Page 53 of Nobody But You

“Take a seat, Stephon.”

“No, Ma. I’m good standing. Now answer the damn question.” I was pushing it, but I was gone off the deep end.

“I know Julius from back in New York; he was friends with your father and me.”

“Ma,” I said tersely. She was trying to drag this conversation, and I was ready to get to it.

“When I first moved here from Puerto Rico, I met two men. One was Julius, and the other was your father, Sean. They were best friends. I fell quickly for Julius, and your father became one of my best friends. We all spent a lot of time together. However, Julius wouldn’t be with us as often. One night, I found him selling drugs on the corner when he missed our planned date. I had to go looking. He’d hidden it well up until then. I had no idea. Your father also told me that he sold on the same night, just not as much as Julius. Julius wanted to take over. That was all he talked about after I found out. He wanted us to get rich together. I wanted no parts.

I never told you, but your grandparents died in the drug game, and I didn’t want to suffer the same fate. That was the sole reason I came here. I needed to get away from it all. I was not about to be dragged back into a world I never asked to be in, not even for love.

When I told Julius I wasn’t happy with his lifestyle choices, he ended our relationship. Sean was there like the friend that he’d been the entire time. He was attentive and cared for me in ways that Julius never had. We were falling in love with each other. Sean even managed to escape that lifestyle, and we started to build a life together. Happily.

Julius was so caught up in the streets that he let me go. There were no issues with Sean stepping in to take his place. Julius didn’t care about me like I thought. At least at the time, I believed so,” she said. I handed her the stack of checks still in the envelopes.

“What are these? You’re talking, but you’re not saying anything. Why in the hell has Julius Miller been sending you money, and for how long?” She took the checks, looking down at them. She looked back up with a pained expression on her face.

“He had been sending me money every three months after your father died. I repeatedly told him I didn’t want it, but he refused to stop sending them. When you received your scholarship, I used your father’s life insurance and the money from the house sale to follow you to North Carolina. I didn’t want any of his drug money, and I thought I ran far enough away until I saw him at the mayor’s ball. It was the first time I’d seen him since I left New York. Why are these addressed to the brownstone?” She asked.

“I bought the place back seven years ago. I never said anything because you never wanted to talk about our time there,” I said as I paced back and forth. Everything she said, except where I fit in, made sense.

“Ma, I understand all of that, but what in the fuck does that man want with me. Did you know that he had been following me?”

“Stephon, I see you’re upset, but I’m still your mother, and you’ll talk to me as such.” Her voice had morphed into the tone she used when I’d pushed her limits.

“Ma,” I groaned.

“Answer the damn questions, Ma, now!” I yelled with my voice booming around the room. It was so loud that my mother jumped.

“Maybe I should let you two have this conversation in private. Stephon, I’m going to sit in the truck,” Jourdan said and stood. Until then, I had forgotten that she was in the room.

“Jourdan sit your beautiful ass down,” I said in a forceful tone. I didn’t mean for it to be, but I knew I needed her in the room. Something told me that I would not like what my mother was about to say, and I needed her here to ground me.

“Julius thinks he is your father, Stephon. I don’t even know how he found out that he could be. I never told him I was pregnant, but Sean and I started sleeping together the same night we’d broken up. When Sean and I found out, I decided you were Sean’s, and he died believing so. Sean signed your birth certificate, and I never said anything else about it, but deep down, I knew there wasno way you could be his. Julius found me at the ball, telling me he knew you were his. Saying some bullshit about how we can finally be the family he knows we can be and that he’s changed. He came here today to persuade me to tell you. I don’t even know how he knows where I live,” she said.

I stopped dead in my tracks. Suddenly, I found myself outside my body, looking in. Out of everything that she’d just said, all I heard was that Miller was my father.

“Let me get this right. You were out there in those Brooklyn streets being a hoe with two niggas, and now I’m just supposed to accept that the man who I’ve called my father my whole life isn’t and never was. You were just going to take it to the grave that my whole life was a damn lie because you don’t want to face your fucking demons.” The strong breaths I was heaving were interrupted by a swift and hard smack across my face. I was on the verge of blacking out until I felt a hand lock with mine while another rested on my shoulder.

“Stephon, I think it’s time for us to go. You and your mother need some time,” Jourdan said as she tried to push me from where I was standing. However, her attempts were unsuccessful because I was rooted in place. As I stared into the eyes of the woman in front of me, the thought that rose to the surface was that I didn’t know who in the hell this woman was.

Jourdan somehow pushed me toward the door. I stared over my shoulder the entire time until I was standing on the other side. I could faintly hear Jourdan in the background.

“Mrs. Rockwell, I’ll call you when he’s calmed down. You know I will. You get some rest, too. Today was a lot for both of you. I’ll call you, and you can tell me about that other man from the ball,” she said as the door closed. I didn’t know the woman on the other side. Hell, I didn’t even know who I was at the moment.

CHAPTER 27

Jourdan

Stephon wasn’t himself, and I didn’t blame him. If my mother had thrown something on me like that at that age, I would be acting the same. At any age, really. Here I was, thinking she was a good ol’ Clair Huxtable, and Mama Rockwell was damn Jenny from the block, or I should say Adriana from the block. I was shocked to hear she’d been with both men, but I wasn’t mad at it. Even though I currently wanted him dead, it didn’t take away from the fact that Julius was fine, and from the pictures of Sean that I’ve seen spread around both of their homes, so was he. Then, there was the man from the Mayor’s Ball, Marshall Declan.

Damn! Ok Mama!

Stephon was currently in his home gym, lifting until failure on every set. He came in, went straight there, and hadn’t come out since.

I was sitting in the living room, watching him on an iPad that contained a feed from all his cameras. Every so often,he would stare off. For the last few minutes, he sat there hunched over, his elbows on his knees, and a towel thrown over his head. I wanted to help him. I needed to get back on my game and formulate a plan.

Sure, I wanted to know who killed my father, but it would have to wait. Stephon had been right; I needed to return to what my father had taught me. The first thing was that I needed Miller back in North Carolina. I could do one of two things.

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