Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2)(96)

“You better.” She looks at me unsmilingly for an extra few moments, and though she doesn’t crack, her eyes soften just a little. Just enough. “Well, you heard him give me my marching orders. I’m gonna go. I have work to do.”

And she’s gone, eyes already glued to the phone that seems to hold the solution to any problem Rhyson ever has. She’s Rhyson’s fixer. Makes life smoother. I don’t think I appreciated before how very good she is at it. I want to ask if she can fix Rhyson and me, if there’s anything on that phone that will fix the mess I’ve made, but I know that’s something I’ll have to do myself.

What will it take to repair the damage I’ve done to our relationship? To our trust? Last night he wouldn’t stay with me, but this morning he asked me not to leave. This stasis, this space between his love, which I don’t doubt, and his anger, which I deserve, feels like a lifelong sentence, even though it’s only been a few hours. Rhyson lasted months with my anger and my silence.

I’ll give him no less.





IT’S NEVER BEEN THIS QUIET IN the car when it’s just Marlon and me. We find something to talk about all the time, even if it’s just Madden high scores or our music. He knows how I feel about Kai and how much I hate Drex. So a sex tape featuring the girl I love and the man I despise . . . yeah, I’d be at a loss for words, too.

“So did you watch it?” He finally drops the question into this vat of boiling silence. “The tape, I mean.”

I’d rather have the quiet than this conversation.

“Uh, a little bit.” My grip tightens on the steering wheel. I almost smile when I think about the first time Kai sat where Marlon sits now and told me her name was like my Porsche.

Kai Anne. Like your car. Cayenne.

From the beginning, she always made me laugh. If I’m a safe, she cracked me day one, and we were friends before we were anything else. We were friends when I wasn’t sure that was all I could settle for. And we trusted each other with secrets we’d never shared with anyone else. How did that happen so quickly? So deeply? I want that back more than anything. She figured it out for me, and as much as the lies hurt, I’ll figure it out for her . . . eventually. But first I have to eliminate these threats.

“Have you thought about what you’ll do if it comes out?” Marlon asks.

“It won’t come out. That’s why we’re doing this now, so it doesn’t come out.”

“It’s possible, Rhys, that it will.” Marlon pauses before going on. “I’m just asking if you’ve thought about how you’ll feel if everyone sees Drex f*cking your girl.”

I shoot him a dark look and take a deep breath, glad the curving road gives me something to focus on besides my fury. The thought of anyone seeing Kai like that takes a chainsaw to the lining of my stomach. I must be bleeding inside. There’s no way I can have pain like this without blood.

“If it was the girl I love,” he continues. “I would tell the whole world to go f*ck themselves. Who cares what they think?”

“Yeah?” I divide a glance between him and the road. “Easy to say when it’s not you on the tape. I don’t care if people talk about me, but people talking about Kai? Seeing her like that? That I can’t take.”

I shake my head, my heart straining with every beat at the thought of her humiliated that way.

“I’ll do anything to keep that from happening.”

“So this isn’t to save your face? It’s for her?”

“It’s all for her.” I frown at the road ahead. “I don’t give two shits about anything else.”

I think that night I found out she’d been with Drex, I thought it might change things. Honestly, with all the acrimony between Drex and me, the thought of him, filthy, dirty him, having her was like a needle threading through my brain, but I underestimated myself. I underestimated my love for her. Even I didn’t know how deep it went. Though I’m disgusted by the video, nothing’s changed in my heart. Not for her. Did I plant the seeds of her insecurity? Or water the ones her Dad planted when he walked away? Maybe I left her thinking I couldn’t handle the truth because on some level, I wasn’t sure I could. But this love, even after my lies and hers, is immutable. Unmoving. Lodged in my heart. Stuck in my soul.

“Damn, this girl’s got you whupped.” Marlon laughs, banging the dashboard with his fist.

“Like you’re just now realizing that.” I pull myself out of my head, out of my thoughts, to respond to him. “I could wring her neck right now for keeping all of this from me, but we’ll work it out. She’s the one, so we have to.”

“How do you know?” His voice is softer somehow, and there’s more than idle curiosity in his eyes when I take a second to search them.

“Remember your Uncle Jamal, and how he always used to tell us about girls?”

“The OG!” Admiration tinges Marlon’s grin. “The man knows his *.”

“That he does.” I nod, sketching a quick grin of my own. Only Marlon would have me grinning when I’m on my way to pound Drex’s punk ass into next week, and could barely breathe past my anger twenty minutes ago. “Remember he told us there was—”

“Basic and magic.”

“Exactly. He said most girls think they’re magic, but they’re all basic until you meet that one.” I shake my head, recalling the day I met Kai in Grady’s studio. “I knew Kai was different the first time I saw her. I didn’t have to sleep with her, had never even kissed her, and I knew she was magic.”