Page 4

Five Months Later…

“Come on, girl. Put on your big girl panties and fuck these dudes up seven ways to Sunday.”

The words felt foreign to my ears, but I had been telling myself those same words for the past hour, trying to channel one of my best friends, Gina, and hype myself up.

However, despite my best efforts, I was still sitting in my parked little silver Mercedes that I kept running to soak in the air conditioning, while sipping tequila out of my discreet flask, wondering how life had managed to get so fucked up.

I took another large sip before I turned off my air conditioning, pressed the button to lower my window, and poured the rest out onto the pavement in honor of my fallen brother. “Miss you, Rev.”

Some siblings weren’t that close, but my brother and I were thick as thieves growing up, and that didn’t change after we became adults.

Which was why neither me nor my parents were surprised when Rev’s lawyer had divulged in his will that he left a lot of his possessions to me, including his stake in the home he shared with his frat brothers and best friends, Cruz, Storm, and Titan.

“What kind of grown ass men in their thirties stay in the same place any damn way?” I asked to myself as I stared out at nothing in particular.

Rev used to go on and on about how much he loved The Omega House that he shared with his friends.

And now, I was parked a block away from the house, trying to get up the courage to march up to that door and tell them how the next few days were going to go.

It was early evening, and although I wasn’t even sure if they were all home, at least one of them probably was.

I was still giving myself a mental pep-talk when there was a knock on my passenger door, causing me to yelp and hiccup at the same time.

It’s him. I swallowed back my nerves at the state he’d found me in. Shit. I rarely got tipsy in the middle of the day, and on the off occasion when I did drink, it was best for me to not be upset. If I was, I wasn’t responsible for the mess that flew out of my mouth.

Reluctantly, I pressed the button to lower my passenger window instead of just having him walk around.

Cruz Crowne. One of Rev’s oldest friends and a constant pain in my side. When we were younger, Cruz and I used to be close. Then we reached our teenage years and everything changed.

“You good?” he asked, in that familiar blunt, bold, and slow drawl that embodied the twang of a man born of cracked pavement on the ruthless streets of Chicago, forged in the resilience needed to survive the South, and as loud as the pulsing Miami atmosphere.

To me, Cruz was a chameleon, everything about him a mix cultures that couldn’t be boxed in.

He talked similar to how he walked. Unhurried, but hastily in a way that made him always seem like he was moving fast and had a purpose for where he was going, yet simultaneously, he wasn’t rushing to get there.

Every time I listened to Cruz speak, I found myself hypnotized by the way his mouth moved, which was often since homeboy didn’t know how to shut up sometimes.

“You good?” he asked again, leaning down to the car this time, his body so close that I hiccupped.

Shit. I was doing my best to appear less intoxicated, which was difficult when his six-foot-five frame filled my car with all his masculinity.

Cruz had always been attractive, but nothing compared to the grown man swag he currently had going on. Ever since I realized that the opposite sex didn’t have cooties, this mocha cinnamon man had been the childhood crush I was happy as hell to grow out of.

He kept his hair faded on the sides, and his shoulder-length locs were often pulled back like they were now. I knew from my friend, Gina, who was Cruz’s hairstylist, that his hair grew fast, but he liked to keep his locs at a manageable length. Yet, he let his beard grow nice and thick.

And while he often wore black and navy name brand suits to work, ink coiled his skin with tattoos creeping up his throat, taunting the shit out of me because I wanted to know if other parts of his body were just as tattooed.

“You plan on gettin’ out of the car anytime soon, or do you want to just sit here and get shitfaced?” he asked, his eyes and crooked grin dripping with playful recklessness and bad decisions.

“Um, no.” I lifted my purse and started pushing the contents that I’d dumped on my passenger seat back into my bag. “I’m getting out.”

“Good.” He leaned up from the car. “Then come on. It’s hot as hell out here.”

When he stretched, I momentarily got distracted but managed to press the buttons to roll up both windows and cut off my car before meeting Cruz on the sidewalk.

“I didn’t even hear you approach me,” I admitted, falling into step beside him.

“You shoulda been paying betta attention to what’s going on around you,” he chastised.

I hiccupped again. “It’s because you’re light on your feet,” I corrected, keeping my eyes forward on the sidewalk and ignoring the strong desire I had to tilt my head back and glance at his ass.

Because why would I do that? I didn’t crush on Cruz anymore.

That was young Santari. Not grown woman Santari.

Get yourself together, girl. I was an emotional mess. It wasn’t that I even wanted to look at his ass right now. I just wanted to … forget about everything.

The tequila I downed in the car did nothing to numb the hollow ache that was eating me from the inside out. My fingers curled tighter around my purse, and my nails pressed into the leather as we reached The Omega House—a place I’d been to before, but never without my brother being here.

Unless I was tipsier than I thought, it was much grander than I remembered with its red brick exterior and tall white columns decorating an expansive porch.

The moment I stepped inside, I knew it wasn’t the liquor or the June heat playin’ tricks on me.

A lot really had changed since I’d been here last.

“Fellas, she’s here!” Cruz bellowed after he escorted me inside, causing my anxiety to increase.

I wasn’t sure why I was so nervous. The guys assumed they knew the reason why I was here, but they didn’t. I currently held all the cards, they just didn’t know it yet. They were about to find out.

The air smelled good as hell, with hints of sandalwood, leather, and whiskey, as masculine as the men living here.

Footsteps pounded right before Titan and Storm appeared in the grand foyer, standing beneath the gleam of a modern chandelier that didn’t quite belong in the bachelor pad but somehow, it worked.

“You’re just in time for dinner,” Storm stated, removing his fedora. “We made some upgrades to the house. Did you want a tour first?”

