Page 20 of Tangled Hearts

“Hov, wake up! Your phone keeps ringing and woke me up. I can’t believe you don’t hear that shit!

” Knycole shook him with as much strength as she could muster up.

Her eyes opened a little and took notice of the room still being dark, which let her know it was too damn early in the morning.

“Nigga! Wake up!” She continued to shake his body.

Hov wasn’t usually a heavy sleeper, but since he’d been sleeping in the bed with Knycole, he’d become one.

He heard her loud and clear and still had no urgency to answer his phone.

He knew it could only be one person calling, so he didn’t budge to answer it.

The phone stopped briefly before starting back up just as quickly.

Angrily, Knycole reached over him. The feeling of his dick sticking straight up, stopped her mid roll.

Now, she was awake. It can’t be this big , she thought.

Her mind ran wild with curiosity. She was nosey enough to want to feel more but still cautious enough to know better.

Hov knew she felt him, which caused a cocky smirk to appear on his face—a smirk she would’ve caught had she not been so captivated by his manhood.

He laid still peeking through his semi-closed eyelids. His phone started to ring again, and just like before, he ignored it.

“Ugh!” Knycole grunted, eagerly reaching for the phone. The size of his dick was no longer on her mind while her leg swung across him, straddling his body. Eyes closed, teeth biting into her bottom lip, her lady parts felt him. Moisture coated the seat of her panties while her nipples pebbled.

Hov’s eyes popped open at the heat that emitted from her center. The sly game he was playing was becoming too real— for the both of them.

“He—Hel—lo,” Knycole stammered, answering his phone. Her slanted eyes trained on him. Her pussy getting wetter and wetter.

“Bitch! Put Hov on the phone!” Briana yelled through the phone. She knew exactly who was answering his phone and hated Knycole with a passion. She wanted Hov in the worst way but was curved whenever it came to his precious little Knyc.

The lust that was brewing between them was promptly cut short. “Here,” Knycole said, dropping the phone on his chest while she took her original place in the bed.

“Yea?” Hov answered the phone with disdain. He wasn’t a disrespectful nigga, but his patience with Briana was wearing thin. She wanted more from him than he was willing to give, and no matter how many times he’d told her that, she still tried.

The tone she had with Knycole left the moment she heard his voice. “I cooked breakfast and thought you could come over to get a plate. My mama is already gone to work.”

Knycole watched him as his expression remained absent. Whatever she was saying on the phone, he wasn’t interested.

Hov pulled the phone from his face to see the time. A grimace appeared. “Nah, I’m still in the bed.” He scratched the back of his head before resting it on his arm. It was too damn early for her to be talking about breakfast and shit. The sun hadn’t even come up yet.

“Still in bed? But she just answered your phone.” It finally dawned on her. “Are you sleeping with her?!” Briana shouted through the phone not caring who heard her.

Knycole’s eyes grew a few sizes bigger.

“Yea,” Hov said before ending the call.

Knycole’s tiny hand landed across his head. “Why did you say that?”

“I wasn’t about to lie. I am sleeping in the bed with you. If she takes it another way, that’s on her.” He shrugged, closing his eyes again to try and get a little more sleep before his day really got started. It was a special day, and he needed to run a few errands.

“I don’t want people to think the wrong thing,” she whispered.

“They will, but I don’t give a fuck. It’s natural for people to put a lot of time and effort into shit that doesn’t pertain to them. They were doing that before I laid my head here, and they’ll do it when I stop laying my head here.”

All she heard was him telling her he was going to stop staying the night. Her chest tightened. Knycole was afraid of being alone. She hadn’t talked to her father, and although Nakorea let Noir come over, she still had to go home. Which meant, without Hov, she would be in the house alone.

In the hood, it was easy to be an abandoned child. No one cared enough to get the authorities involved and as long as she showed up to school, no one would really put too much thought into it. That and since she was sixteen, the school wouldn’t even trip if she dropped out altogether.

He was always so in tune with her feelings. “I’m not saying that.” He snorted.

