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32
I woke up with a slight headache the next morning, something that happened from time to time if I cried hard or was tired. Well, I had cried hard the night before and Lorenzo didn’t let me get much sleep that night, not that I was complaining. But as I stepped out of the shower, I thought to myself that I really hoped it wasn’t my blood pressure again since my doctor had taken me off my medicine.
Thankfully, by the time I made it downstairs to have breakfast with Lorenzo, the headache had dissipated.
“Good morning,” I greeted Lorenzo, who sat at the table with his eyes glued to his laptop. “Working at breakfast? That’s new.”
He looked up at me and smiled, then stood and pulled a chair out. “Hey, baby. Come sit next to me. I wanna show you something.”
“All right,” I said, as I sat down and tilted my head so he could kiss my cheek.
After he’d set a plate of food before me, he angled his computer so that I could see the screen. There was a Facebook page pulled up. “Who’s that?” I asked, taking a bite of turkey bacon.
“My son.”
I stopped chewing. “Your what?”
“My son. My oldest. Darwin.”
I shifted my eyes from the smiling face on the profile picture to Lorenzo. There was definitely a resemblance… “You have a son, Zo?”
He nodded. “I actually have three sons…and a daughter.”
My stomach started to feel sour, and that headache suddenly reappeared. “What? Zo, you have four kids?”
He nodded again. He had this hopeful look on his face as if somehow this news was supposed to please me. “Yeah,” he said. “So you see, it doesn’t matter that you can’t have children, baby. I really don’t want you to worry about it.”
I frowned. “Zo, you have four children that you never told me about?”
“I—”
I stood from my chair. “I have known you for ten months, been your woman for eight months, and it never once crossed your mind to tell me you have four whole kids?!”
He stood, too, his eyes wide with surprise. “Look, it’s not what you think. Darwin is twenty-three—”
“What the hell difference does it make how old he is?! What are you? Some kind of deadbeat? You have never mentioned these kids. You have no pictures of them anywhere. I would give anything to have a child and you act like yours don’t even exist!”
“No—”
“Oh, my God! What kind of fool am I to fall for a man like you?!”
“Wait a minute, now. You need to calm down, Renee. It’s not like you didn’t keep anything from me! Did it slip your mind all these months that your ass couldn’t even have kids?!”
I opened my mouth to reply, but couldn’t. I just stood there and stared at him, because he’d just hit way below the belt.
“Shit,” he mumbled. “Baby, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. Look, will you just calm down and let me explain?”
My head throbbed as tears began to fall. “No, Zo. I don’t wanna hear a damn thing you have to say. Screw you. Screw your weak-ass apology. You can kiss my ass and go to hell.”
I snatched my purse from the table and dug my keys out.
“Where are you going? You need to hear me out on this. Please.”
“To work.”
“Wait,” he said softly. “Let me call Rell.”
“I’m driving myself.”
