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Malik laughed, for real this time. Deep and hard, holding his ribs. “Cuh, you stupid.”

“Yea,” Pharoah said. “And you still dumb as hell if you don’t get what I’m sayin’. You ain’t built for the grave, Malik. You built to get out. You just gotta believe it.”

He tapped his chest with two fingers. “Stop tryna survive for the block and start livin’ for the people who love you.”

Malik acquiesced. His eyes drifted to his phone on the armrest.

He picked it up, opened her thread.

Typed slow, honest…no mask this time.

I love you, Dorothy.

The Wiz was all a lie—just some fuckin’ smoke and mirrors. Click your heels and come get me. Bring me home.

A double text always.

Pharoah watched him with a small smile. “You tell her?”

“Yea,” Malik murmured.

“She love you back?”

“I think so.”

“Good,” Pharoah exhaled, leaning his head against the back of his chair. “Then maybe one of us still gets to walk down the aisle.”

Malik laughed again. “Nigga, you ain’t invited if you ain’t lettin’ me push your chair down the aisle.”

Pharoah lifted his vape like a toast. “On the dead homies.”

Aku stared at the text like it was a spell. Like it cracked open something soft in her she’d been trying to stitch back together. She didn’t text back. She didn’t need to.

She just drove.

No makeup, no cute outfit - just hoodie too big and her heart too damn loud. By the time she knocked on his front door, her breath was shaky and her lashes were wet from crying in the car. Malik opened it slow - shirtless, chainless…but that look in his eyes?

Still hers.

Aku didn’t say anything. She just stood in the doorway, lips quivering.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Malik murmured.

“I almost didn’t,” she whispered. “I told myself I was done. That I was too good for this… for you.”

He nodded. “I believe you.”

“But then you said that shit like you meant it. ‘I love you, Dorothy’?” She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. “You really been watchin’ the Wiz without me?”

Malik laughed under his breath. “That’s what you caught outta that whole text?”

She grinned through her tears. “I had to laugh before I cried harder.” And then she cracked. “I can’t keep doing this, Malik.”

Aku needed him to understand she wasn’t the back and forth kind of girl. She wasn’t built for halfway. Aku was either all in or all out. No in-between. No gray areas. No lukewarm love.

He looked up slow, eyes tired. “Doing what?”

“This.” She pointed between them. “Loving you through your chaos. Waiting for you to decide if you wanna be whole or just hurt in peace.”

“I know what I bring, I know what I’m worth, and I refuse to love a man who’s still tryin’ to figure out if he deserves me.” She took a shaky breath.

Malik’s tongue touched his cheek. “You came all the way over here to argue?”

“No,” she said, stepping closer. “I came to tell you this is your last chance…for real.”

He blinked, his long lashes curling.

Her voice trembled—but her spine stayed straight. “I’m not gonna keep loving you through heartbreak. I’m not gonna keep showing up for a man who hides behind his past like it’s some kind of excuse to half-love me.”

His mouth opened to speak, but she cut him off.

“I’m not mad that you come from the hood. I’m mad that you stay there mentally, when you don’t have to. I’m mad that you know how rare this love is…and still treat it like it’s disposable.”

Malik stood, slow, facing her with his hands at his sides. “Aku…”

She shook her head, she had more. “I want the house. The ring. The kids that look like us and got your eyes but my smart-ass mouth. I want Sunday mornings with you in the kitchen, burning pancakes and cussin’ at cartoons.”

She stepped to him now, chest to chest.

“I want a man who fights for his peace the way he fights for the pain, and I want that man to be you.”

Malik’s throat worked hard, swallowing guilt and fear and whatever else had been choking him for years. “Aku…” he whispered again.

“No - you don’t get to say my name like that, unless you mean it with forever attached.”

He reached out and took her hand, kissed her knuckles softly. “I’m scared as hell,” Malik confessed.

She nodded. “Me too. But I’m here anyway. I’m showin’ up anyway.”

She touched his forehead, fingers brushing the faint scar where he’d been cut. Her voice broke. It was softer now, laced in the kind of tenderness that comes from soul-deep knowing.

“How many times I gotta tell you…I don’t need perfect, Malik. I just need honest . I need effort. I need to know that I’m not building dreams with a man who’s addicted to his own self-destruction.”

He nodded once, eyes glossing.

“I wanna love you so bad,” he said. “Wanna wake up every day knowing I didn’t ruin the one good thing that could’ve saved me.”

She sniffed, biting her bottom lip.

“Then don’t ruin it,” she whispered. “This is your moment…right now, to love me right or let me go.”

He stepped forward, pressing their foreheads together. “I ain’t letting you go.”

“You better not,” she whispered, palm over his chest like she was feeling for proof.

She sank into his arms, not caring if she was hurting him or not. Nose pressed against his neck. She cried hard—real, ugly crying. He just held her, rocked her like a song he couldn’t stop humming.

