Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 124320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Me: After this meeting, I’ll call you.
Ezra: If you don’t call, I’ll come to your mother’s house.
That is a scene I want to avoid at all costs. I heave a sigh and slip the phone back into my purse. The preternatural quiet from my typically boisterous family makes me realize they’re all staring at me.
“What?” I ask, giving them each a piece of my frown. “What are you looking at?”
“Who you texting?” Kayla aims her chin at my phone.
“Is it that Stern boy?” Mama asks with a smile. “Nose been wide open for you since he was old enough to know.”
“What does that even mean, Mama?” I ask. “Old enough to know what?”
“What girls are for,” Keith drawls.
“Focus, fam,” I say, trying to keep my voice light when my heart is Titanic in my chest, overburdened and sinking. “Less talk about my love life and more about this damn biography. Piers got me a number for the author, this Serena Washington, so I’ll try to find her today.”
“Yeah, like I was saying,” Keith interjects. “I knew a Serena Washington. She was Mrs. Washington’s niece. Lived across town, but bussed in one year. She was in my class.”
“That would be quite a coincidence,” Kayla says. “Though Washington isn’t exactly a unique name.”
“If there’s a connection,” I say, standing and grabbing my purse, “I’ll find it.”
I stride to the door, but Mama stops me there with a hand on my arm.
“Tru,” she says. “I love you, and I’m glad to have you home.”
I’m taken aback for a moment and look from her hand on my arm to the sincerity in her eyes.
“Yeah, I forgot how good it is to have you around,” Keith says, his cocky grin softened around the edges into a sweet smile.
We all look to Kayla, silent and watching us.
“What?” She smirks. “Tru’s been a pain in the ass all my life.”
The obvious humor behind her insult spurs us all to laugh again, and I realize how much I needed things to be right with them with so much going wrong.
“Love you guys.” I split a grateful smile between them all. “Zee, is there an office I can use to make some calls?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Empty office at the end of the hall.”
I walk down the corridor and close the office door behind me with a decisive click, leaning against it, almost afraid to call Ezra. Number one, what’s happening under his roof will affect the rest of my life, and I have no control over it. Having no control makes me feel like one of those blow-up wavy, flailing things you see advertising tires and used cars. Number two, the only thing I hate more than feeling out of control is feeling weak. And Ezra is my weakness.
There’s no way I’m moving forward if that baby is his. The worst thing for my state of mind embarking on one of the most important campaigns of my life would be battling menopause…while someone else is pregnant with my boyfriend’s baby. When I’m away from him, when I don’t see him or hear his voice, or feel him, I know that’s what’s best. But he makes me weak. Will he make me stupid, too? Will wanting him mean accepting something I know for me is wholly unacceptable?
I dial.
“Tru,” Ezra answers on the first ring, his voice even, but with a thin line of anxiety strung through it. “Hey.”
“Hey.” The line goes quiet, but there’s no telling what he’ll say so I fill the silence first. “Any word on the charm?”
His pause tells me that isn’t where he wanted to start this conversation.
“I left my mom a voicemail,” he says. “She’s not great about checking those, but I’ll try her again. I spoke to Noah, though, and asked him to have her call me back. She sneaks in a call with him every day, though she denies it.”
I allow myself to smile, thinking of Noah’s quick, eager grin and his eyes, exactly the shade of Ezra’s, always bright with questions, sharp with intelligence. “He’s a pretty great kid.”
“Yeah, he is.” Ezra clears his throat. “Aiko has no idea how far along she is.”
That levels my smile into a straight line. “Oh, yeah?”
“She and Chaz have been sleeping together for three weeks. It’s early, but it could very well be his.”
“And when did you last sleep with her?”
“Seven weeks ago.” I don’t have to tell him it’s more likely that it’s his. He knows that. “She’s trying to schedule an appointment with her doctor so we can know for sure.”
“You’ll go with her?”
“Of course.” I hear the frown in his voice, hear the tension of wanting to detach from this for me, but being too good of a man to send her alone. I resent him and fall deeper in love with him in the same breath.