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“I know everything about you.” His bedroom voice floated around the room, landing on her thumping clit. It was a double meaning, and it was true. He knew all about her crying at night when she thought he was sound asleep. He knew it all and would soon rectify it.

Her mind ran wild with what it was he meant by knowing everything about her.

Was he aware that her pussy was purring for him as they spoke?

If so, she was even more embarrassed. Instead of talking to him until she fell back to sleep like she’d usually do, she rolled over with a smile on her face while her heart beat a different tune.

Silence settled in the room but Knycole’s thoughts wouldn’t let her rest. She shifted, staring at the wall for a long time before blurting out, “Hov… I think Nick left rehab.”

His eyes opened again, the weight of her words pulling him out of whatever peace he’d been clinging to. “What you mean you think?”

“He hasn’t called me,” she said, sitting up now. “I called every local rehab I could find. None of them got him. He was supposed to stay another month, Hov. I don’t know where he is.”

Hov rubbed his face, sitting up slowly, ready to beat Nick’s ass. “What you want from him, Knyc? Be real. You want him back in your life, or you just want to know he’s breathing?”

He needed a better understanding of why she was so pressed with Nick getting clean.

Her throat tightened. “I want him to be clean. I want him to be a father to me, my safe space... I want to curl up with my daddy and laugh or cry depending on the time of the month. I want him to see me walk across the stage and go to college. I just want to get what I feel I deserve ‘cause God wouldn’t take my mama and leave me a shell of a daddy.”

“That’s the thing,” Hov grumbled, still a little tired. “Will him being clean really make you happy? Or you chasing something that never existed?”

Her eyes watered, but she blinked fast to fight it off. “You don’t get it?—”

“I do get it,” he cut in. “I know you love him. He’s your daddy. But stop acting like it’s on you to fix him. If he left, he chose that. You ain’t gon’ love him sober if he don’t love himself sober.”

Knycole’s hands balled in her lap. “So what I’m supposed to do? Act like I don’t care?”

“Nah,” Hov whispered. “Care. But don’t break yourself chasing him. That ain’t your weight to carry.”

She leaned back against the headboard, chest heavy, heart torn. Part of her wanted to scream, part of her wanted to cry, and part of her just wanted Hov to keep talking because he always knew how to bring her back down.

He watched her for a long second, studying every twitch on her face. “You hear me, Knyc? You ain’t built to carry all that shit by yourself.”

Her lips quivered. “Then who else gon’ carry it?”

“I will.” His voice was patient like he was promising her more than just words.

He shifted closer, hand sliding over her chest, landing on her neck, squeezing it—feeling her pulse skip and sputter.

“I’ll carry it for you. Anything you got…

your pain, your fears, your daddy, all that shit you don’t say out loud.

I’ll take it. I’ll carry everything for you. ”

Her eyes fluttered over to his.

He leaned in closer, his breath warm on her ear, calloused hand still gripping her neck. “That’s what you got me for. You don’t ever gotta fight none of this alone, kid. Long as I’m breathing, I’ma carry you.”

The weight of it sank in her chest, but it didn’t crush her this time. It felt like relief, like she could finally exhale. She blinked, tears threatening to fall again, but this time they came with a small smile tugging at her lips.

And Hov just sat back, cool as ever, but his hand stayed locked on her neck like he meant every word.

The visiting room smelled like bleach and tired air.

Phones on the wall and glass scratched from years of hands pressed too close.

Rock walked out in state greens, chains clinking around his ankles with the CO trailing behind.

He carried himself like he wasn’t fazed, but his shoulders looked heavier than they ever had on the block.

Shakeisha was already sitting at the booth. Jacket zipped to her neck with her hair pulled back and eyes red like she’d been crying before she walked in. She jumped when she saw him. She was happy to see him but sad and anxious about what she needed to drop in his lap.

In his eyes, she was still everything he never shook loose.

Same girl that laughed with him when they were too broke to do anything but sit on the curb.

Same girl that knew every piece of his ugly and never ran.

Same girl that embarrassed him in front of everybody but came crawling back to him at night.

She wasn’t perfect. Not even close but she was his first real taste of love, and that had a way of sitting in a man’s bones whether he wanted it to or not.