“I missed you,” she whispered.

“I ain’t stop missin’ you.”

They didn’t say much after that.

He took her hand, led her to the bed. He needed to sit down or he was going to pass out.

But Aku had other plans. She dropped to her knees.

Aku needed to feel him and taste him to make sure his words were real, even though her heart knew they were.

“Aku,” Malik sighed. “You ain’t gotta do all that.”

“I want to…I said I missed you.”

She let her fingers trail the band of his sweatpants. Her eyes never left his face.

“You wanna talk about the future?” she asked, voice low and teasing now. “Or you want me to show you how serious I am?”

“Both,” he rasped, “at the same time.”

She pulled him free slowly, his dick already hard in her hand. He twitched against her palm. His breath hitched.

“I wanna build with you,” she murmured, running her tongue along his tip. “Wanna raise our babies somewhere soft…somewhere they don’t gotta fight to smile.”

“Fuck, Aku…”

“I wanna watch you code and curse, then kiss your stress away.”

He tried to respond, but his head fell back.

She took him in deep—slow, warm, mouth wet and humming around him as he groaned with his hand in her hair, eyes rolling back.

“I wanna marry you,” she said between strokes. “But first…I’mma love you in ways you ain’t never felt.”

Her tongue danced. Her lips wrapped tighter around him.

Malik moaned her name like a prayer and damn near lost himself right there.

And as she kept loving him, slow and full of devotion, Malik realized something?—

The pain hadn’t left his body.

But for the first time…it wasn’t running the show.

Her lips wrapped around the head of him, like she’d missed the taste of peace.

Malik’s hand slid to her cheek, thumb brushing the edge of her jaw like he didn’t know whether to guide her or worship her.

“Damn,” he breathed, voice already shaking. “You gon’ make me tap out before we even get started.”

She pulled back just enough to whisper, “Good. You need to let go.”

Then she sank deeper, slow and steady, letting the weight of him fill her mouth. Her hands caressed his thighs, soft but firm, grounding him as he bucked a little. Still sore…still healing. But she didn’t rush it—she worked him like she knew every nerve,

‘cause she did.

“Relax,” she hummed, eyes locked on his. “I got you, baby.”

That did something to him.

His breath stuttered. Eyes fluttered. Chest rose like her words were air.

“Fuck, Aku…”

She smiled around his length, tongue swirling with intention. Not just to get him off—but to pull the pain out. The shame. The weight. The idea that he wasn’t worthy of softness.

“You safe here,” she whispered when she came up for air. “Ain’t nobody gon’ hurt you in my mouth.”

That made him laugh—low, throat-deep, a little feral.

“You talkin’ real crazy, cuh,” he muttered, body twitching beneath her.

“Nah, I’m talkin’ real,” she whispered, pumping him slow with her hand. “Let go, Malik. You don’t always gotta be on ten, at least not with me.”

His stomach flexed as her mouth took him again. Sloppy, slow, sure . He groaned so deep it sounded like a growl—eyes hooded, lips parted.

“I’m here,” she cooed. “Let me love you back to life...show you what black legacy looks like.” Aku was talking big shit because she could back it up.

She sucked deeper, gripping tight at the base, tongue moving in rhythm with her breath. She worked him until his hands groped the sheets and his hips jerked once—hard.

“I’m close…”

She hummed around him.

“You been carryin’ too much,” she said, breathing hot air against his slick shaft. “Let some of that shit out.”

He couldn’t hold it anymore. Not with her looking at him like that. Not with her voice so soft, so present , while her mouth did things that erased everything he’d ever tried to forget.

He came with a loud grunt, back arched, hand over his face like he didn’t wanna cry—but might.

She held him through it, making sure to swallow it all.

Then she rested her cheek on his thigh, smiling soft, fingers tracing lazy patterns on his knee.

He stared at the ceiling.

His lazy Cali accent spilled out. “I ain’t deserve that.”

She glanced up at him, tongue flicking the corner of her mouth. “Yes, you do. Every damn drop of love I got for you, you deserve it.”

Malik tried to swallow his emotions ‘cause that was still something he had to learn to be okay with. “What if I fuck it up again?”

“You will,” she said easily, crawling up to straddle him gently, “but not tonight.”

She kissed his cheek, then his jaw, then pressed her forehead against his.

“Tonight,” she whispered, “we just dream about how good it’s gon’ be. Our life, our babies…you cookin’ in the kitchen with a bonnet on while I run the world.”

He chuckled, hands resting on her hips. “You really think that’s what this gon’ be?”

“I know it is.” She kissed him again, slow and deep. “’Cause I’m not lettin’ you run no more…so don’t try.”

He leaned back, looking up at her like she might be the best thing Crescent ever gave him.

She was.