Page 88 of Rebooked For Us
“I love you too, Skye.”
He gathered me into his chest, my back to his front, his arm heavy across my waist, his nose in my hair.
I was halfway to sleep when he spoke again, low, careful.
“There’s a gala in Upland in a few weeks.” He felt me go still and tightened his arm.
“Okay.” I kept my voice even. “So you’ll go, and we’ll be here when you get back.”
“No, I want us to go.” His mouth pressed to the back of my head. “You, me, and Cadence. Together.”
I turned in his arms to face him, searching his eyes in the dark.
“You think I can’t protect y’all?”
“Ducane, no, I never said that. We aren’t afraid of Ruben, I know that. I took how he felt about me on the chin because I was grown. Cadence is an innocent child,ourinnocent child. I’m not about to stand there and watch him look at my baby like she’s a problem. She doesn’t need a grandfather who has to be talked into loving her. Can you promise I won’t have to knock him out?”
“I can’t promise that, baby. But I can promise to walk in there with my wife on my arm and my daughter’s hand in mine and make every single one of them choke on that shit.” His voice came out hard, certain. “But most importantly, you and Cadence are my whole life, and if a muthafucka can’t respect that, I’m laying him out. It’s long overdue.”
I felt that all the way down to my toes.
“He won’t get near her. Or you without going through me.” He cupped the side of my face, his thumb moving against my cheek. “Skye, I’m not the man he shipped off. I see him clearly now. And I’m sorry it took me so long.”
“The minute I feel like she’s uncomfortable, I’m taking her home.”
“We’re taking her home,” he corrected. “Together.”
I closed my eyes, thinking about the most perfect little girl asleep down the hall, praying I wouldn’t regret this.
“Okay,” I whispered. “We’ll come.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I tucked myself back into his chest, right where I fit.
“I’m not gonna let you down, Skye. Not you, not her. I spent six years protecting my pride instead of my family. I’m not missing anything else. You walk in on my arm, you walk out on my arm. I swear it.”
I searched his face for the catch, the angle, the lie I’d trained myself to expect. It wasn’t there. And I let myself believe him.
“I trust you. And I’m wearing something expensive, on your dime. And if Bianca’s there, she’d better keep her distance. The headlock comes standard now.”
His laugh rumbled through me.
“Wear whatever you want. Spend whatever you want. You’re walking in there as a Simmons.” He kissed the top of my head. “Go to sleep. We’ll talk more about it in the morning.”
The house was dead quiet. My husband wrapped around me, our daughter asleep down the hall. Home finally looked the way I’d always imagined it.
a few weeks later…
“Daddy, my feets hurt.”
“I’m sorry, baby. Get on my back, we’re almost done,” he said as we headed out of the mall our daughter insisted we stop at.
Upland was nothing like I’d built it up to be in my head. Kareem had driven us through wide, clean streets lined with magnolias, past restaurants with valets and storefronts I recognized.
By the time we pulled up to Ducane’s house, a massive estate lined with glass windows that caught the afternoon sun and threw it back, I’d stopped bracing and started gawking.
For six years, saying this city’s name left a rotten taste in my mouth. The city that took him. The place his father exiled him to. I’d pictured somewhere gray and cold, a place a man goes to disappear. But this wasn’t that.
