Page 70 of Body Language
“Look, Zejah,” I said firmly, “your life is about to change. For real. A baby isn’t a small thing. And you have to stop being hot out here before you ruin yourself completely. You hear me?”
She just cried harder. Shoulders shaking, chest heaving.
I sighed, rubbing my temples. “I’m not trying to be mean, baby. But this…. This is family business. I’ll help you where I can, but this don’t really have anything to do with me.”
The look she gave me could’ve cut through steel. She whipped her head toward me, eyes blazing through all those tears.
“It has everything to do with you,” she snapped, her voice cracking but loud enough to slice through the air.
My brow arched. “What the hell you mean?”
Zejah sat up straighter, wiping her face with the back of her hand. Her lip trembled.
“Because I’m pregnant with your niece or nephew.”
The air left my lungs.
“…What?” My voice barely came out.
Her eyes locked on mine, watery but steady.
“It’s Huxley’s baby.”
18
Niveah
My whole body went cold.
Huxley???
The name hit me harder than a slap. My little brother. My responsibility. My baby that I raised like he was mine when our mama couldn’t get her shit together. I was staring at the girl carrying his child, which meant I wasn’t just raising Hux and Heidi anymore. Now I had to make sure his baby… and Zejah… didn’t crumble under the same shit I’d spent my whole life trying to escape.
I felt my stomach twist, rage and heartbreak doing somersaults inside me.
Responsible for two kids and a newborn. How the fuck did I get here?
No. Four. Because like it or not, Zejah was just a kid herself. And the way she was looking at me… scared and reaching for something stable.. told me I couldn’t just leave her to figure her life out alone.
Then, like a puzzle slamming into place, everything about Hux made sense.
The late-night walks. The random mood swings. The way he’d been quiet lately, looking like he was carrying a mountain on his back but too damn stubborn to ask for help. The smart-mouthed responses followed by quick apologies. I thought it was just ball practice, grades, being a teenager. But nah… he’d been holding this. Holding her. Holding a secret so heavy, and all the while I was clueless.
God, why him? He’s still a baby himself…
Zejah’s voice broke through my storm.
“I been telling him to tell you,” she cried, her words stumbling over hiccupped breaths. “I told him we needed to figure out a plan before my mama found out, before things got this bad. But he kept saying… he kept saying he was gonna handle it.”
I swallowed hard. Handle it? Hux thought he could handlethis? A baby? At his age?
“Lord have mercy,” I whispered, more to myself than to her.
I just sat there and listened. That’s all I could do. I sat there on that busted-up stairwell with the sound of babies crying in the distance, dice shaking in some old head’s cup, and Zejah pouring her whole little heart.
“I tried to call Hux before I called you,” she said, sniffling. “But he didn’t answer. Hasn’t called me back, either.”
My chest tightened.Of course, he didn’t answer. His ass was at that tournament.
