Ace of Spades Sneak Peek(107)

We hope you consider our offer.

Yours sincerely,



Dr. Chiamaka Adebayo and Professor Devon Richards Co-Founders of the Underground Society





DEVON



I watch him sleep soundlessly, chest rising and falling, rising again. Beard overgrown, scruffy, head clean-shaven—always. The room is dark, despite it being early in the afternoon, and I have somewhere to be, but I get sucked into his beauty and find myself trapped.

I let my eyes fall to his bare back, where my favorite tattoo of his is, the one with numbers. I run my fingers over the date written on his back, then I lean in and kiss it.

“If you’re gonna touch me, at least touch me somewhere it counts,” his sleepy voice mutters.

“You’d love that so much, wouldn’t you, T?”

His dimples pop out and he laughs.

“Why are you up so early?” he moans.

“Firstly, it’s twelve thirty, and secondly, I have a doctor’s appointment at one.”

“You just want an excuse to see her,” he says, turning to face me now, squinting. “God, I’ll never get tired of looking at your face,” he muses out loud.

My heart is beating fast but steadily.

“I’ll never get tired of looking at me too,” I reply, leaning in, giving him a quick kiss.

“That so?’ he says, wrapping his arms around my shoulders, trapping me.

“Mm-hmm…” I kiss him again.

When I’m with him, I feel like I’m falling in love all over again. I’ll never get tired of him. It’s one of the only things I’m sure of.

I know that if I don’t move away, I’ll end up skipping the whole day, and so I stand before he can pull me back down again.

“Ma made you breakfast,” I tell him, pulling my jacket on now.

He grins. “I love her more than anything in the world.”

“Marry her instead, then,” I tell him, walking out of our bedroom. I run down the stairs into the foyer, then I turn to the kitchen. Gray coils are springing out of Ma’s bun and there’s a smile on her face as she sits on a stool doing sudoku puzzles—Ma has an addiction to those—while whatever’s in the pot bubbles in front of her.

There was a time when it felt like this wasn’t enough. A time where I resented her so much for hiding what she did about my pa, I didn’t pick up her calls, I didn’t check in on her. It’s hard to forgive when you’re hurting so much. But I hurt no more. Now I know she was all the family I needed. And if I can wake up every day to Terrell’s face and Ma doing her puzzles, I think that would be everything to me.

“Gonna go to the doctor’s, Ma,” I tell her, hugging her from behind, before kissing her forehead.

“Is Terrell awake yet?”

I nod. “I told him you made breakfast.”

“Have a nice trip,” she says.

I leave, rushing out the front door, down the steps of our home, and straight into my car.

It doesn’t take me long to get to the hospital, where I walk past the receptionist—much to her obvious dislike—up the stairs and straight to her office, with her name on a plate outside the chestnut-colored door.

I knock and she yells, “Come in,” and so I open the doors to find her behind her desk, sifting through papers. She throws me a quick glance and I smile, moving toward her and hugging her from behind.

“Richards, unless your heart is failing, you need to wait in line.”

I roll my eyes. “No time, I have a music class to teach. Just wanted to swing by and say hello.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Did you get me coffee?”

I sit down on the chair opposite her desk. “I’m not your intern.”

She squints behind her glasses, hair packed up in a bun, coat dazzling and tailored.

“Couldn’t tell, you definitely dress like one,” she mutters to herself, a small smile playing on her lips.

Most days I drop by. When she’s not busy, we go out to lunch. Today’s clearly not one of those days. She goes back to staring down at her papers like a mindless zombie, occasionally signing things in black ink. Her phone chimes and she briefly looks at it, then looks away.

“How’s Mia?” I ask with a smile.

“She’s good, very pregnant, but good…,” she replies, still not looking up at me. “I actually wanted to tell you something,” she adds, still shuffling through papers. “I found out that this Black student, Rhys Johnson, is applying to Pollards. I got members of the society to speak with his family, get them to reconsider, but they want the best for him, and the best in that town is Pollards.”

“So what, we just let them enroll him?” I ask.

Chiamaka nods. “We’ll keep an eye on them; have people watching out for him. Plant someone on the inside. Anything to make sure we never let another Black kid get hurt by places like Niveus again.”





CHIAMAKA




It’s late when I leave my office to check up on my final patient.

I nod at a nurse wheeling in a pregnant woman, smiling as the bleach-like, sanitary smell of the hospital fills my nostrils.

My shoes squeak against the floor, and curls from my bun loosen, falling and blocking my sight a little. But I can still see the room number in the distance.