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I felt her shake her head as she said, “No. He broke her heart but he loves me. I’m sure of that and he helps me now that I’m grown and my mom can’t stop him. Anyway, my grandmother, her mom? She couldn’t help because she was poor too and then she passed away when I was ten. Things were bad when I was a kid, really bad. We moved a lot because we were always getting evicted. We probably lived in every project or low rent apartment in Romey. Rats, roaches, bed bugs, little to no food. No water one week, no lights the next. My mom worked but there was just never enough money until she met Doyle.”
“Doyle?” I asked, rubbing my hand over her arm.
“A guy she met when I was like fifteen. He had money and didn’t mind sharing it with her. After him were Eddie and John and Roland, all men with money, and gone were the cheap apartments and bug infestations and empty-stomach nights. Things were better, but I was always scared they’d go back to shit, you know?”
“Yeah, I can see that. What about now?”
“Now…I’m good for the most part. I get a lot of help from my aunt.”
“Your mom?”
She breathed a mirthless chuckle. “My mom…I…she loves me, but I don’t think she knows how to support me now. She never expected me to go to college and she sees me as an adult who shouldn’t need her help, just like her mother saw her. It’s cool, though. I get it. I just…sometimes I get sad out of nowhere, like tonight.”
“You still sad?” I asked. “I got more work to do?”
“Unh-uh. I’m all good now, thanks to you.”
“Good. Hey, Brooklyn?”
“Yeah?”
“If you ever need anything, and I mean anything at all, I got you. Okay? I don’t care where I am in the world. I got you.”
“Okay.”
CHAPTER16
BROOKLYN
NOW…
He was magnificent, shorter than I’d imagined, but attractive and alluring, his looks only eclipsed by his immense talent. Before me stood an international superstar, his signature dreadlocks thick and pulled back from his face. His smile was dazzling—his voice, rich and soulful as he sang along with the accompanying track.
I was in an extremely privileged position, sitting in the Louis Armstrong ballroom on the Romey U campus hours before the event watching THE Messiah go through the rituals of sound check. Sharla and I sat at a table near the stage, my friend exhibiting the appropriate amount of starstruck awe. I, on the other hand, was fixated with a love from my past. My eyes, having a mind of their own, would not stop following Vann King London as he moved about, speaking with different people, making sure everything was perfect for his client’s upcoming performance.
As Sharla observed Messiah dreamily, I observed her big brother, my mind traveling into the past, to hot, savory kisses, caresses, squeezes, gropes, and a fit that seemed tailor made. The best sex I’d ever had, experiences I’d never even come close to reliving. Not even with Jamaal, a guy I was crazy about. What was worse than crazy? Because that’s what I’d felt for Vann.
Hell, Istillfelt it.
Vann left the small stage and stepped toward where Sharla and I sat. As he settled in a seat next to his sister, I felt my pulse thrum in my neck and crossed my legs, squeezing my thighs together. It’d been a long while since I’d partaken of sex in any form, good or bad, that involved another human, so I determined that although I did share a very carnal past with this man, my inactive sex life was the true culprit for the pulsing between my legs. I mean, Vann wasn’t doing anything overtly sexual. He was just…being.
And that was evidently enough to make my pussy hot enough to fog up car windows.
Shit.
“I hope your spoiled ass is happy now,” Vann said, grinning at Sharla. He was wearing that black eye patch he’d been wearing every time I’d seen him since he came to Romey and damn if it didn’t make him look impossibly sexier.
“Yes!” she squealed, pulling him into a seated hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, big brother!!”
He laughed, hugging her back, and I decided maybe I should unglue my eyes from him and fix them on the man singing onstage. So, I did, not that I was really paying attention. If someone gave me a test about the performance, I would fail with flying colors.
Once the song had ended, Sharla hopped up from her chair and headed toward the stage, leaving me at the table alone with her brother. My eyes slid over to him to find his gaze affixed to me. Then he moved to the seat his sister had vacated which was next to mine.
“Hey,” he said in that voice of his, all thick and deep and dripping with Mississippi.
I pulled my regard from his face back to the stage although they weren’t really focused there. “Hey.”
“Uh, I’ve been meaning to speak with you.”
