Page 68 of Tangled Hearts
Knycole came by late to drop Qua’s swimming bag off at Hov’s since he had lessons after school the next day. The goggles clinked against the zipper as she stepped inside. Hov was leaning in the doorway, shirtless with his sweatpants low on his hips.
Qua’s bag landed by the door, and her eyes cut to the hallway. “He good?” she asked.
“Knocked out.” Hov’s lips curved. “Come roll with me. Just one, then I’ll let you go back to getting your life together.”
“You so petty, Quameek,” she laughed. “I guess.”
The backyard was quiet; the kind of silence that made it feel private. Hov dropped into the chair to break down a blunt with steady hands. As he licked it to seal it, he motioned her closer. “Sit down, kid… I don’t bite.”
She sat across from him, legs pulled up under her, watching him work. When he lit it and pulled deep, she leaned forward, took it from him, and let smoke slip slowly through her lips. “Still the same,” she teased, tasting the same weed he’d been smoking since he started.
“Don’t fix what ain’t broken.” He grinned. “I like the level of high this gets me.”
“I feel you,” Knycole blew smoke from her lips.
They sat with everything between them, the smoke, the night, the silence. Her eyes stayed on him. He noticed.
“You look different,” he muttered. “Something on your chest?”
Her stomach twisted at how effortlessly Hov could read her.
Knycole tucked hair behind her ear. “I been talking to my counselor. I’m changing my major.”
Hov’s brows lifted. “To what?” A knowing smirk resting on his lips, he just needed her to say it.
“Pre-Med.” Her voice was steady, even though her heart was racing.
He sat back, blunt paused at his lips. “Dead ass. You gon’ go big?”
“For real.” She shifted, arms wrapping around her knees. “Nursing was safe. Easy. But I don’t want safe. I want to change lives. I want to change mine. I feel like this is the only way I can do it.”
He leaned forward. “Kid… you don’t even know how proud that shit makes me. Dead ass. You hear me?”
Her chest tightened. “You proud?”
“I’m more than proud.” He tapped his chest. “I’m talking about standing-on-the-table screaming proud. I always told you, you bigger than the shit around here. Always told you, you had it.”
Her eyes misted. “You’re the first person who ever made me believe it.”
Hov’s eyes didn’t move from hers. “You did it. You making it real. I love that for you. My BM bout to be a fuckin’ doctor.”
She let out a shaky laugh, grabbing the blunt just to calm her hands. “You always knew how to make me feel like I wasn’t crazy.”
“You not crazy. You’re chosen, kid. Everything you’ve been through was to get you here.”
Knycole held his words in her chest like she was storing them for later, like she needed them to carry her through every late night and long class ahead. Nobody else ever talked to her like that. Nobody else ever saw her that clearly.
Noir did sometimes, but Hov always did.
The blunt burned slowly between her fingers, the smoke slipping into the night, but the high from him alone was already settling inside her. This was what she missed. His voice steadying her, reminding her she wasn’t small, wasn’t average, wasn’t stuck.
Her eyes stayed on him, studying his face in the low light. He wasn’t the same boy she used to fight with, but he wasn’t far from him either. The scars were there, the weight too, but the way he looked at her… it was the same. That look had never left.
For Hov, this was more than just pride. It was proof that even when their hearts twisted in knots, they were still tied to each other’s wins. Loving her meant celebrating her, even when they weren’t right. Even when they were distant.
Tangled hearts weren’t always about pain—they were about finding your person again, after everything bent and broke. About realizing some love was etched too deep to die out.
Knycole wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, trying to laugh it off, but her voice weakened. “I don’t think you get how much I needed to hear that from you. Everybody else just… expects me to figure it out. You the only one that ever really seen me.”
Hov grabbed the blunt from her. “I’ll always see you. Even when you was tryna play me, even when you was running, I still saw you. That’s why it cut the way it did. ‘Cause I knew you was mine but you ain’t know it yet.”
Her lips trembled. “I knew. I just didn’t want to admit it.”
“Why not?” His voice dropped, those brown eyes bore into her soul.
“‘Cause if I admitted it, that meant I could lose you. And that was the one thing I wasn’t ready for. And I’m learning I’ve been selfish with love.”
Hov shook his head, pulling her hand into his. “You lost me anyway, kid. We both lost. Shit was empty without you.”
