The sweetest part, p.1
The Sweetest Part, page 1
THE SWEETEST PART
Lashae Latimore
Copyright © 2017 LaShae Latimore
Published by Love and Literature Publications
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written consent of the publisher, except brief quotes used in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living or dead, or to real locals are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents are entirely coincidental.
Prologue
“He’s dead! Oh my God, What did I do?”
I repeated these words over and over again. I knew what I was saying and I could hear the words echoing throughout the silent room, but reality hadn’t set in. I stood there just staring at his lifeless body wondering how or why I had just done what I did. A faint smile appeared to be rested over his face, as if even in death he had taken me for a joke. I was a wreck pacing back and forth like a maniac. The way that he laid there on the bed only added to my anxiety. One arm dangled off the side of the thin mattress while the other lay limp in the pool of blood that was now forming over the cream colored sheets as if they wasn’t even a part of his body. Feeling my chest tighten and my throat dry up, I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. All of the sudden the room seemed to be spinning. Looking around the room through tears the only thing that was on my mind was my next move.
“What now? What do I do?” Paranoia had gotten the best of me as I sprang to the small window in the front of the room and shut the blinds after peeking out to observe the scene outside. It was completely still outside and the only light was from the dim neon sign in front of the building.
I paced back and forth in the small room as I carefully weighed all of my options and I soon realized that I only had one. I had to leave.
There were bags of what looked like clothing and shoes everywhere and hardly any space to maneuver through the furniture and clothes that were scattered about the room. My heart was racing and a big knot had formed in my throat; I felt like I had swallowed a tennis ball. I was sure someone heard the gunshot. The cops had to be on the way. The gun was still in my right hand as it shook uncontrollably. The strong sour smell of the gun powder was almost like ammonia lingering about the room, and only made it harder for me to breathe as I continued to hyperventilate.
Looking over at the night stand, I noticed a bottle of Hennessey. It had been a very long time since I took a drink, but this was a special occasion.
I walked over to the bottle and turned it right up to my mouth. My hand trembled as I placed the rim to my mouth and took a long gulp. I let the first taste rest in my mouth before letting it flow down my throat burning my chest. I waited a bit then I turned the bottle up again and gulped. This time I didn’t stop until I was sure that I had topped off the bottle. Again, I held the last sip in my mouth for a bit before swallowing. After I was done the effects were almost instant and it wasn’t long before I remembered exactly why I had done it.
He was a selfish little ass boy; that’s why I did it! He deserved what he got. Yes, I loved him ever since the first time I laid eyes on him. And when he first came into my life, I made a promise to support him and make sure that we had the best of everything. I saw the potential and I damn near killed myself trying to nurture it. I knew that he was going to be great and I would be the one to help him achieve greatness.
But he turned his back on me. He provided me with his ass to kiss time and time again. Not only that, he acted as if he wanted to ruin what I worked so hard to build. All the sleepless nights; the sacrifices that I made would all have been in vain had he carried out his plan. Here I was this whole time thinking that we were a team.
Now, it was one thing to want to ruin his own life, but his mistake came in when he tried to mess with mine. He thought that he could dismantle everything that I worked so hard to build and that’s why I had to do it. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s Third Law teaches us that in grade school. This was his equal and opposite reaction.
As the alcohol continued to circulate, my nerves had started to calm. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad. Slowly standing up from the chair that I sat in, I walked back over to the bed.
“You chose this.” I said to his dead body as if he could still hear every word that I said. “This was all you. I told you that you would be held accountable for your actions and this is what I meant.” Just as the last words slid out of my mouth I remembered that I had to get the hell out of there. I leaned down and kissed his cold forehead, right next to his wound.
My eyes scanned room, hoping to spot a sign as to what to do next. Realizing that I had to do something and that I had to do it fast, I grabbed his wallet, and his cell phone and slid them both into my back pockets. I tucked my gun in the front of my pants and pulled my hoodie over top. As I walked over to the door I noticed a picture of him and I lying on a table near the door. It was the two of us at a cookout a few summers ago. Sadness crept over me as I admired how happy we looked. Yes he got what he deserved, but that didn’t change the fact that I loved him. I truly loved him.
I glanced back at the bed where his cold heavy body was. “I loved you. I loved you with everything in me.” I said as I looked over my shoulder “I just so happen to love me more.”
And with that I opened the door. Quickly I did a quick survey of my surroundings. I looked around outside, making sure that the coast was clear, and then I slipped out into the cool crisp air of the night.
Chapter 1
Miles
“Miles! Miles wake up…”
I could hear my wife calling my name angrily in her sexy British accent, but it sounded as if she was speaking soft enough to not wake me out of my deep sleep. Maybe I was in such a deep sleep that it seemed as if she was speaking softly.
“Miles wake de hell up now! I need to talk to you.” This time I could hear that she was clearly upset. My wife was from London, England, but whenever she was upset her families Jamaican roots came out and she would switch her accent to patois without even realizing.
