His eyes tightened. “It’s a girl. A dark woman has seduced you.”
I laughed. It was odd to think of Rosa as a dark woman, when she was so full of energy and vigor. It was odd to think I would have once accepted this assessment, or even repeated it.
“You lost me the day you sent me to become a true soldier,” I said. “I saw the world. I saw real things to fight for. But, yes, it was indeed a woman who finished the transformation.”
His eyes condensed to coals. I thought he would erupt in rage, but suddenly he started blinking. He clutched my shoulders. “You are abandoning your father for a woman?” he said. “After everything we have been through?”
“It is because of what you put me through,” I said, softly.
His face was quickly becoming a mask of grief, but I didn’t break. I did not even hug him. Our relationship had spanned decades, but it was all logic. Anything to avoid the emotional fracture at the heart of it.
“You abandoned us,” I went on. “The day mother died, you abandoned us. What came back from the grief was not the father I knew. I was too young to understand the change, just that you needed me. And so I supported you, and I continued to support you well beyond what my experiences taught me was right. Vaughn leaving should have woken me up, but I was too sturdy. Too stubborn. It took two years of the military to make me confess the truth deep within. It took a bullet wound to break my will and a caring woman to heal me right. But now I see it clearly.”
“See what?” he said, desperately looking into my eyes as if they held the answer.
“You are wrong,” I said. “The cause is wrong. That’s just the truth. Grief shattered you, and you didn’t find all the pieces.”
I pulled out his grip. He stood there like a statue, completely wordless. There had always been a threat that this would destroy him. That he would just crumple. But there was a strength to him - a strength which had eventually made him rise from the bed after that month of grief.
Perhaps, in time, he could rise all the way out of it.
“You know my number,” I said. “I’ll be nearby. You can always call me if you need help with something serious. But not for the cause, for you. The cause is dead to me, do you understand?”
He lifted his head gently, but not all the way to my voice.
“If you can let it go,” I said. “If you can truly move past that moment, then we’ll be out there waiting for you.”
He startled up. “We?”
“The only brother I have left. I’m going to go find him.”
I lifted the sheet on the refrigerator, took a last look at Vaughn and me, perched together in our old colors. I let it go and clapped my father’s shoulders one last time.
“You call me when you’re ready to talk,” I said.
I strode out through the hall, away from the posters and hate, away from the freeze frames of a long lost past, away from the father who still lingered in the shadow of his memories.
The sun was soft behind white clouds. It was bright but not burning. Still, I hurried to the taxi and got inside.
I took it to downtown. My bank account held a good amount, but nothing most would consider wealth. Still, I spent some now on a hotel room in the middle of the city, one high over everything. I dropped off my bags and went to get my chopper.
Tomorrow, I’d look for an apartment. Tomorrow, I’d make a fresh start. Tonight, I wanted to be with the one person I intended to take into that new life.
I found her, as I had the first time, in the ER. Her dark hair lay strewn and spread across her shoulder. Her blouse was the color of spoiled milk specked with dirt. Her face looked as weary as if she’d been awake for days.
It was still the most gorgeous sight I’d ever seen.
I leaned by the wall until her blond nurse friend saw me and nudged her. She looked up, shocked a moment. Then, her mouth erupted into a sweet little smile. She checked the clock and came out.
“I didn’t know you’d be out so fast,” she said. “How’d it go?”
“No worse than expected. But I’m not here to exchange histories.”
I ran a finger along the length of her arm. I felt it shiver.
“Five more minutes till I can get off my feet,” she said.
“Perfect.” I pecked her lips. “Because that’s just how I plan to take you.”
It wasn’t long before I could keep my word. I had her rich, sweet body bare and spread wide open over white sheets. The glass balcony door lay open and the sheer curtains fluttered as Atlanta twinkled below.
My shirt was off, my skin beaded with sweat from the heat we were creating in this room. I crept up to her and dug my tongue deep between her legs. She cried and gripped my head with her thighs.
The taste was like nothing I had savored before, even the last time I had her. There was nothing to hold me back from experiencing her, no lies, no secrets, no worries. She was soft and moist and responsive as I licked her and squeezed her breasts. She tried to squirm away, but I pressed a palm under her plush rear and brought her further into my mouth.
She had given herself to me completely now. This gorgeous body, the one an old version of myself might have stupidly overlooked was mine now. I could take care of it and cherish it and treat it as she desired.
I furrowed her with my tongue, insistent, powerful, and hungry until she understood how much she could ask of me. Until she broke over me in an unending wail and washed my face with her sweet juices.
I owed her so much more to atone for my sins. For making her endure them and still granting me this.
I could not withstand the ache of being apart longer. I shoved down my pants, spread her open and slid into her. I groaned as her tight entrance squeezed me, accepted me whole. Rosa’s voice went out altogether. It was just a high whistle of air escaping and the wet sounds of me plunging it out.
I wrapped my arms around her and dug my mouth deep into her neck until her mouth sat warm against my ears. Then, I rode my whole body against her. Every inch inside her was exquisite, every second outside her, agony. I thrust into her harder and faster, gripping her tighter and tighter until we fit with perfect ecstasy.
Rosa found her voice again, and soon it was hammering against my brain, breaking my will, making me lose control. The bed bucked under our coupling and just as it felt like the springs might twist apart, Rosa’s voice broke.
