Page 98 of Be My Compass

It’s still daylight. In the middle of a parking lot.

Doesn’t matter.

I’m here.

He’s here.

This is our world.

I realize, in that moment, that I want every minute of every day to involve Kastle. To touch some part of this. To create this world that we’re building. I want to breathe and eat and dream it.

He pulls back. Rests his forehead against mine. “I trust you.”

It hurts me. Those words.

They make me want to curl up in a ball.

Because he knows.

He knows I did something to hurt us. To hurt him.

But he’s talking himself out of it.

I try to speak, but I can’t find the words. What can I say? I hate your mother, so I used you without your permission? I threw you out to the world and grabbed our burgeoning love as a weapon to beat the crap out of her?

No.

Did I?

Did I do that?

“Come on.” Kastle takes my hand and leads me into the store.

Every eye turns to us. The women are all gorgeous shades of brown. Black women. Beautiful black women. Natural hair. Relaxed hair. Wigs. Dresses. Skirts. Pants. Smirks.

The men wrap their arms around them. They’re all various shades of pale. All blinding levels of adoration and worship. They understand what they have. The gift. The queens. The melanin. They understand.

I see it in a heartbeat.

And I get why Ollie invited us here.

“Is it just me,” a woman with reddish-brown curls and mischievous brown eyes speaks first, “or did watching them make you want to pull your man into a dark corner and take advantage of him?”

All ten women raise their hands.

I hold Kastle’s fingers tightly.

And I laugh.

And they laugh too.

Just like that, I’m a part of them.

I sit between the woman who spoke—Venus—and another woman, Asia.

We talk.

We ply Zania with compliments for those scrumptious brownies.

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