Love In the Red Zone (Connecticut Kings Book 1) (17 page)

I glanced down on our meeting skin. Her pink manicured nails over my calloused hands. I felt a zinging sensation course my body instantly. The next moment anger followed for being so affected by this beautiful girl that I didn’t understand.

A few nights after I went to church with Trent, I put Kyree down and toed out of the room, biting my lips as I closed the door behind me. Trent had come home a few hours ago and I had been plotting this time of the day with him for two days now. That’s how long it took me to get up the nerve. I fingered through my weave, fluffing it around my shoulders. I applied the right amount of foundation, blush, eye-liner, and lip gloss to appear casual.

When I made it to his door, my pulse beat so loud I could hear it in my head. Taking a deep breath, I skipped in his room and found him tossing a football in the air while he lay on his bed wearing a tank top and basketball shorts. I bit my bottom lip, knowing the moment his eyes met me wearing a tank and tiny boy shorts.

“Hey!” I trilled, batting my eyes.

For a while, Trent didn’t speak. “We celebrating something?” his tone was far more neutral than his hooded eyes appeared.

Yessss!
I was thrilled he found me attractive. I’d been worrying about that.

“Yeah. I kinda guess so.” I couldn’t help my smile and it wasn’t for the reason he named. It was how I battled my nerves.

“Tell me about it.” He laid his ball aside on the bed.

And that’s when I went for it. I dived on his mattress, landing on my knees. My boobs jiggled madly during my dissension and my weave crowded to the front of my face. It took me a moment to correct it, but I transitioned seamlessly.

“My Section 8 got approved!” I clapped.

Slowly, the realization of my announcement settled over Trent and his lips curved. “Congratulations. So, how does that work?”

“Well, I have a month to find an apartment before losing my voucher. It’s for not Alpine, though.” I snorted drily and shrugged my lips. “But I have to do what I have to do.”

“Don’t know much about real estate, but let me know if I can help.”

“You’ve done enough.” I stretched out on his bed.

Trent’s eyes widened, surprised by my audacity of relaxing on his bed.

“So,” I strained stretching out my arms. “what is a man your age doing home at a decent hour?”

“Chillin’,” was all he said before continuing with his ball toss and catch game.

“So, no girlfrien
d…
estranged love
r…
ex-wife?”

“No.” He caught the ball. “No.” He caught the ball. “An
d…
uhhhhh
h…
no.” He caught the ball again.

“Do you date?” I bit my lip.

“Not at the moment. Don’t think you’d be here in my bed if I had a special lady in my life, Jade. So, the short answer to your burning question is no. No lady. Ain’t got a care in the world for one right now. Got more important things to do.”

My neck snapped back. It was my turn to ask what audacity he’d had. I jumped from the bed, not even worried about the wedgie in my booty. I started opening up drawers in his dresser and armoire, shuffling through clothes.

“Yo!” he called out from behind me as I was bending over in the bottom drawers. “What’re you doing, man?”

I waited until I was done to straighten and speak.   

Out of breath, I put my hand on my hip and answered, “I’m looking for evidence of your woman.”

“Maaan! What woman?” Trent was sitting up, eyes wide as saucers.

“The one that wants me to know she exists. She’ll let me know by leaving her shoes in a corner, combs or hair clips in the bathroom drawer. Or the ones who want your wife to know about her, by leaving her soiled panties in your sheets.”

I went to his bed and yanked back the sheets, wearing a determined glower.

“Jade, man!” He stood from the bed and headed toward the bathroom. “You ain’t ‘bout to find no evidence of a woman. Trust. But go knock yourself out. I gotta hit the bowl.”

I leaped around in just enough time to see the bathroom door closing. My shoulders dropped.

I’m in here, almost naked and he announces he has to go take a crap?