Her hands scratched down my back, searching uselessly for holds. Finally, she gripped my butt and clutched it to me. She wanted me deeper. She wanted me to occupy her.
She wanted me to make her my home.
The very thought shattered me. I kissed her neck and slammed deep into her as warmth flooded me, before bursting out into her.
After, we lay in the sheets, snuggling and smiling and kissing. But it was just intermission. Soon, I had her pressed her up against the glass window. I took her so that all of Atlanta could see.
We slept well that night.
But when I woke the next morning, she was already up and dressing for work. I managed to press her into the shower for one last session, but then we both needed to leave. She had her shift.
And I had to do something I had already put off for far too long.
“You got this,” she told me, as we sipped at coffee outside a Starbucks. She had little time, but she knew I needed her strength for this.
I gathered a deep breath, like a sniper lining up a shot he couldn’t miss. I picked up the phone and rang the number I had found online.
“Hello,” a man answered.
The voice was lower and softer than I remembered, but I recognized it easily.
“Hi, brother,” I said.
There was a tremendous pause. A chasm that could crack my world in half.
Then, there was a half exhaled breath. Air that left smiling lips.
“Well,” Vaughn said on the other end. “It’s about damn time.”
Epilogue
I sat on the wooden bench at the precinct, drumming my fingers on the armrest. I had never expected the police station to be something other than an opposing force. My father had called it a thin veneer of civilization to hold in a city cracking at the seams.
But the cops and detectives moving in the pit around me didn’t show it. They laughed, they joked - even the ones bringing men to the station in handcuffs didn’t look mostly unhappy.
When I came in for an interview earlier in the week, they’d made clear my chances were low. But seeing this all just made me want it. I had to force myself to keep still as I waited for my follow up.
Rosa squeezed my hand. She was dressed in a bright blue summer dress that ran just past her knees. I felt calm looking at it, like I was seeing an open sky. She rested her head on my shoulder and that brought my frantic energy most of the way down.
No matter what happened here today, I would still get to leave with her.
The police sergeant came clipping up from the side hall. He was a tall, graying black man, in a slim fitting teal shirt and black pants. He might have looked weak at first glance, but I’d seen guys like that fight. Inside, he must be all steel cable.
He stopped at the conference room door, but glanced at Rosa peculiarly. Then, he ticked his head at me. I patted Rosa’s hand and got up to go in.
“Good luck,” she whispered.
The conference room had waist high windows looking out on both sides - into the precinct and onto the sunlit street. I sat down, and my world condensed to the thin metal-top table and the sergeant behind it.
“Is that your girl back there?” he asked, flipping through a manila folder.
“It is.”
“She’s cute.”
“She’s taken.”
The sergeant allowed a thin smile. He had seemed to like me even when I came in the previous day. Of course, that wasn’t enough to mitigate my tarnished service record. Or my past affiliations.
Rosa might just be though. She had insisted on leaving work early to be here for my second meeting.
“So,” the sergeant said. “I had a chance to talk with this Montego, the military officer responsible for your discharge.”
“Right.” I forced myself to breathe.
“He was not what I expected. No camaraderie there. Not for me as a cop, not for me as a veteran. Guess they haven’t really changed since my tour in the Gulf.”
“I imagine they want to remain impartial.”
He shrugged, but continued looking through sheets. “In our line of work, community outreach is the best crime-fighting tool we have.”
“I understand.” My breathing was not coming easier. I knew he had gotten something.
“Still, he seemed to treat you different. When I asked him about the nature of your dereliction of duty charge, he basically told me it was a technicality.”
The sergeant’s gaze lifted to mine, gaging me. I nodded slowly, struggling to keep the surprise of my face. I probably failed in a dozen little ways.
“It was enough to get me discharged,” I said.
“Yes.” The sergeant flipped the sheet over to some notes. “Now you freely admitted last time that you were punished because you left the base to go somewhere and help out your former outlaw biker club.”
“It’s not something I’m proud of, but it happened. The only good was that it led to me cutting ties once and for all. ”
“That’s well and good, but what interests me is that you got shot in the process. That’s hardly a technicality.”
I shrugged. “That was an accident. It led me to Rosa. That seems like a fair exchange to me.”
The sergeant met my eyes. “But you’re expecting me to believe that there was no other criminal activity? The MP had nothing else to hold against you?”
There was the stolen bullet, the stolen keycard. There was my confession about the drugs, even if they were never found. There was a ton that Montego could have shared to crater my chances here, but he didn’t.
“They don’t,” I said. “Whatever I set out to do, I committed no crime. It would be a dishonorable discharge if I did.”
The sergeant sat back in his seat, lacing his fingers together and studying me for a bit. “Montego also said one more thing.”
I mirrored his posture and felt the calm. This could be the knockout punch after Montego’s feint. If it came, it came.
“What?” I said.
“He recommended you for this position.”
That was a knockout punch alright. I moved my mouth, but it took seconds to finally speak. “Really?”
“He said you have a real commitment to protecting and serving. That you take care of people you feel are worth saving.”
I thought of Rosa out waiting for me. She had shared what she said to him. She must have made him believe I had changed. It was something I never could have done alone.
The sergeant smiled down at his notes. “I asked him if that was a danger given your known affiliation with a white power group. He simply said there was more to you than that.”
He glanced out the window towards were Rosa sat. “I think I can see how he’s right.”
“She’s my everything,” I said, trying to count how many times she had saved me now. “I mean that quite literally.”