Page 28 of After the Knockout
“I see you.” The dude laughed under his breath. “Good looking,” he said as we grabbed the bags and headed out. Dakoda stayed close, still talking about something under his breath, but I wasn’t really hearing it. My head was somewhere else.
“Get in.” I unlocked the car and opened the back door for him. He climbed in, already reaching in the bag. I shut the door, then walked around to the driver’s side. I tossed Lyrius one of the bags before getting in myself.
“In case you hungry,” I said like it was nothing.
She looked at the bag, then at me. “Thank you.”
I nodded, already starting the car. I drove us back over near the clinic. There was a little park area across the street with a picnic table that wasn’t too soaked to use, so I pulled up and parked. Dakoda was out of the truck before I could fully turn the engine off.
“Slow down!” Lyrius yelled, climbing out behind him. He wasn’t trying to hear that. His little ass was gone. I didn’t blame him, though. He’d been cooped up in one room for damn near twenty-four hours. We carried the food over to one of the tables and sat down. Dakoda stayed close long enough to stuff two fries in his mouth, then spotted birds over near the edge of the grass and took off after them.
“Don’t step in the mud!” Lyrius called after him, and I laughed. “Boys.” She sighed as she opened the bag I had given her.
“He’s a fun kid,” I said, opening my food. I started eating, and she did the same. For a second, everything was quiet, but my head wasn’t. My grip tightened around the box in my hand. I couldn’t keep sitting there like we were good.
“I ain’t gonna hold you,” I said, looking straight ahead. “I don’t fuck with you.”
She went still beside me, but she didn’t say anything.
“I don’t like how you played me. I don’t like how you did it. I don’t like that you had all that time to tell me the truth and never did.” I turned my head and looked at her. “I loved the shit out of you. I let you into my world. Into a nigga heart. I ain’t never did that with nobody before you. That shit hurt me. For real.”
“I know.” Her voice came out quiet.
“If that test says he mine, we figuring this shit out. I’m gonna be in his life. I’m not a deadbeat. I ain’t have my daddy and damn sure ain’t letting mine grow up like that. You ain’t gotta be worried about me tryna take him from you, even though it’d be easy as hell for me to do if I wanted to. But I’m not doing that. I’m not gonna put him through no mess like that.” Her head came up. I could tell she wanted to say something, but for whatever reason, she chose not to. “Just don’t keep him from me. I missed enough.”
“I won’t. I already told you that.” I held her eyes for a second, then nodded. The silence after that felt different. Like we’d addressed the elephant in the room, but one was still lingering in the distance. “So . . . What about the kiss?”
I looked at her and almost laughed. “What about it?”
“KO—”
“That was my body doing some shit that my mind knew better than to do,” I said. “You ain’t gotta worry about it happening again.” That landed the way I meant for it to. She looked away first just as Dakoda came running back toward us with a fry in one hand and excitement all over his face.
“Look! Look! Mama, Daddy, look!”
Both of us turned toward him at the same time. Every time he called me that, my chest hurt in a good way. I glanced at him, and he held up some little feather or leaf, or whatever the hell he’d found, like it was a treasure. Lyrius smiled at him, and I nodded like it impressed me.
“We should head back. Test probably ready.” I checked the time and stood up.
Lyrius nodded. Dakoda stuffed one last fry in his mouth and took my hand when I held it out. And as we walked back toward the truck, I already knew one thing for sure. No matter what happened next with me and Lyrius, no matter how I felt about her, we’d created a child together, and that meant she was family.
By the time we made it back to the clinic, my head was all over the place, and not because I was worried about the test results. Nah, I knew 100 percent that Dae-Dae was KO’s son. It was everything he said on that bench that kept replaying in my head. The way he looked at me when he said it. The way he didn’t hesitate to let me know kissing me was a mistake. That he actually hated my guts. I didn’t even have a rebuttal, because he had every right to feel that way. At the end of the day, this wasn’t about him and me. This was about Dae-Dae, about how happy he was to have his father in his life, and what came next.
“Go ahead.” KO’s voice pulled me out of my head. I looked up to find him holding open the door to the clinic, Dae-Dae halfway hanging off his arms like he had no intention of letting go. For asecond, I just stood there, staring before nodding and stepping past him. We barely made it inside before Nurse Nikki at the front desk called us back.
“Y’all can come on,” she said, playfully pushing Jaylen off the counter as she stepped from behind it. I glanced at Jaylen and shook my head a little. Whatever he had going on had allowed us to get a DNA test done in the middle of the city falling apart, so I wouldn’t judge.
“Watch him for a minute,” KO said, already shifting Dae-Dae on his arm. “I need to handle this.”
My eyes darted to Jaylen, then back to KO. He was right. Dae-Dae didn’t need to be in the room for this. But that didn’t mean I was comfortable leaving him with someone who was practically a stranger to him.
“I can stay out here with him,” I said, stepping in a little. “You can go back?—”
“I’ll stay with Daddy,” Dae-Dae said quickly. He’d already decided. That stopped me in my tracks. KO glanced down at him, then crouched in front of him without missing a beat.
“I need you to stay with your uncle for a second, aight?” he said, steady. “We’ll be right back.”
“Okay.” Dae-Dae looked between us, nodding just as Jaylen stepped up behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder like it was nothing.
