Page 68 of Love me Like XO

“How do you feel?” Asha stood at the foot of my bed looking at me with pity in her eyes.Bitch don't pity me,I thought.

I was sure to be the last one laughing at the end.

She didn't know that, though.

None of them did.

I don’t know how, but I’ll make them all pay for this,I reassured myself.

It wasn’t that I hated my brother or anything like that. I didn’t. I just hated that he chose her over me. No matter what I did, I believed my brother would always have my back when I fucked up, but never in a million years did I think that he’d put me out and move on with his life. Yeah what I did in his house was foul, but we were blood and he always had me. At least that’s what I thought until I was climbing into Benson’s truck, and he was telling me how much of a manipulator Empress was. Not only that, but her own sister had taken his side, so there was something about her my brother didn’t see. Something hechosenot to see.

“How do you think I feel? I have a hole in my chest.” I mugged Asha, before pressing the button to administer more morphine for the pain my thoughts were causing.

She breathed deeply, attempting to not say what was on her mind.

“What? Say it,” I demanded, not liking that tongue biting shit. She cut her eyes at me while she began getting her bag ready to go. Thank God visiting hours were almost up. That meant she’d be out of my face.

“You. You have the nerve to sit in here and play victim when you shot our brother to protect a nigga that ran the woman he loved off the road. Then to make matters worse, your hateful ass was in the front seat.”

My eyes grew big, as I sat up, seeing the irritation in her eyes. She didn’t want to be here with me, that much was obvious, but her heart was too big not to be. I was her sister and technically she was all I had, because my stank ass auntie had washed her hands with me a long time ago. Instead of telling herfuck herlike I wanted to, I sucked that shit up and played the game. “You’re right. I was wrong. I allowed the drugs and my jealousy to cloud my judgment.”

She looked at me skeptically for a moment. I knew my sister, she had one of those pure hearts and wanted to believe the best in everyone. Bitch was too trusting. Shit, that’s why I fucked her husband last Thanksgiving, and she still didn’t know about it. Hell, I even flirted with him a few times in front of her soft ass.

“Seriously, I was messed up, and I’m sitting here pissed because I know I messed up. Can you tell him that? Can you tell him how sorry I am? How muc?—”

“Why don’t you tell him that yourself?”

“Because we both know he’s done with me. Just like Tete, tired of my shit and washing his hands. Thank you for still being here. I love you.” I was laying it on thick at this point.

She nodded her head. “I’ll talk to him and see what he says. I love you, too, Mia, but you gotta do better.”

“I know.”

A brief silence filled the space before she spoke again. “I need to leave, but I’ll see you soon.” Then she walked over and kissed my forehead. She was gone seconds later.

Sometime after my sister left and I was left to do some real thinking I fell asleep.

I needed to figure out what was next for me. I didn’t set out to just shoot my brother, but when I had the gun in my hand, and all the anger in my heart it was so easy. All my life Zero was the only person to have my back, then she came. He listened to her in the blink of an eye. He even kicked me out behind that bitch. Me shooting him instead if Benson was just right passage. He had to learn a lesson for not being there for me. For choosing somebody over me. Over the years I never cared about the females that my brother messed with, because they never posed a threat to our relationship, but this one was different. This bitch had to go, and I hoped to God she died in that hospital. My sister let it slip that she was unconscious and all banged up, shit I wished worse on her and those fucking babies. If she did makeit I swear I wasn’t gonna stop here, I’d make sure she suffered. That just meant when Zero did come to see me, I’d have to play the sorry role. Actually seem like a gave a fuck when in reality I didn’t. I had all this hostility in me for my brother that was only stemming from her. She got the parts of him that I didn’t. I saw it in the way he looked at her that night he bailed me out. She got the Zero that should have only been reserved for blood…for me.

I woke up to the middle of a conversation. It took a minute, but when my eyes focused I spotted a man standing in front of me. He was talking to someone on the side of me, prompting me to look that way, where I saw a woman seated on the sofa.

“Finally, she’s awake,” the man spoke seconds before the lights came on.

My eyes fluttered a few times, shocked by the blaring light, before I was finally able to look at the man and woman in my room. “Who are you and why are you in here?”

“You’re Amia Hughes, right? Zero’s sister,” the woman spoke through a thick accent.

“Ye...yes,” fumbled from my lips.

“Then you must know who I am, right?”

“No. My brother and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms.” I was honest.

She laughed. “That makes two of us. Brothers can be a big bother, can’t they?”

Ignoring her, the one standing tilted his head to the side and addressed me, “Oh yeah, and why is that?”

“He’s the reason I’m here. Him, that little bitch, and his boy,” I spat venomously. I had no loyalty to the brother who chose a manipulative bitch over me.

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