Page 142 of Tangled Hearts
“Knocked out.” Hov’s lips curved. “Come roll with me. Just one, then I’ll let you go back to getting your life together.”
“You so petty, Quameek,” she laughed. “I guess.”
The backyard was quiet; the kind of silence that made it feel private. Hov dropped into the chair to break down a blunt with steady hands. As he licked it to seal it, he motioned her closer. “Sit down, kid… I don’t bite.”
She sat across from him, legs pulled up under her, watching him work. When he lit it and pulled deep, she leaned forward, took it from him, and let smoke slip slowly through her lips. “Still the same,” she teased, tasting the same weed he’d been smoking since he started.
“Don’t fix what ain’t broken.” He grinned. “I like the level of high this gets me.”
“I feel you,” Knycole blew smoke from her lips.
They sat with everything between them, the smoke, the night, the silence. Her eyes stayed on him. He noticed.
“You look different,” he muttered. “Something on your chest?”
Her stomach twisted at how effortlessly Hov could read her.
Knycole tucked hair behind her ear. “I been talking to my counselor. I’m changing my major.”
Hov’s brows lifted. “To what?” A knowing smirk resting on his lips, he just needed her to say it.
“Pre-Med.” Her voice was steady, even though her heart was racing.
He sat back, blunt paused at his lips. “Dead ass. You gon’ go big?”
“For real.” She shifted, arms wrapping around her knees. “Nursing was safe. Easy. But I don’t want safe. I want to change lives. I want to change mine. I feel like this is the only way I can do it.”
He leaned forward. “Kid… you don’t even know how proud that shit makes me. Dead ass. You hear me?”
Her chest tightened. “You proud?”
“I’m more than proud.” He tapped his chest. “I’m talking about standing-on-the-table screaming proud. I always told you, you bigger than the shit around here. Always told you, you had it.”
Her eyes misted. “You’re the first person who ever made me believe it.”
Hov’s eyes didn’t move from hers. “You did it. You making it real. I love that for you. My BM bout to be a fuckin’ doctor.”
She let out a shaky laugh, grabbing the blunt just to calm her hands. “You always knew how to make me feel like I wasn’t crazy.”
“You not crazy. You’re chosen, kid. Everything you’ve been through was to get you here.”
Knycole held his words in her chest like she was storing them for later, like she needed them to carry her through every late night and long class ahead. Nobody else ever talked to her like that. Nobody else ever saw her that clearly.
Noir did sometimes, but Hov always did.
The blunt burned slowly between her fingers, the smoke slipping into the night, but the high from him alone was already settling inside her. This was what she missed. His voice steadying her, reminding her she wasn’t small, wasn’t average, wasn’t stuck.
Her eyes stayed on him, studying his face in the low light. He wasn’t the same boy she used to fight with, but he wasn’t far from him either. The scars were there, the weight too, but the way he looked at her… it was the same. That look had never left.
For Hov, this was more than just pride. It was proof that even when their hearts twisted in knots, they were still tied to each other’s wins. Loving her meant celebrating her, even when they weren’t right. Even when they were distant.
Tangled hearts weren’t always about pain—they were about finding your person again, after everything bent and broke. About realizing some love was etched too deep to die out.
Knycole wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, trying to laugh it off, but her voice weakened. “I don’t think you get how much I needed to hear that from you. Everybody else just… expects me to figure it out. You the only one that ever really seen me.”
Hov grabbed the blunt from her. “I’ll always see you. Even when you was tryna play me, even when you was running, I still saw you. That’s why it cut the way it did. ‘Cause I knew you was mine but you ain’t know it yet.”
Her lips trembled. “I knew. I just didn’t want to admit it.”
