The Billionaire's Secret: A BWWM Romance Mystery (25 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sanniyah

When I
finally stumble home, I am more than slightly drunk. I need to sleep, but I am
way too keyed up to do anything other than text Tricia. "You up?"

In
reply, I hear a dull thud. She's banging on the wall to let me know that she is
still up. The faint sounds of music accompany her invitation.

Just as
I raising my hand to knock, Tricia flings open the door, shotglass in hand.
"Bottom's up, bitch! Rita got a new job!"

Rita is
behind her, rolling her eyes so hard they might fall out of her head. I raise
my glass to her. "Congratulations!" I shout, a little too loudly. The
bourbon blazes a trail down my throat and I can feel my tattered emotions
rising even closer to the surface. "What are you going to be doing?"

She
squares her shoulders, then collapses, giggling and shaking her head. Tricia
eyes her with drunken pride. "You're looking at the new Senior Fellow for
Journalism Ethics at Haywood University."

"That's
incredible! I'm honored to be in your illustrious presence."

Rita
rolls her eyes again. "It sounds lot more prestigious on paper. Honestly,
I'm not even sure why they chose me."

Tricia
fixes her with a glare. "Because you're incredible. And you're damn good
at your job. The paper hasn't been using you the way they should be. Not at
all. You're finally going to get to shine, baby!" She breaks out into a
spontaneous jig that has us both laughing.

"Haywood
University, that's one I haven't heard of."

Rita
shakes her head. "You probably wouldn't, unless you were looking for
journalism schools in New England."

I feel
my heart sink. "So...you have to like, live there and stuff, right?"

Tricia
stops her spastic dancing. "Oh, um, yeah Yahya." She darts a quick
look at Rita who shakes her head imperceptibly. "We're going to have to
move."

All of
a sudden, all of the drinking hits me at once. My head is spinning as I sag
into the couch. Tricia moving? My best friend? Sure, since she and Rita got
married, I've been the third wheel, but I somehow thought we'd always live in
close proximity to each other. I couldn't bring myself to picture it otherwise.

Tricia moves
to sling her arm around Rita, nudging her into dancing. "You do understand
that I can't dance to the music that's only in your head, right?" Rita
laughs, squirming away. I smile, but it dies on my lips and Rita notices
immediately.

"Yahya,
you okay?"

"I'm
great," I lie. "I'm totally thrilled for you. I just think...no wait,
I know I drank way too much tonight."

Tricia
cocks her head. "You went out without me? Bitch, you told me you were
working."

"I
know," I moan, leaning forward and cradling my head in my hands. "I
was working. I broke my rule about not drinking on the job." I laugh
ruefully. "I'm breaking a lot of my own rules lately."

"You
don't break rules." Tricia shakes her head. "Sorry, that doesn't
compute."

I
laugh, then cringe as it makes the throbbing in my head worse. "Yeah,
apparently I do."

"Bullshit.
I bet you like, forgot to pay a meter or something."

I look
up at her through my fingers. "Try, 'I slept with my client's
brother.'"

Tricia's
mouth is a perfect 'O' of shock. "The white guy? The rich guy? Romeo and
freaking Juliet guy?"

"Yes,"
I moan softly.

"This
is huge." She plops herself right next to me, pressing in close.
"Babe go get me more bourbon, I need it." Rita grabs the bottle and
mutely pours us two more shots. I watch her warily, expecting her to start
hollering at me any moment. In fact, I would relish it. Then I would know I
deserved to feel as shitty as I do. Tricia leans back on the couch, pursing her
lips, her eyes unreadable as she stares off into the distance.

I wait.

Then I
wait some more.

"Tricia,
if you don't say something, I'm going to self-combust."

She
turns to me, slowly. "Okay then. I have one question for you."

I
swallow hard. "What?"

"How
was he?"

"What?!"

"In
bed? Was he any good?"

“Why do
you care?” I said, laughing.

“I’m
just curious!”

I slump
back, suddenly boneless at the memory. "Best I've ever had," I half
moan, half sigh. "And then in the morning he offered to make me poached
eggs...right before I had a mental breakdown and ran out of there."

Tricia
is speechless for possibly the first time in her life. But I suddenly can't
stop the words from coming.

"Tricia,
oh my god. I like him. I do. He's got this weird duality to him, where one
moment he's all formal and holding open doors for me and the next moment he's
tearing off my clothes." I ignore Tricia's shocked sound and plow on, the
words coming in a stream of conscious ramble that I couldn't contain if I
tried. "But it's just...bad fucking timing. Like, literally the worst.
Nothing is going according to my plan, not the business stuff, not the family
shit, none of it, and when I got the Camilla Easton wedding I thought,
holy shit this is it, I finally have made my
break!
I wanted everything to go flawlessly from start to finish so that I
could use this as a launching point, get Felicia to fucking call me back and
then I'd be able to focus on fixing my personal life afterwards. I don't have
time for a man to complicate my life! I mean, I planned on taking some time off
once the licensing process was over, maybe I can wait until that...."

Tricia
speechlessness is finally broken when she practically explodes off the couch.
"Yahya, this isn't the kind of shit you can
plan,
girl! You know what your problem is? I'll tell you, because I
see you doing it to yourself over and over again. You want the world to follow
your rules when the world is just doing its own thing with you in it. You're
not in control, and that's a fucking beautiful thing, don't you see? You gotta
roll with it and when gorgeous guys who make your parts tingle tell you they
want to make you breakfast, you fucking stay for breakfast. I'm a fucking
lesbian and if he's half as sexy as you make him sound I would have eaten his
eggs from here until next week.

