Page 161 of Falling Into Gravity

He looked down at the documents, eyes wide. “You serious, cuh?”

“I don’t play about you,” she cheesed, “or your future.”

Malik sat back, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe it. “And the music app?”

“Little Lunar asked for you specifically, said he didn’t want nobody else building it but ‘the hood genius from Crescent.’ I got the advance deposited in the business account I opened under your name. I used some of it to keep Pharaoh and Quesha’s bills paid while you were down. I sent grocery deliveries every week - covered Pharaoh’s PT. He’s got a nurse now too.”

Malik didn’t speak. His jaw clenched and he dropped his head.

Myesa caught the moment before it could fall too heavy. “You raised her right,” she told Solar, who had stepped outside and was listening from the side with French, both arms crossed.

“I’d like to think we did,” Solar beamed, chin lifted.

Malik looked over at Aku, eyes glassy. “You did all that…for me?”

“I did it because I love you,” she told him. “And because I saw you working so hard to build something for everybody else, but you never left space for someone to catchyouif you fell. So I stepped in. That’s what we do, right?”

Anthony cleared his throat, nodding slowly. “That’s real love. The kind that don’t fold just ’cause shit get hard.”

Gran Betty added, “You don’t let someone love you like that and walk away the same.”

Qamar leaned against the patio rail, eyes on the horizon. “You picked a woman who’s gon’ guard your legacyandyour body. That’s rare…protect her.”

Malik looked like he was still trying to process it all.

He rubbed the space above his brow, then let his hand drop to his lap. The weight of their words pressed into him, not heavy but anchoring. He wasn’t used to being spoken about with that kind of care, that kind of reverence. He wasn’t used to beinglovedlike this and still standing afterward. Most love he’d known came with bruises or silence. His parents loved him to the best of their ability, but it was rooted in that hood love. But this…this was soft and firm in all the right ways. It made room for him to be brilliant and broken.

“You good?” Aku asked, hand resting gently on his thigh.

He nodded. “I just…I ain’t never had nobody ride like that... Not outside of my family.”

“You do now.”

His eyes burned, but he blinked fast. He wouldn’t cry, not in front of all these people. “I used to think I was only good for survival,” he said, quietly. “I didn’t think I’d ever know peace. Then you came in and made it feel regular.”

“You deserve peace,” Solar said from the steps, “so do all our sons.”

Myesa smiled at her, “and our daughters.”

There was something holy about the silence that followed. Not the church kind, but the real kind—the kind built on survival, on joy, on Black love that knew how to endure.

It wasn’t just about healing from a shooting.

It was about what came after.

How you rebuild…How you stay free…How you stand when the world tried to bury you.

Malik breathed in deep, chest rising more than it had since the shooting. “Thank you,” he said to Aku. “For everything.”

“You don’t ever have to thank me,” she whispered back. “We a team.”

Aku reached for his hand again and held it against her stomach.

“I told you I clicked my heels,” she whispered, “we home.”

“Where my baby at?” Aku’s Granny Stephanie rushed onto the patio.

Qamar cocked his head to the side. “Ma, where you been all this time?”

---