Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 74450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Disappointment.
Rage.
A need for revenge.
They came together quietly, watching each other lose silent control. His body stiffened as he jerked a few times, releasing his balm inside her canal. She caressed his back with her fingertips as the music played, and he snuggled against her.
A few minutes passed. Perhaps more. She looked up at the ceiling, floating high in the air, looking for answers.
“I have fallen in love with someone just as complicated as me. This is fate. Karma, too.”
“…You’re not complicated,” he murmured against her neck, eyes closed.
“I am. I just make it look easy.” She laughed mirthlessly. “I have issues. I have issues with my father. I fight with my art. I hate it and love it. I have issues with other women folk because I don’t do micro-aggressions, pettiness, and competition well, yet I love my sistas, too. I have two best friends but if I were less guarded, I’d have plenty more. Black women need other Black women. What am I trying to prove, and to whom? What does it matter? I live in my head. It’s lonely in there sometimes. Often there’s too much going on in there, too. It’s crowded. I sometimes feel crazy. Out of my mind.”
“If you never second-guessed yourself, that would mean you believed yourself to be perfect. Perfection doesn’t exist. Beauty does, inside and out.” He yawned, not the least bit concerned by her confessions.
Caspian was a refreshing, enigmatic, amazing man. Red flags, madness and all.
“You’re top tier. I’m a walking contradiction. I see things that I feel I should be and present them as fact. People look up to me so I keep my internal struggles to myself. I made a lot of rules for the men I date, knowing that for the most part, it would be humanly unattainable… And then came you.” She sniffled, then he wiped a tear from her cheek.
“I didn’t come to you. You found me. Baby, there’s something on my mind.” When he sat up and looked into her eyes, she fell in love with him all over again. “Let’s say there was someone you loved.”
“Mmm hmmm. Romantically, or just friendship?”
“More like a son, or little brother.”
“Okay.”
“And let’s say, right before you moved away forever, meanin’ you’d never see this person again, you left them a present. That present was only a key. It had no instructions on where it would fit. Nothing. The key kind of looks like a key you used for work. As a woman, why would you leave someone an item like that?”
She took a moment to answer. “Is this a riddle?”
“It might be. Brainstorm with me.”
She shuddered when he took her right breast in his hand and squeezed it.
“I would think if I left someone I cared about a key like that, it would mean it’s important. One thought that comes to mind is that I want to tell them something but don’t have the guts to just come on out and say it. Did this person move away abruptly before giving the key?”
“No. The move was known about in advance.”
“Okay, well, if it belonged to the door of a place I used to work at, then I would expect this brotherly person to go to where I worked, after I had moved away, and open a door. A drawer. Something. If I was the brother, I would look at the key with the eyes of an artist. Notice the fine details. Put it under a microscope, so to speak. If I loved ’em like you say I do, then I wouldn’t make it easy for them to crack the mystery, but not too hard, either. If it’s too hard, then something is wrong. Me leaving a key like that—with no note, no instructions, and nothing explaining what it goes to means I had something to hide before I moved away. Women are usually natural communicators. We’re not going to leave difficult puzzles for something we want you to understand. As a woman, and if I loved you like my own brother or son, I wouldn’t want the secret to be forever undiscoverable. I’d want that person to know. I’d want you to know.”
They stared at one another for so long… held each other for so long…
“Caspian…”
“Yeah?”
“There’s another possibility. Have you considered you were left what you were supposed to have, but something happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe someone messed with the key… removed the box it unlocked, the code to a locker, or a letter that gave instructions. I have a hard time believing that your aunt left you a key and that’s all.”
“…You know.”
“Of course I know. I see colors you don’t. I speak your language and understand your thoughts without the need for words. We’re alike, but people can’t tell at first glance. I’m an artist with paint. You’re an artist with problem solving. You got stuck between the lines because it didn’t make sense. You’re insane but logical. You got stuck because someone you trusted interfered… Now it’s up to you to find out what happened, and unlock the truth…”