Married to a Brownsville Bully 3 Read online

  Married To A Brownsville Bully 3

  Jahquel J.

  Copyright © 2018

  Published by Urban Chapters Publications

  www.urbanchapterspublications.com

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Any unauthorized reprint or use of the material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage without express permission by the publisher. This is an original work of fiction. Name, characters, places and incident are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Contains explicit languages and adult themes

  suitable for ages 16+

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  “The Older you get, the more you appreciate.” – Wale

  To My mother, I’m always going to be the little girl waiting to hear I make you proud. Even if I never hear you say it, I’m always going to work ten times harder praying I hear those words one day.

  Foreword

  A Note From The Author

  I did it, yall. This the final book. There will be no part 4-9. This is the end of these characters. It’s time for me to focus on some of these other characters that are driving me nuts.

  As always, I appreciate you all.

  -Jah

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  1

  Hazel

  “I gave you everything you wanted. Love, I gave that shit to you more than I gave to anybody else. What the fuck did you want from me? I tried. This shit ain’t no damn text book, I didn’t know what the fuck to do. All I knew is that I love you and wanted to make this shit work with you.” She walked closer with tears in her eyes. “I still want to make this shit work with you. This house… Nah, my life ain’t the same without you. I had the best intentions when I married you, baby.”

  “We can have the best intentions and still fall short,” I wiped away the tears that fell down my cheeks. “I’m happy, Lani. For once, I’m so happy I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t want to make you feel like shit, but I’m choosing me and my child. Me and Denim are having a child and it’s all I wanted from you. I had to realize that I was being selfish by expecting you to give me things that you didn’t want. For so long, I relied on you to make me happy, and I realize that I was wrong. I needed to make myself happy before someone else could make me happy. Yolani, I love you and will always love you, but we can never be together. I love you, but I love myself more. I choose me this time, not you.” I was hysterically crying as I stood in front of her. She looked so hurt and broken.

  “Y…you’re pregnant?” she stuttered.

  “Two months. I just want us to remain friends. I don’t want to cut you out of my life for good, but for my child, I’ll do it. Yolani, you gotta get clean, this isn’t you,” I begged.

  Grabbing my suitcase and duffle bag, I walked by her. I knew she wasn’t ready to change, even after losing me and having her family not talk to her. This was something that Yolani would have to fight alone. I couldn’t want this more than she wanted it for herself. In the end, I wanted her to get clean, but if she didn’t want that for herself, then there wasn’t anything I could do. As I made my way toward the steps and started down them, Yolani came out the room.

  “So that’s it? You walk in here, wearing the Versace leather jacket and boots I bought you and think that you can tell me that you’re married and pregnant? That’s what we doing now, Hazel?”

  “I told you what it was. Get some help. I don’t want this life for you. Despite how we ended, I want you to be happy.” I turned and walked down the stairs. I felt a hand on my back trying to push me and I held onto the banister. “Stop, Yolani. What the fuck are you doing!” I screamed.

  “I leave bitches, not the other way around.” She pried my hands off the banister, put her foot in my back and kicked me down the flight of stairs. I went tumbling down the stairs and landed on the bottom landing. I couldn’t feel my body and tears slipped down my eyes. I was dizzy and everything was swirling around me.

  “I see what the fuck Bruno was talking about when he said Versace on the floor.” She snarled and stepped over me. The last thing I heard was her sniffing some coke into her nose before everything faded to black…

  “Hazel, what the fuck you doing here?” I felt someone gently nudge me. I stirred from my sleep on the pile of winter coats in the closet we once shared.

  Removing the hair out of my face, I stared up at Yolani. I backed away from her quickly and tossed my hands up in the air. “Get the fuck away from me!” I screamed and she looked alarmed.

  “The fuck? What the hell happened? Why you sleep in the closet?” she looked around confused.

  My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest if I didn’t calm down. I held onto the box next to me and slowed my breathing down and realized it was a dream that felt all too real. Yolani would never do anything like that to me and I knew it.

  “I was packing the rest of my things and I must’ve fell asleep.” I allowed her to help me up from the floor.

  “Had me scared as fuck when I came in here to change into some basketball shorts.” She went to her side of the closet and grabbed some shorts.

  I was trying to get myself together. The sleep I had just awoke from had me confused about everything in my life. Yolani was staring at me weird as she quickly changed out her jeans into her shorts. Yolani really appeared to have lost a lot of weight and it showed in her face and body. She had a small pudgy stomach when we were together and now it was gone. I could almost see her ribs, if she didn’t switch her shirt so quick. Why was she this way? The drugs were taking over her body and the Yolani I loved wasn’t there. This was just a shell of what she was and I was almost moved to tears staring at her.

