Page 15 of Rah

His eyes widened. “Both?” Fabe shook his head with a disgusted look on his face. “You’re playing with fire. I get cheating on your girl here or there, but you are building multiple families with different women. Solae and Aaliyah are good women that love you, and you’re playing with their hearts. If one of them finds out, it’s going to be hell.” He leaned in a little closer, lowering his voice. “And that bank job was stupid and sloppy.”

I smirked, brushing him off. “Mind your business, Fabe.”

He chuckled with a shrug. “You got it. But remember that. When you’re calling me in need of help, I’m going to mind my business.”

I leaned back with a grin, unbothered. “I’m not going to need your help because, as far as that bank robbery, I made sure that it couldn’t get linked back to me. And as far as Aaliyah and Solae, I’m Daddy. I take care of home. I run this shit.”

The pressure to make my words true was unbearable. I was barely running my world. At this point, the weight of my world was on my shoulders. I was spending money that I didn’t have, trying to take care of the bar and Aaliyah, Solae, and three kids. Moses hadn’t even finished high school because I had sold him rap star dreams. He was starting to get antsy, wondering why things weren’t happening like I promised they would. I felt things unraveling. I felt my control slipping through my fingers.

I had to make this shit happen. Ihadto, for me.

FABE

I walked out of Rah’s bar disgusted that I was related to a cornball like him.

Rah was my brother, but he was a snake. He was conniving, selfish, and always moving with a hidden agenda. Still, he was my blood. And I’d never be the type of nigga to snitch on my own family. Especially not over a woman, even if that woman was Aaliyah.

I never planned on falling for my brother’s girl. It was never supposed to happen. I always told myself family came first. Blood over everything. But love doesn’t listen to rules, and lust doesn’t wait for permission. It crept in on me, real slow at first, like smoke filling a room. Before I knew it, I was choking on feelings I had no business having.

Aaliyah looked at Rah like he was her world, like he was everything a man was supposed to be. And it burned me up inside because I knew the truth. I knew she wasn’t the only one. I knew Rah had Solae at home while he whispered the same sweet lies into Aaliyah’s ear.

I wanted to tell her everything. But that would’ve made me the kind of man I hated. I would be a snitch, a man who stabbed his own blood in the back. And no matter how badly I wanted her, I couldn’t cross that line. So, I said just enough for her to feel that itch in her spirit that maybe she deserved better. But I never gave her the full truth.

Standing on the sidelines, I watched Rah finesse her and play her like she was another trophy on his shelf. And the more I saw him use her, the more my feelings grew. I’d catch myself staring too long, memorizing her smile, her laugh, the way her perfume lingered when she walked past. She didn’t belong to me, but in my heart she did.

The night I caught her in the parking lot of Rah’s club, I only wanted a few minutes to talk to her, to be close without Rah hovering around. But chemistry don’t lie. It pulled us together like magnets. One kiss turned into me finally having her, finally feeling everything I’d been starving for.

That night ruined me.

But, even after that night, she chose him. I’d fumbled my chances by letting my guilt keep me away. So, I respectfully fell back.

Ten months later, I was still ruined. I was completely in love with a woman who was never mine to begin with.

I never judged her for sleeping with me because I knew what Rah truly was. Her fucking me was the bare minimum of what Rah deserved.

The city lights were bleeding through the blinds in my living room late at night, while Jackie drifted around my condo in asilk robe and furry slides, “fixing” things that weren’t broken. She’d lined my whiskey by height, color-sorted my coffee-table books, and slid the remotes into a marble tray like we were staging the place. Her perfume had already moved in.

“Babe,” she said, posing on the loveseat. “Take me to Moses’s party. I know it’ll be full of hood boogers, but I can…adjust. I’ll wear sneakers.”

I had to laugh. “You don’t have sneakers.”

“I have Louboutin sneakers.”

I shook my head. Jackie was a beautiful woman. She was intelligent and had her shit together. She worked at the firm where I invested my money. That’s how we’d met. But I was very much a hood nigga. The kind of boujee, uptight woman Jackie was didn’t do it for me. She was a good look, but I wanted a woman I could take to Paris or the projects, a woman that was a little rough around the edges and told me to shut the fuck up when I was doing too much. That wasn’t Jackie. That was Aaliyah. But I couldn’t have Aaliyah, so I settled for good enough, which was Jackie.

“You’re not going,” I told her without taking my eyes off of the football game.

“Excuseme?”

“You heard me. You’re not going. I’m not dragging you somewhere you’ll hate, then listen to you roast outfits, plastic cups, and the DJ.”

“I can be lowkey.”

“Your lowkey like glitter, baby,” I laughed, while taking a sip of my whiskey.

She squinted. “I’m your girlfriend, and it’s a big party. I should be there.”

My head tilted towards her. “You’re my what?”