Rita
chucks a throw pillow at her. Tricia puts up a soothing hand and grins
lasciviously. "Baby don't be jealous, you know I only eat your eggs."

"Gross,"
Rita laughs and I am filled with another flood of sadness. I love these two
more than is sensible, how am I going to be able to handle it when they move?
The sadness spreads through me, a level of grief that doesn't make sense with
my happy surroundings. I don't understand where it is coming from...until the
text message alert goes off on my phone. I look down, already knowing what I am
going to see.

"Yahya?"
Tricia sees me staring at my phone in mute sorrow.

"It's
my mom," I explain. "Otis is in the hospital."

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sanniyah

Shock
is supposed to sober you up, isn't it? That's what I have always heard. But I'm
stumbling through the hospital entrance, still reeling like a drunken sailor.
Tricia and Rita insisted on coming with me, with Rita somehow sober enough to
drive. Tricia is clutching me right now. I know she is trying to hug me, support
me, but she is leaning so hard I fear we both might fall over.

And
when I see my mother's exhausted face, I know I'm going to crumple to the
ground.

She
unfolds herself from the chair and sobriety finally finds me. "Mom,"
I say, rushing to her.

"Baby
girl," she sighs, folding me into her arms. The instant she has me, we are
both crying.

"What
happened?" I sniffle through my sobs. My mother's grief is infecting me.
I'm taking it on in addition to my own.

She
pulls back and squares her shoulders. It's such an unconscious gesture, so much
like her normal self that the tears are flowing again. My mother always centers
herself before she speaks. She always chooses her words carefully, for maximum
effect, making sure to hit you with the full force of her emotional one, two
punches. But there is no power in her stance now. She is just trying to hold
herself together.

"They're
saying it was a stroke," she says, like the doctors can't be trusted.
"He was walking to the bathroom, Yahya, and he just..." her chest
hitches slightly," went...down."

"Oh
mom."

"I
was right there, honey. I haven't left his side, not once." The tired
lines etched into her face are proof of that. "So I was right there to
catch him as he fell, but that man just got so fat. I kept telling him he
needed to lay off the sweets, that it was going to be the death of him. He was
too damn heavy for me to hold up and we both went down." For the first
time I see the splint around her wrist. "He landed on me, and the doctors
say that's the only thing that kept him from splitting his damn head
open." She shakes her head at the irony. "I got stuck though. Had to
pull myself out from under him to get to the phone...and...."

I am
openly weeping now. Tricia is patting me everywhere, but I barely feel it. I
watch my mom as the full force of what she just went through hits her. All the
color drains from her cheeks, her beautiful cocoa skin an ashen gray with deep
purple bags under her eyes. "They say it might have been too long,"
she finally whispers. "They don't know how much of him is left in
there."

Tricia
grabs me, steering me towards the chairs before my knees buckle. I land, hard.
"When will we know?" I croak. This isn't right. Not Otis. He has
dignity, poise. He is always dressed up, his pocket square ironed crisply in
his Sunday best suit. He always walked with such a straight back that I teased
him about the literal stick up his ass...

My
mother glances up at the huge clock that dominates the wall above us. "I
have no idea, Yahya. We just have to wait. And pray." Her shoulders hitch.
"That man doesn't deserve this," she half moans, half wails.

She
collapses against my shoulder and I cradle her face, letting her tears soak my
hand as I try to soothe her with words I don't believe. "It's going to be
okay, Mom. Otis is strong, you know that. Remember when Monique stayed with you
two, and he was so intent on being the best granpappy ever that he nearly broke
himself in two? You yelled at him to stop tossing the twins around like they
were ragdolls? And he just looked at you like you were talking Chinese to him
and went on throwing those seventy pound kids around like they weighed nothing
at all."

My mom
sniffles. "He was hurtin' for days after that, I know he was. But he
wasn't about to let me say I told you so. Caught him sneaking Tylenol in the
bathroom and I just had to laugh at him."

"See,
he's strong and stubborn, mama. He's not about to go down without a
fight."

I
expect her to agree, because it is true. But instead my mother is quiet and still.
I feel a flutter of fear in my stomach. "Mama?"

Slowly,
she sits up. Her face is dry, her gaze faraway. She is staring at a point on
the floor in front of her and I look towards it on instinct. There is nothing
there except a spot, but I stare too, wondering what it is that is holding my
mom's attention.

"He's
been fighting for so long," she says, slowly. The hitching in her voice is
gone and she is speaking clearly. "So long. My man is tired of fighting
and he deserves a rest. I don't want to see him trying so hard to stick around
if he's hurting himself doing it."

"No,
mama."

"Yes,
Yahya. He doesn't have to fight for us anymore. We're okay, he's done right in
every sense of the word. It ain't fair to be holding on so tight if we're only
hurting him in doing so."

I am
shaking my head. "No mama," I can only repeat the words over and over
again. "I can't lose him. He has to stay." My voice is rising and
Tricia is shushing me, but the words won't stop. I grip the handles of the hard
chair, ignoring the swivel of heads in my direction as I feel myself shouting
louder and louder.
 
"This isn't
how it's supposed to be... I'm not ready! I'm not ready!"