
Seeing the name, I answer. “Easy?”
“Yes, sister wife,” she says, being silly. I don’t mind; she didn’t have to make space for us in her wedding to Angel, especially after everything they’d been through in their relationship.
“What’s up?” I ask, looking around her town house she let me stay in when I asked how she got away from Angel. She told me not to go to those extremes but immediately offered me her this place which she’d kept as a rental property after she and Angel reunited. Thankfully she was between renters just when I needed it.
“Girl, Mathias has been meeting with Angel. I don’t know what it means. They are like brothers, so of course he’d confide in Angel, but honey, be careful. He may have asked Angel to help find you.” Dull dread skates across my heart at her words. Then I realize if Mathias knew where I was, he’d already be here making good on his threats.
“Hmm, I’ll stay here for another day or two, then I’ll contact Flower’s friend Prosper. I hate that I left in such a rush and didn’t get my journal. That’s where I keep all my important stuff.”
“I think I have it. Or rather, I know Krie has it. Girl, I hate to involve her. Her husband got downright severe when she helped me. I know she’ll do it, though. Cousins come first. Well, except Joi’s trifling ass.”
I smile, loving her loyalty. “Well, I don’t want you to get in trouble with Angel.” In all seriousness, her husband is way scary, though maybe not as scary as Krie’s man.
“I can’t ever be in trouble with Angel. He loves me too much, and he wants like five more kids, so he can’t be bothered with being upset.” She laughs.
We talk about mundane things and family gossip, like Summer taking less money to make the mayor’s kids a wardrobe. “You know she loves the kids,” Easy tells me.
“Yeah, but she also loves huge commissions.” I laugh.
After giving each other our love, we get off the phone, and I feel good for the first time since this whole nightmare started. Though this situation has been thrust upon me, I had the courage to walk away before it became untenable. I saw what I needed to see. But I could kick myself for not putting a stop to it sooner when he never asked for the ring back; his mom had said for him to give it to the woman he loved. Natalie still had it. She had it on the night she jumped in my husband’s arms like he was hers. For all her talk of propriety, she has no problems stepping out of those bounds to stake her claim on someone else’s husband. I don’t blame her, though. He allowed it. He was the married person in that equation. Despite their past, he should have never been kissing her.
Yeah, fuck all that and him.
I switch channels to the local broadcast so I can watch Masterpiece Theater. Instead they are showing a local town hall here in Birmingham with Mathias.