I parted my eyes just enough to glance over at the F.O.P. 20th Anniversary alarm clock that my lieutenant presented me with last year. I set the clock 10 minutes forward, which is why I was annoyed when I saw that the clock read 3:31 am.
“Damn it Shayne! What is it? I have 3 hours left of sleep and you know…”
I stopped myself when I looked over at my wife and saw that she was holding my cell phone. My heart started banging against my chest.
Shit! Not again. Not right now. I thought.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” I said softly as I studied her face and tried to read her disposition. I knew exactly what was wrong.
My wife was beautiful. She was what I liked to call “cherry milk chocolate.” Her deep brown skin had a mixture of red tones that I had never seen on anyone before meeting her. To me she looked like an African- Native American Queen. She had her long kinky hair wrapped up in a silk scarf neatly propped on her head like a crown. Her thick pink lips were pressed together like an angry duck which made her deep dimples more pronounced. I carefully sat up and moved in to pull her close to me but as soon as I touched her, she snatched her arm away.
Even as she stood over me infuriated, I couldn’t help but to stare at how sexy she was. Her thick thighs and onion ass were trying to escape from the boy shorts that she was wearing. As she paced back and forth my eyes seemed to continue to migrate to the side boob of her perky A-cups as my white beater clung to her breast.
She knew I loved when she wore those boy shorts.
“Miles what di hell yah do now? Who is dis?” she yelled.
Grabbing my phone from Shayne I felt my heart sink as I read the text message.
Miles we need to talk, ever since I told you I was pregnant you have been avoiding me…but I won’t go away. This baby won’t go away.
I hung my head as I thought on what was about to happen. I had been down this road a few times, but never anything this serious. “Shayne…” I started but she cut me off.
“Why yuh keep doing this? Mi try mi best to be a gud wife. An yuh kip fucking round wid dem yah whores. Yuh nuh love mi? Yuh out here inna dem yah streets wid di dutty women. Wah gwine?” She screamed through tears.
Knowing that I had few options in the situation, I went directly into cop a plea mode as usual. “Shayne I’m sorry. You know I love you.” I said. “I have no excuse for this, but she means nothing. You have to believe that, Shayne.” Pausing for a second to check her demeanor, I noticed that Shayne’s fist were balled up as she held them along side of her thighs. Typically this meant that Shayne was ready to lay hands on me. I kept talking to try and diffuse the situation. “She was just someone I met when I went out with Richie. I should have never given her my number.” My words seemed to pour out of my mouth all at once like a waterfall.
“Miles did you sleep with her?” Shayne said folding her arms. Shayne’s question hit me like a jab in the face. I knew the answer to the question and I wanted to tell her the truth, but the words would not come out. I guess my silence gave her the answer that she needed. She threw her hands up and began pacing the room. Her manicured feet sank into the plush carpet under the weight of her angry steps. “Miles, you know what I’ve been through. You know that I’ve been in relationships with men who didn’t really love me…men that wanted one thing from me and that’s it. Why yuh continue to treat me like I’ m dispensable? Like…I’m just one of the girls you decided to take home one night?” she folded her arms and waited for an answer. When I didn’t immediately respond to her query, Shayne continued.
“And now, after all of the shit that we’ve come back from, all of the shit that I have brushed under the rug…this? Someone claiming to be pregnant with your child.”
I grabbed her arm again and this time she let me pull her close. The look on her face let me know that she was furious. I knew that it was time for me to begin the process of me playing on her emotions and feelings in order to get myself out of a bad situation; one that I created.
“Shayne, these females don’t mean anything to me!” That was the truth. “I only ever seen that girl once.” That was a lie. “You are all that I want in a woman, from start to finish.” Truth. “I’m done with this foolish shit. I see how bad it hurts you and I never want to lose you, Shayne. I don’t know why I do the things I do, but it’s done! I’m sorry! You have to believe me.” Partially lies, but mostly the truth.
I felt bad that I continued to hurt Shayne, but what really made me feel like shit was that I sometimes had to look her in her beautiful face and lie to her to protect her feelings and self-esteem. It was the age old question; Do you lie to the one you love to protect them, or do you tell the one you love the truth because you respect them?
Shayne had been through so much in her life. She had been through a series of abusive relationships before she met me, both physically and verbally. She had been through things that no woman and in her case, no child, should ever have to go through. She certainly had some scars.
I tried to be as faithful to her as she was to me. My problem was my weakness for the feminine physique. The way that the female anatomy came in all shapes, sizes and forms; it consumed me and my better judgment ever since I was a young boy back in grade school. I loved Shayne. I bought her any and everything she wanted, even when she insisted that she didn’t need any of the fancy things that I showered on her. I worked hard to make sure that she didn’t have to worry about any of the bills for the house and encouraged her to focus completely on her degree. Of course, she refused to let me take care of her because she was raised to be independent and to support her man in any way that she could. It was for this reason, that she started her last year of school and went down and got a job as an executive assistant to the VP of a bio chemical engineering firm in Philadelphia.