If I didn’t learn that night, I soon learned Jade was a wild, fiery, miniature pit-bull. A sexy one who suffered from insomnia. That wasn’t the last time she waited for Kyree to fall asleep before creeping into my room. The first few nights were awkward, because typically I knew exactly what to do with a woman, wanting to lay half naked in my bed with her face made up nicely and hair wild and long.
Yeah
. It was clear to me she wanted to fuck, and man, was she tempting. But I wouldn’t go there with Jade. I respected Kyree too much to lay a finger on his mother. Plus, as much as I wanted to, something about it didn’t feel right. She stayed at my crib temporarily because she was on hard times. Taking it there with her would feel like I was exploiting her. Outside of that, I had to be real with myself. I didn’t want a woman. I needed my career back. I had to prove myself worthy to Christ so he could provide that blessing.

But Jade kept sneaking into my room, and to be real, I started looking forward to it. You never knew what she was going to come with, but it was always something interesting. One night, and out of the blue she told me how she came from a decent family. And though she didn’t point it out, I knew it was the type of family that people from my hood would consider rich. She pretty much grew up in West Orange with a housekeeper and nanny at some point in her childhood. Apparently, her mother married his wealth and the stability he could bring her daughter. She believed her mother married him for his money first, then fell in love. That admission confirmed my fears about getting caught up with her. Jade was familiar with money and knew how to spend it.

That same night Jade talked a lot about her stepfather. Jade watched her mother wear her husband, George’s, wealth like an accessory. It was something that she thought all women did until she grew up feeling something was missing, which was her mother’s love. It was something she didn’t see evidence of in her parents’ marriage or her mother’s care of her. Jade said George, her stepfather, had been good to her coming up.

“George never got involved when my mother and I would fight—and boy, did we fight all the time. I figured he didn’t interfere because I technically wasn’t his. But what’s weird is how he cried when I left their home while pregnant with Ky. It wa
s…
sad.”

Another night she kicked it about Kyree’s father and how wild their relationship had been. His name was Ryshon, but he went by the street name Ryder and was a year older than me. She shared how she almost came to blows with other chicks and one of his four baby mothers over his bullshit. Obviously, they were no longer together, but what I wasn’t expecting to learn was how he had been incarcerated for three years. It amazed her that Kyree still remembered him, which is why she always took his calls and obeyed when he insisted on their son playing football. Jade said she wanted Kyree to have a relationship with his father no matter the dude, Ryshon’s decision because she didn’t want him growing up fatherless like her.

Jade’s conversations were more or less her sharing her mistakes and revelations over the past ten years of her life. She didn’t press me much about my personal life, making it comfortable for me to lay back and listen. But this one night that so happened to be Halloween and after she’d tucked Kyree in and had put his candy away, she slid through the cracked doors of my bedroom and dumped her voluptuous body on my mattress.

“When was the last time you...” Her eyes traveled over to me, lined with caution, and voice now timid. “...you know.  Had sex?”

I rolled my eyes, chuckling at her intrusion. For some reason, I felt I shouldn’t be surprised, though I was.

“Months.”

“Months?” she asked, tone laced with suspense. “How many?”

“‘Bout six.”

The quickness of my answer only came because since she’d been staying here, throwing me those ‘
fuck me hazels;
’ it reminded me of the drought. The drought that hadn’t been an issue at all before.

Jade jumped up from the mattress to sit on the backs of her legs, facing me.

“You’re shitting me!”

I shook my head, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“There’s no way you haven’t had sex in months, much less six, Trent!” It seemed the word pained her to speak.

I shrugged with a tight face. “Of course I can. Sex ain’t bread and water.”

“For men, and especially men like you, it’s oxygen.”

I chuckled again. She was something else. Jade knew nothing about me, and assumed everything.

“It’s actually not.” I started pulling on a hangnail on my thumb. “In my case, I grew up in a hyper-sexualized environment, per my shrink.”

“Shrink?”

I nodded. “Yup. Saw one for a minute. My pastor.”
And now that you’re in my crib, I may need to call on him again.

“I don’t think talking to your pastor qualifies as seeing a shrink. You can’t even talk about sex with him.”

“My guy has degrees and a license. And we’ve talked about everything in my world. Anyway, I come from a line of strippers. My uncles were strippers, life-long professional ones. It was their bread and butter. When you see sexual content to that level, sex loses intimacy and becomes just an occupational art form.”

“Who was the last girl?” Her eyes shot down to her lap, she still sat on her knees, facing me.