A tour? The last thing I needed was to be led around this house by three men who looked like they were plucked out of every woman’s fantasy with the scent of money, power, and seduction coming off them in waves.

Even so, they were still lying about the most important thing to me right now …

figuring out what happened to my brother.

Regardless, I nodded, knowing I had bad news to deliver and hoping the delay that the tour offered would help me sober up a bit.

The place really did look fantastic. The colors were classic and warm, while the rich leather furniture, dark-stained wood, and white walls with pops of black and dark grey gave the whole place the air of an upscale gentleman’s lounge.

As I followed Storm, I couldn’t help but notice how Titan seemed to be observing me closely, waiting to see my reaction to all the updates they’d made.

He stood the tallest, with his neatly groomed goatee and that commanding presence that made you hold your breath when he was near.

I literally had to remind myself to breath around him sometimes, his intensity intriguing and a puzzle I wouldn’t mind solving.

He had the kind of rich brown skin that stopped you in your tracks because it was seductively flawless and epitomized his Nigerian roots. Ever since I first met him, Titan had been a blend of strength and durability, his deep sense of pride in his ancestry present in how he carried himself.

“Our goal was to focus on the feng shui of the space,” Storm explained, not a hair out of place with his faded waves, as the sharp angles of his face lit up as he spoke with his easy confidence.

Honestly, Storm could have been talking about how to install a sprinkler system and I’d probably be listening intently because he was so introspective, it made mundane things sound interesting as hell.

It didn’t hurt that he was so nice to look at, my fingers itchin’ to touch his sexy five o’clock shadow, while his golden-brown complexion smoldered under the lights in the house.

Okay, Santari. No more tequila today.

“It wasn’t enough to just declutter,” Storm continued. “We needed to rearrange our furniture and layout of the house to promote positive energy and well-being.”

Cruz snorted, his broad chest and muscles flexing beneath his black tee that had been hiding underneath his suit jacket. “As you can tell, Storm took this konnichiwa stuff too seriously during the renovation.”

“Nigga, it’s called feng shui,” Storm corrected as Titan shook his head.

Cruz tossed his arms in the air. “That’s what I said! You had us sprinkling konnichiwa all up and through our house.”

Storm abruptly stopped walking and turned to Cruz.

“Feng shui is an ancient Chinese practice of arranging your life in a way that promotes balance and harmony in your environment,” he explained in a philosophical way that let us know he’d put on his professor hat.

“Meanwhile, konnichiwa is how the Japanese say hello or good afternoon.”

Cruz shrugged. “They sound similar to me.”

Titan rubbed his temple and masked a sound that sounded a helluva lot like a laugh, causing Storm to raise an eyebrow at him.

Titan cleared his throat before saying, “Cruz, they literally don’t sound shit alike. They don’t even mean the same thing,” his words backing up Storm.

“They do to me,” Cruz argued.

“Because you’re uncultured,” Storm retorted.

“I know two languages now!” Cruz defended. “Do you know how hard it is to learn another language as an adult?”

“Yet, you still stay on bullshit,” Storm stated. “Knowing Spanish is great, but in this day and age, you need to acknowledge that your words are another weapon that sets us back several generations. Now is the time to evolve, not be ignorant.”

“Ignorant!” Cruz exclaimed. “Listen, I ain’t tryin’ to piss off any ancestors of any nationalities.

And I damn sho’ don’t want to be hunted by any ghosts tryin’ to change the way I interpret things.

All I know is that you got my personal spaces in this house so decked out with plants that encourage all this different shit, that it feels like my bedroom is a jungle.

That palm that’s in there brings peace and prosperity.

Then that snake plant for protection. The small citrus tree for clarity and happiness, even if that shit do smell good as hell.

Then there’s the money plant and the Chinese money plant because you know a muthafucka like me wants all the riches I can get my hands on. ”

Storm rubbed his jaw. “Cruz, I literally told you that you didn’t have to put all of those plants in any personal spot of yours that you didn’t wish to have them at.

I only wanted to enhance the energy of our shared spaces, not have you get duplicate plants and then complain when they start overgrowing. ”

Cruz shrugged. “So what? Many grown ass men don’t have a green thumb.”

Titan shook his head again. Storm frowned. And I laughed, inwardly blaming it on the tequila like I was everything else.

“Can you keep your mouth shut while I get back to the tour?” Storm asked.

“My lips are sealed,” Cruz said, doing the motion like he was zipping it closed.

Cruz actually did keep his mouth shut and lips tight right until the end of the tour when he looked like he was ready to burst at the seams. He waited until Storm was a few feet away, before he leaned to me and said, “I know the difference. He forgets I spent some time overseas. But saying we konnichiwa’d our house instead of our house got fend shui’d sounds a lot more bad ass, don’t ya’ think? ”

I couldn’t help the giggle that escaped my lips because yeah, it did kinda sound more bad ass even if it didn’t make a lick of sense.

“Careful,” Cruz stated, gripping my shoulders when I almost ran into a wall that I didn’t recall being there before.

I didn’t know what it was about Cruz, but I was always clumsy around him when he made me laugh.

I tried to shake it off like I always did whenever he saved me from a catastrophe, but having Titan and Storm turn around to see why Cruz had told me to be careful had me getting much more attention than I was prepared for.

God, why are they all so beautiful to look at?

It was hard not to study them just as hard as they were watching me.

They each had an imposing presence about them.

The kind that turned heads when they walked into a room, prompting you to decide if you wanted to be them or be with them.

And if I hadn’t been here to discuss business, maybe I’d let myself enjoy the view a little longer.