Shayne was the total package. She was very intelligent, sexy and supportive. She graduated at the top of her class in high school and took some time off to study abroad in Africa. After starting her freshman year of college at Princeton University she wound up transferring to Temple University due to issues with her tuition. I worked hard to make sure that we were not only stable, but comfortable. My work as a detective at the Camden County Police Department spoke for itself and I had created a name for myself across surrounding areas. I worked my way up from a uniform officer and became the youngest detective in the districts history at the age of thirty-five. I won countless awards for my dedication and commitment on the job including the Prestigious Samuel J. Battle Award for Outstanding Police Work and Leadership. All of which came with a very impressive six figure salary.
Even though she seemed to nitpick and majority of the time, nagged me until I did what she wanted, none of my accomplishments would be possible without Shayne pushing me to do better.
I looked at my wife as she held her head down and cried. After a few minutes of her sobbing into the palms of her hands, she stopped. For a minute she just sat there in silence. After a few additional minutes she stood up, tossed back her head and stared at the ceiling for what seemed like forever. She turned to me and stared me directly in the eye. This caught me off guard so I offered a goofy mouth-and-tooth only smile back.
“Baby, I love you.” She said in a tone that was hard to read. “I know that you are a great man. That’s what makes this so hard to accept.” She slowly shook her head. “But you gotta fight those demons, baby. Loyalty has an expiration date, Miles.” With that, she tossed me my phone and walked around to her side of the bed. After tightening her head scarf she climbed in the bed and just laid there. I couldn’t tell if she had fallen asleep or if she just laid there pondering on the situation, but she was still for a while. As we laid there in our king sized bed, both of us on opposite sides, I couldn’t help but feel the chill that filled the space between the two of us.
Shayne was lying with her back to me and after a while, I noticed that her petite shoulder started to jerk up and down as she sobbed softly. I knew that I should have left her alone. I should have just let her have her space, but instead, I stretched my arm across the chilly bed and placed my hand on her lower back. Shayne arched her back slightly but she didn’t move away from my touch. I invited myself a little closer.
When I was close enough I ran my hand along her back then wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her close to me.
I pulled her close until we were spooning and her body fit with mine like a puzzle piece. Shayne’s sobs were now louder and harder but she still did not pull away as I buried my face in her neck and kissed her softly.
Inhaling deeply, I took in the smell of her sweet smelling body wash. She was so warm and soft and with each kiss to her neck, I felt a little more shame. I was ashamed that I could love someone so much, yet be so weak and a careless with her feelings. I couldn’t even offer up an explanation for my wrong doings. In that moment an overwhelming feeling of fear came over me. I was scared that I would lose my beautiful wife to weakness. I was scared to death that she would realize that despite my trying to convince her that I wasn’t that bad, and that there were men out there that were doing things far more outlandish and disrespectful than I was; she would realize that there were men out there that could and would treat her like the queen she was and she deserved nothing less.
Shayne and I had been through a lot of shit; most of it at my hands, but never anything like this. A pregnancy allegation whether it be true or false was something I wasn’t sure that we would be able to come back from. But I had promised myself right then and there that I would die trying to keep us together.
I rubbed my body on her soft behind as I pulled her as close to me as I could. I reached around and grabbed her breast and to my surprise she placed her hand gently on mine as I massaged them.
“I’m so sorry, Shayne.” I kissed her neck slow and long after whispering in her ear. “I don’t deserve you, but I am going to show you how much you mean to me.”
Kissing her neck again, I gently turned her until she was on her back. I started with another kiss on her neck then a kiss on her chest. I kissed her soft brown skin until I reached her breast. Shayne seemed to be into my touch as I gripped her behind with one hand as I ran my other hand down her thick soft thighs. I continued my train of soft wet kisses down her chest and across her belly ring until I got to the section right above her crotch. I spent a little extra time, kissing and licking until she grabbed my head and pushed for me to move on. Just as I went to move in for the kill, my phone rang. My heart started pounding again as I slowly raised my head to glance over at my phone buzzing on the other side of the bed. My first thought was to ignore it, but I knew that Shayne would never let that fly. Nervous and afraid, I reached over the bed and picked it up to see who was calling.
Oh Thank God! It was Richie.
“Rich, wassup? It’s 3:45 in the morning. You better be dying or in jail,” I barked into the phone as Shayne slid from under me and sat up to read my expression.
“Well, someone’s dead, but it ain’t me, man.” Richie joked.
“What you mean, man?” I mouthed to Shayne that it was Richie and rolled over and sat on the edge of the bed as Richie explained the scene.
“Yea man, I’m down here at the Moonlight Motel on 130, it’s a fresh body down here waiting for you.” He said sounding almost amused.
“Well, how the hell did you beat me there, nigga?” Richie was never on the job early. Hell, Richie was never on the job on-time.
“I just so happened to be down here at the VFW and heard the call come through on the scanner,” he said proudly. Richie was what I liked to call a functional alcoholic. We joked all the time about how he had a liver made of steel and how he could drink Henny for breakfast lunch and dinner. It made perfect sense that Richie just so happened to be at the bar when he got the call.
