AllFreeNovel
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I reached in front of her and unlocked the door. She still had a key, but I guess she thought it best not to use it.
She walked into my house, and I glanced back at Rell who gave me a smile as I closed the door. When I turned back around, Renee was already headed up the stairs.
“Renee!” I called after her, but she didn’t respond. By the time I made it upstairs, she was already in the bedroom, pulling clothes out of the closet.
As she placed some stuff on the bed, she looked up at me, and asked, “Where are the boxes?”
“I don’t want you to take your stuff,” I said.
She was headed back to the closet, but stopped in her tracks and with her back to me, said, “No, I clearly remember you telling me to get my stuff and go, Lorenzo. It took me a little while, but I’m here and I’m not leaving without my stuff.”
“I don’t want you to go, either.”
She didn’t respond or move a muscle, so I stepped up behind her and leaned in close to her ear. “Don’t go.”
She shook her head. “Zo, you hurt me. I mean, you really hurt me.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that shit I said. I was—I was upset. Look, baby, I got a lot of things about me that need to be fixed. I ain’t been right since I lost my dad. It hurt for you to leave me like that, and I just…I didn’t handle things right. Please, forgive me.”
She stood there for a long moment, as if she was thinking about what I said, and then she headed back to the closet. I followed her.
“You’re not going to forgive me? You’re not going to stay?”
“No, because how do I know you won’t go off on me the next time I decide to go to the store by myself?”
“You’re exaggerating.”
She snatched a dress from a hanger and flung it at me. “No! You exaggerated. I was gone for one day, Zo, one day, and then I came back, because I love you and not coming back was never really an option. I came to you as a woman and apologized. I owned my wrong and you shit all over me, threw me out like trash. Dismissed me like I meant nothing to you. So, no! I’m not staying!”
She yanked a few more items from hangers and tried to move past me into the bedroom, but I wouldn’t budge.
“Zo, move!”
“No. Not until you accept my apology. You’re right. I’m wrong. I’m a piece of shit for treating you like that. I don’t deserve to breathe the same air as you, never did, never will, but I love you and I need you.”
She shook her head as she dropped the clothes in her hands, picked up a pair of her shoes, and threw them at me. “I don’t care what you need! Move! Move your big ass out of my way!”
“No.”
She backed up against a wall in a section of the closet that was bare because of the clothes she’d removed, slid down, and sat on some shoes that she promptly pulled from under her and threw across the closet, hitting the opposite wall. Burying her face in her hands, she groaned, “Just let me goooo!”
I lowered myself to the floor, sitting directly in front of her. “I can’t.”
“You hurt me, and I don’t want to be hurt anymore!”
“You hurt me, too, baby.”
“But I apologized!”
“So did I.”
And then silence, as we sat there staring at each other. I watched a tear trickle down her face and finally spoke again. “I love you, Doc.”
“I know you do, Zo.”
I moved right next to her and wiped her wet cheeks. “And I don’t want to be without you.”
She sniffled. “I know that, too.”
