Page 42 of Keyoni & Sage
I grabbed her hand, guiding her out of the room. “Come on.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “What about Keturah?”
“She’s thirteen,” I said, accepting the fact that my little girl wasn’t so little anymore. “If she don’t know, she’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t want to give off the wrong impression?—”
“Of two consenting adults?” I posed. Sage had no response. “Exactly. Now bring your pretty ass here.”
I started feeling her up on the walk to my room.
SAGE
“I hate these meddlin’ ass people!” Lanique ranted. “Ugh! Why can’t they mind their fucking business?!”
Stepping out of my room, I asked, “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Lanique repeated. “What’s wrong?” she said again. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong!” She pushed the letter she was holding into my chest. “Thisis what’s wrong.”
I read the letter, advising of the numerous fines she amassed by violating her lease. She had a deadline of three days to get rid of the ferrets, bearded dragons, guinea pig, and even the fish, since she wasn’t supposed to have a tank of that size anyway. She could keep two animals—either both cats or the dog and one cat—and say goodbye to all the others.
“How did they find out?”
I gave her the heads up when Jami told me.
“The property manager came in with the maintenance man. I didn’t have time to put ’em up.”
“I told her, Sage,” Cauvey revealed. “But she didn’t want to listen to me. She was too busy on her phone.” He fell onto the couch.
“Trinity was texting me.” I rolled my eyes at the mention of our other cousin. “It was important.”
“Well,thisis important.” I passed her the letter back. “What are you gonna do?”
“There’s nothing I really can do. I have to get rid of my babies.”
I saw the tears she attempted to blink back. One fell anyway though.
“Don’t cry, Nique Nique.” I wrapped my arms around her. “We’ll figure out something.” My hold on her tightened. “We always do.”
“It ain’t even that fucking serious,” Cauvey said behind us. “They’re just animals. You’ll get over it.”
“I hate you.”
She pushed me off and stormed toward her room. I heard a door open and slam shut.
“Why did you have to say that?”
“Because it’s true,” he defended. “She’ll get over it. We got too many fucking animals anyway.”
“You can never have too many animals.”
“Bullshit. We got four fucking litter boxes. That’s too damn many.”
I was fighting a losing battle. Cauvey would never understand our love of animals. They were like family.
Lanique’s dog Cara made her way to the front door. She started sniffing around, a sign that she needed to go outside. I volunteered to take her out to get away from the conversation and ran into a solid body when I stepped out of the door.
He damn near knocked me down, grabbing me before I tipped over.