  “Sorry. I just wanted to get the rest of my stuff out while you weren’t here.” I walked past her carrying a suitcase in my hands.

  The pregnancy had me pissing more, eating more and sleeping more. It didn’t matter how much sleep I got during the night, I was still sleepy in the morning. I must have fell asleep while I was folding up my long sleeve shirts in the closet.

  “When you gonna be done with all this shit?” she asked me and plopped down on the bed. I stared at her like she had lost her mind. She didn’t need to kick me out just because we weren’t together. I had come in peace to get my clothes so I didn’t have to make multiple trips. Mo would kill me if she knew I was here after she told me not to come alone.

  “I’ll be done in a few. I’ll grab the things I really need and send someone to pick up the rest,” I replied.

  “Nah, if you don’t take everything, I’ll have Grape drop it to you. Don’t need to drag this shit out more than it needs to be,” she snapped and laid back on the bed.

  “Why are you like this? If anything, we’re friends before anything else,” I sighed and plopped on the bed beside her.

  For a quick moment, I thought we would share a moment together. “Yeah, and when you decided to give up on us and this marriage, you killed all that shit.”

  “What marriage?
You got some fucking nerve thinking you’re the victim. You forget you lied to me about us being legally married, Yolani? You got me running around here thinking I’m married and swinging that fucking ring around, and I’m not even married.”

  “Who told you to be faking the flex? You wanted to be out there tossing our marriage in all those bitch’s faces. You swore I was fucking them and I wasn’t.”

  “Oh, you weren’t? Bullshit. You’re always trying to lie. As if cheating and fucking your marriage up wasn’t enough, you on drugs now too. Really, Yolani.” Tears dropped down from my cheek.

  For the first time since we split, I could see the remorse written on her face. “Haze, don’t start that crying, please,” she pleaded with me.

  “This wasn’t supposed to be us, Lani. We were supposed to be happily married and working on children, not breaking up. I’m not supposed to be married to someone else and having their baby.” I cried into my hands as I stood up and then went over to my vanity and took a seat.

  “Married to who and pregnant by who? That nigga Denim?” she asked calmly and touched the bed.

  I was so lost in my emotions that I hadn’t realized that I slipped and told her that I was married and pregnant by Denim. She had to know and I would have rather her hear it from me than anyone else.

  “I’m pregnant, Yolani. Me and Denim got married too,” I finally revealed to her while staring into her eyes.

  “Damn…” she whispered as she allowed her voice to trail off.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.” I walked back over and sat next to her. Taking her hand in mine, I stared at her with tears coming down my face.

  “You always loved that nigga, didn’t you?” she asked me.

  What she asked was a valid question. Was I in love with Denim? No. Did I have love for him, I did. It was a complicated situation to be in. I knew I had love for him and we could make this marriage work for our child. Still, I wasn’t in love with him and often thought about how I rushed into one situation right into another one.

  As much as I tried to downplay me and Denim’s relationship back in the day, it was more than that. We grew up together and he had always been the male in my life that I could count on. Our family knew each other and there wasn’t a memory I didn’t have growing up that he wasn’t a part of. When he wanted me to move to California, I was going to go with him. However, I had my best friend in my ear telling me how much she loved me and needed me. How could I turn her down? Denim would be fine without me, but I couldn’t take that risk that Yolani would be fine without me, so I chose her. I chose her over a future I could have had with Denim. She needed me. Her mother was murdered and she was battling with her sexuality, so she needed me.

  “I do.” Instead of me telling her how I really felt, I just answered the question with a simple response. Right now, Yolani didn’t need anything complicated in her life, and I didn’t want to have to explain that I married a man that I didn’t truly love.

  “I knew you did. It was why I chose to profess my love to you that day in my whip,” she admitted.

  “Did you ever love me?”

  “I do. Shit, I love you more than myself. I also know the shit I’ve done to you wasn’t right and you still put up with my shit. It’s because of the love I have for you that I’m letting you free. Go get everything that I couldn’t or wouldn’t give you, Haze. You deserve that shit.” She took both my hands into hers.

  “Lani, I can’t leave you. You need me.” I leaned my head on her shoulder. She needed me more than anyone else.

  “Nah, it’s about time I stop trying to make people deal with my shit.”

  “I want to be here for you.”

  “Nah,” she kissed me on the cheek. “You’re pregnant, Haze. Something you wanted more than anything since we’ve met. My shit is gonna get ugly before it gets pretty.”

  It pained me to know that she knew what she was doing was going to be terrible before it got better. How did I miss this? She didn’t just decide to do coke randomly. This had been going on for a while and I was too blind to see it.

  “I was too wrapped up in my own shit to see that you needed me.”