The words sat heavy between them. She stared at his hand gripping hers, rough and warm, thumb brushing against her knuckles like he was memorizing them all over again.
“I don’t wanna do that again,” she whispered. “I don’t wanna keep living without my person.”
“Then don’t,” he sat up. He needed her to understand what he was saying. Feel how he was coming. “Not if you serious this time. I ain’t got no pride left when it come to you. I just want us back on track.”
She pulled out her phone. “Let me play something. Create some vibes.”
Hov nodded, still holding her hand. “It’s always your world, kid… always.”
Slow dancing in this burning house… I don’t want to go nowhere.
Leon Thomas’ Breaking Point hit so hard, Knycole closed her eyes.
“I ain’t never heard this,” Hov sat up.
“Then listen, nigga,” she joked, still swaying to the music.
Hov tapped his lap. “Come sit right here so I can hear it better.”
“Or I can just turn it up,” she laughed but was already making her way to his lap.
She lowered onto him, body molding into his like it never forgot where it belonged.
His arms came around her waist, while her head dropped to his shoulder.
That warmth was second nature. Hov had always been her home.
From the nights he showed up broken and she fed him scraps she could barely spare, to the way he gave her everything she didn’t even know how to ask for.
Her mind flooded with snapshots of them. Good times, bad times, the in-between. Crying, laughing, fighting, then making up. Their whole story played like film rolling inside her, a reel that couldn’t ever be replaced. She realized in that moment there was no version of her life without him in it.
She bit her lip to stifle a smile. “I love it here.”
“Then act like it and stop making me wait.”
“I like when you puff your chest out and put your foot down with me.”
“Shit, that was all I needed to do to get your head right?”
“Mm hm,” she snickered, rubbing her fingers across the tattoo on his neck.
He laughed too. “You’re something else.”
“Something good?”
“Something, perfect.” He pushed his lips out for her to kiss them. “I’m saying everything when you’re the one that needs to be convincing me why now… why you choose me now?”
Knycole’s voice cracked, “it’s always been you…
since back when an unloved little girl met an abused little boy.
I knew then that nobody could love you the way I do, and nobody could ever come close to loving me the way you always have.
” Her chest heaved as she fought to get the words out.
“But I let my head get in the way. I didn’t feel worthy of something that pure.
That much love was foreign to me. And I got scared.
I got selfish. Selfish because even when I pulled away, I still wanted your love in some form.
I couldn’t let it go, even when I didn’t give it back right. ”
Her emotions spilled out through the tears sliding down her cheeks and her voice trembled with every word.
“But now I get it. It’s not about me choosing you over anybody else.
It’s about me finally choosing me. And when I choose me, I have to choose you…
because without you, I’m not whole. You’re the part of me I been missing, the part I can’t fake or replace.
Quameek, I choose you. Not just now. Not just when it’s easy. Forever, kid.”
Her words clung to the air, bare and raw. There was no shield left for her to hide behind.
Hov’s chest pounded. He could feel her—her love pressed into him like it was carved on his skin, written in a language only he knew how to read.
He grabbed her hard, pulling her into him, kissing her with force, with years of ache and need pouring through it. His lips moved rough against hers, hungry, leaving marks he didn’t care about hiding.
Hov kissed her like he was claiming back every piece of her that had ever drifted away. His hand pressed firm at the back of her neck, holding her in place as if letting go would mean losing her again.
She moaned into him, the sound raw, desperate, breaking between their mouths.
“I choose you,” she whispered again, words swallowed by his kiss. “Forever.”
“Don’t ever take that shit back,” he rasped, lips brushing hers. His forehead rested heavy against hers. “You all I ever wanted, kid. All I ever prayed for.”
Her hands slid against his bare skin, palms flat on his chest, feeling the racing of his heart. “Then let me love you right this time. No running. No breaks. No other choice but you.”
“You better not,” he warned, though his voice cracked under the weight of it. He kissed her again, slower this time, his tongue stroking hers like he wanted to memorize her taste.
He stood, lifting her in his arms, carrying her inside without breaking the kiss. She clung to him, legs wrapped around his waist, face buried in his neck. The faint sound of another R&B track bled from her phone, but the only rhythm that mattered was their breaths syncing.
Hov laid her down on the couch, his body hovering over hers.
His eyes searched her face, needing to see the truth in her tears, in the way she held onto him like he was air. “Say it one more time,” he demanded softly.