Page 35 of Give Me All Of You

“You need to be making a deci-”

I cut his ass off.

“Aye, I’m out. I didn’t come over here for this.” I stood to leave, and my father pinned me with an angry glare, and I gave him one right back.

“You’re not staying to eat?” my mother asked.

“Nah, I have plans for dinner.”

Kissing my mother and niece, I left my parents’ house just as fast as I came. When I got in the car, I called Rue. I was about to hang up and just pop up on her ass because she was taking too long to answer.

“Hello?” she answered, somberly. That shit immediately pissed me off because the only reason she could be sounding like that is because of her bitch ass baby daddy.

“I’m on my way,” was all I said. There was no need for her protest because I wasn’t going for the shit no way. She’d realize sooner than later that she’s dealing with a real nigga. I’m not waiting for her to tell me what the problem is. It’s my job to sense where there is one and offer to fix it in any way that I can.

Since my parents lived in The Estates too, it took me another hour to get back to The Heights and pull up on Rue. When she opened the door for me, I could tell that she was crying and that immediately had me seeing red.

“Wassup, shorty?” What’s wrong? I asked, pulling her into my lap.

“Keith, is what’s wrong,” she started. “He won’t leave well enough alone and leave me and my baby alone.” She cried.

I tried not to snap out because I wanted her to tell me what was wrong, but the shit was hard while looking at her cry.

“Tell me what happened.”

I listened to her run down the events that took place after I left her earlier. This nigga was a piece of shit, and I couldn’twait to ship his ass off. The part that pissed me off most was he was only doing this because she wasn’t allowing him to fuck on her anymore. From what she told me, she hadn’t had sex with him since baby girl was like four months old. This nigga was a whole bitch, and it showed.

“What am I supposed to do? I can’t afford a lawyer and if he takes this shit to court, I’ll lose my baby. I can’t lose my baby, Hassan.” She buried her face in my chest and cried. I tried my best to soothe her, but I knew this shit was heavy. When her cries faded out, she looked up at me with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

“I don’t know what I can do at this point. It’s like my back is against the wall.”

Lifting her chin, I kissed her lips and said, “marry me.”

Chapter Fifteen

JaRue

“Marry me.”

I thought I was hearing things when I Hassan said that, but I wasn’t because he repeated it.

“Huh?”

“Marry me,” he repeated.

“Marry you? Are you serious?” I quizzed.

I looked in his face to see if I could see if he was playing, and his expression never wavered.

“Hassan,” I expressed.

“Listen. Hear me out. You’ve been around The RCF long enough to know what they have going on and how things go. My pops never pressured us into the arranged marriage thing, so we never felt the need to get married. Well, all of that changed when my pops handed everything down to me. It’s my birthright to take over my family, the same way it was in place for Knas. Since he’s the head of all the families, he can set certain stipulations in place. Now that I’m in transition to take over my family, he suggested I get married so that I could have a structural foundation. He gave me this rundown about how it helped him and shit, then gave me a timeframe to do so,” he explained, but that didn’t tell me why in the hell he just asked me to marry him.

“What does that have to do with me?” I asked.

“Right now it doesn’t, but if you agree to it, it’ll help you with the situation with your baby daddy?”

“How?”

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