  “Don’t do that, Haze. We both had our own shit going on, and I was good at hiding the shit. Don’t go blaming yourself for my shit.”

  “No, as your wife, I should have caught the signs and I didn’t. I was too busy doing me and not worried about you.”

  “You get a pass. You weren’t my real wife.” She cracked that smile I loved so much. Were we really able to sit here and talk without yelling and screaming at each other?

  “Real funny.” I leaned my head on her shoulder. At this moment, everything felt right in our world. Except, when I got behind the wheel of my car to leave, I was going to another home I shared with my husband and Yolani would be left alone to do her drugs in peace. Everything wasn’t fine and I almost didn’t want to leave her side. The more I stayed by her side, the more I knew she wasn’t going to go to drugs. Was it bad that I wanted to protect her and never let her go?

  “Grab what you can and I’ll help you out. Come back when you want to get the rest, you got the key,” she told me and stood up. She wiped invisible dust off her pants and stared at me for a bit before she turned away.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Help me with what, Haze? I’m fucked up, man. The thoughts that run through this head… fuck, I couldn’t even tell you the shit that goes through my head. Being high and getting out my mind is a relief. Well… it started as one. The problem with coke is a little is cool, but then the quantity goes up and you need more just to function through the day.”

  “We can get you into rehab and help you fight this, Lani. I want to be there and help you. Can you please stop shutting me out?”

  “You want me not to shut you out, but I bet your husband wouldn’t be too pleased with you being here,” she grabbed one of my suitcases. “Haze, I fucked what we had up, not you. Stop beating yourself up and trying to find a way to fix someone who doesn’t want to be fixed.”

  “Why don’t you want to be fixed? Yolani, you have your entire life to live. Think about Pit Pat and Yoshon.”

  “You don’t fucking think they the reason for this shit? They one of the main reasons I’m fucking doing this shit.”

  “Stop blaming everyone for your issues,” I told her and she rolled her eyes and leaned onto the wall. “You’re doing this because you want to. Just like you were cheating on me because you wanted to. How about you make the decision to help yourself before it’s too late? I don’t want to get that invitation to your funeral, that would break me.”

  “It is what it is, Haze. We all gonna die one day.” She shrugged her shoulders and carried my bags out the room.

  Her words hurt me more than she knew. We all died someday; it was something I knew happened. Still, we were young, and she was sounding like something was going to happen to her. I grabbed my duffle bag and followed behind her. She was at the bottom of the steps staring at her phone ring.

  “Answer her.”

  “Nah.”

  From her expression, I could tell it was Pit Pat calling, and she didn’t want to be bothered. It was the same look she always gave when she called when we were together. Pit Pat was worried about her and wanted her to be better. Yolani had a team of people that loved and cared for her. It was as if we didn’t matter.

  “Look, you have my number so call me if you want to talk or hang out. Yolani, nothing changes between us. You know I still love you and want the best for you.”

  She pulled me into her chest with one hand and kissed my forehead. “Just worry about your marriage and baby. Don’t fuck this up because you’re worried about me.”

  While I didn’t want to say she was right, she was. I had a husband and a baby to think about and I was already betraying him by standing in the foyer of the home I once shared with her. Our lives had both changed so quickly. I was married to a good man that would risk it all for me and
was expecting a child. In a few months, a baby would be coming out of my body. Yolani was single; something I always thought she always wanted. But now staring into her eyes, I wasn’t so sure. She seemed so broken, torn and hurt all in one.

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “Let’s put this in your car. You need to get home to your hubby,” she teased me.

  “Whatever. You know you miss me.”

  “Yeah. We can’t have everything we want,” she sighed and put my bags into my trunk. After she closed it back, we both stared at each other, confused on what to say next. Was this goodbye or see you later?

  “Can I call you sometimes?”

  “You already know I’ll be here for you whenever you need me. Let that nigga act stupid and I’m running there with the strap.” She gently nudged me.

  “Thank you. You know you can call me too, right?”

  “Yeah. Don’t hold your breath. I’m done weighing you down with my shit. Know that I’m here for you though.” She held my car door open and I slid behind the wheel.

  “Take care of yourself, Yolani. Your family wants to be there for you, let them.” She closed the door and bent down to look through the window.

  “Love you, Haze. Drive safe.” That was all she said as she headed back into the house. She turned to wave before she closed the door behind herself.

  Tears welled up in my eyes as I pulled off and looked at what had been home to me for years. The tears continued to come down my eyes as I drove toward the expressway. My phone broke me out of feeling like a piece of shit. Pressing my steering wheel, I sniffled and tried to sound normal.

  “Hello.” I didn’t recognize the number.