Page 45 of Out of Bounds
“Who the fuc… Who is Marcus?” I frowned.
“A boy in her class.” Maddie Claire laughed. “He’s all she’s been talking about lately.”
“Sophie Rose…”
“What, Daddy?” she asked all innocently.
Missing front tooth and all, my baby was gorgeous. Looking just like her mother, she could be a model. But man, she was only six. When the hell did she start liking boys? Knowing I couldn’t ruin the comfortability for future communication, I clear my throat. “You crushing on some knucklehead at school, my Rose?”
“Not a knucklehead, Daddy. His name is Marcus,” she corrected me, making the oldest two fall over in laughter.
“I don’t know how I feel about that, Sophie.”
“He’s just a friend. Mommy and Nana said I’m too young to have a boyfriend.”
“You are,” I confirmed.
“But he’s a boy… And he’s my friend, Daddy. So same thing, right?” she deduced, drawing temporary silence out of my ass.
“Well… Two things can be true at once. He is a boy, who isjustyour friend. But he’s not your boyfriend. Are you understanding what I’m saying?”
“No…” she said, staring at me with her head cocked to the side.
“Let it go, Daddy. Mommy tried to explain the same thing,” Maddie Claire added. “She doesn’t get it.”
“Is this what I have to look forward to?” I pondered. “You girls are growing up too fast for me?”
“Buttercup. You like boys?” I asked and poked Aurora in the cheek, making her giggle. “Do I have to worry about you and some lil’ knucklehead?”
“No, Daddy!” she said in between her giggles.
“Better not.” Looking up in the air, I begged time to slow down. If in a few short years, my Bug tells me about some littlenigga that has broken her heart, I was going to have to show up at his house with my gun. That was the only way to set the tone for the other three little ladies.
When I begged Masai for all of these kids, I wasn’t prepared for them to grow the hell up. I had four girls with four very different personalities. I wasn’t ready for them to start dating and shit. Just the thought of a little nigga making them cry had my eyes twitching. I see now that I was going to have to stay in their business. I’ll be done fucked around, and one of them slips through and ends up on a date or some shit.
“Finish eating your food. Daddy gone take y’all to go buy a Barbie doll or something.”
“We don’t play with dolls, Daddy,” Sophie told my ass.
“You gone play with ’em today.” I teased and pinched her cheeks.
I know if they had my ass this stressed out, Masai must’ve really been going through it. They told her all of their secrets; I had to damn near bribe them to get any information about their little lives. Peering around the table, I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. I might have been a shitty husband in Masai’s eyes, but one thing no one could ever say was that I was a half-ass father. The way my girls clung to me proved that I was doing something right.
This is it.After everything… this is how it ends.
I was holding the pen. My hand was steady, but my heart—my heart was shaking as if to shatter again for the one thousandth time since learning about Kreed’s junior. Kreed and his attorney were sitting across from me, waiting for me to seal our fate. My husband suddenly felt like a stranger, but I still felt compelled by him. There was a time when I knew every detail of his face and every shift in his mood. I could tell you how many times that vein in his neck pulsed depending on the day. I’d studied him, memorized his moves, used to look at him, and feltsafe.
Now, when I look at him, all I feel is pain, sorrow, disappointment. I thought being here at the table with our lawyers present would make me feel relieved. Shit, maybe even free, and while a part of me does, the other part is wondering if it’s too soon to make such a permanent decision. My mind was now questioning my heart.
Did I give up too fast? Is it possible for all of this to go away? Could we get past it if I tried harder?
The grief I felt was heavy all of a sudden. We had built a life together—shared a bed, a last name, and memories that only the two of us would ever understand. He knows me more than anyone has ever in my life, and yet here we are. We were on the brink of ending a story that we promised to keep writing.
Feeling his eyes on me, I knew he was willing for me to look at him. I knew without looking that he was pleading with me not to go forward. Staring at the line marked with an ‘X,’ I’m willing myself not to cry. After all,thisis what I wanted, so why does it feel like the minute I sign, I’m going to hurt myself more than I’m going to hurt him?
Why do I even care how he feels? He’s the responsible one for everything that has led to this. I don’t want to be the one to break down; not now, especially when I’m supposed to be strong and hold my head up high. Memories of the day we vowed forever to one another played over and over again in my head. I didn’t walk into this marriage expecting it to fall apart. I don’t believe he did either. But here we were, and now, I have to sign it all away. I had to seal our fate with conviction.
This would be easier if I hated him. However, I don’t hate Kreed. It’s impossible to hate someone whom I once loved with every fiber of my being. I’m not even angry anymore. I’m tired. I’m tired of questioning myself. Tired of feeling like maybe if I had done just a tad bit more, he wouldn’t have stepped out. The truth was, I was tired of beating myself up.
