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What was I supposed to do now? What did he expect me to do, teleport to Africa with him and live out my days learning how to talk to fucking lions?
HELL no!
Curling my legs up under me on my sofa, I sighed, because as upset as I was about the whole situation, I kind of already…knew. I knew I didn’t have the capacity to love any man other than Sam. I also knew I’d never stopped loving him. I was just missing out on the why.
Now I knew the why, too.
*****
It’d been a week since I stormed out of Sam’s hotel room, and I was no less confused than I’d been at that moment. As I sat in the studio, staring at the pre-programmed song listing, I felt an ever-present maelstrom of feelings ranging from anger to disappointment. Anger at the fact that he’d blown into my world after twenty years and upended everything I thought I knew about myself and life in general, disappointment because he hadn’t tried to contact me since that day. But truthfully, Sam might’ve had permanent residence in my head for all I knew, probably heard all of my thoughts, and was privy to the fact that I hadn’t been doing shit but thinking about him. In that case, why would he reach out?
As Raheem DeVaughn’s “Marathon” played, I thought about the saddened expression on Sam’s face, my last vision of him. I was pissed when he’d honestly helped me solve a puzzle I’d spent my entire adulthood grappling with. I’d thought something was wrong with me, that both me and my pussy had to be broken for relationships and love and happiness to be so elusive for me, when in reality, by giving myself to Sam, I’d inadvertently set myself up for failure.
He was to blame for my fucked-up love life, even if it had been unintentional on his part, and I truly believed it had been. Sam was a lot of things back when I really knew him, but he wasn’t malicious, and I felt no malice in Immortal Sam’s presence either.
Immortal.
Did I really believe that? Did I want to believe it? Hell, did I even care? He was gone…again, and that was a good thing, wasn’t it? I mean, being around him had awakened feelings and desires that I thought I didn’t or couldn’t possess, but that was because he’d marked my ass.
Wasn’t it?
Hell, my thoughts were all over the place, but my heart? It was still in the same holding pattern it’d been in since I was seventeen years old.
9
Sampson
“Baba…”
My eyes popped open, confusion, and then recognition, registering in my brain in rapid-fire succession. I was still in Brownhaven, and Porter had invaded my damn mind.
Par for the course for him.
“Show yourself,” I grated, not in the mood for him or whatever he’d deemed important enough to disturb me during my misery.
I sat up on the side of the bed just as he arrived, standing before me as I scrubbed a hand down my face and yawned.
Porter’s eyes shifted from me to the empty other half of the bed.“You are alone?”
“You think I’d invite you here if I wasn’t?”
With lifted eyebrows, Porter replied, “So, she rejected you? I suppose that explains the sour mood, Baba.”
“Don’t call me that,” I groaned. “I’m not qualified to be anyone’s Baba.”
“Your blood and the prophecy qualify you. You know that. The ancestors assigned me as your guardian from the day you were born because you were always meant to be who you are…Baba.”
“A Baba, a chief who can’t even be with the woman he loves? A king with no queen?” I scoffed.
“She is your destiny, and you are hers. That, too, is a prophecy that will be fulfilled. Surely you know this. Isn’t that why you haven’t left?”
I nodded. “Yes. I believe she’ll be mine. I do. It’s just that seeing her, touching her, has eroded my patience.”
“I can imagine. She’s quite beautiful, Baba.”
“That she is, Porter.”
*****
