Page 23 of Meet Me at the Altar

Moving in with my parents wasn’t an option. Kelsey let me crash at her place for a few weeks before I found a brownstone on the other side of town from Remy. I wanted to eliminate the chance we would run into each other again, and thus far, I’d been successful.

My parents told me that he called, and my mother had cursed him out. That wasn’t enough of a warning because he had shown up on their doorstep, and it had taken our neighbors to keep my dad from beating Remy into the ground. Now here we stood, facing each other, and I realized that all the therapy in the world had not prepared me for this moment.

“Uhm, . . . what do you want?” I asked in a wobbly voice.

“You changed your number, so I haven’t been able to get in touch with you. I went to your job, and they said that you didn’t work there anymore. I looked all over for you, but I couldn’t find you.”

“If you hadn’t been so far up Ellis’s ass, pun intended, you would have known that I was terminated that day,” I replied hotly.

“I know what I did was wrong, Kalliope, but I thought we could have worked through things. I mean, you deserved honesty and transparency, but I deserved to be heard out.”

“I deserved someone who handled my heart with ease and respected me enough to tell me when things were over. You deserved nothing but what happened.”

“I didn’t mean for you to find out that way. It only happened a few times, and I was trying to stop it, but then she startedblackmailing me. Every time I turned her away, she threatened to tell you and her parents.”

“I really don’t care about that anymore. My life with you is done.”

He reached for my hand and grabbed it. “Baby, please. It doesn’t have to be, unless you’ve moved on.” He glanced up and over my shoulder just as I felt Andrès take my hand.

“Nah, son, she came back home,” Andrès stated, rubbing the webbed space between my thumb and index finger before he lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles.

“Kalli, can we please just?—”

“You can’t do shit but march your corny ass on down the street, nigga.”

Remy balled and un-balled his fists repeatedly as he stared into my eyes but spoke to Andrès. “I wasn’t speaking to you. I was talking to Kalliope.”

Andrès moved in front of me and stepped so close to Remy that their shoes almost touched. Drè was a couple of inches taller than Remy, but Remy was larger. “Anything you’ve got to say to her, you can say it to me, and I ain’t trying to hear that shit, nigga. Now I’ma tell ya ass one last time, step the fuck on before I catch a case.”

“You were always jealous of what she and I had. So, of course, you would take the perfect opportunity to move in. I bet you couldn’t wait until things broke down between us,” Remy declared.

Andrès sniffed and rubbed his nose with his thumb before he angled his head. “I ain’t never been jealous of no nigga, and I didn’t have to wait for shit. If you couldn’t close the deal in ten years, she was never yours in the first place, but I knew that all along. This is the last time that I’ll warn you, step the fuck away and stay away.”

Remy looked between the two of us and replied, “I hope you’re happy, Kalliope.”

“I’ve never been happier in all my life.”

He turned and walked away. Until Andrès wrapped me in his arms and held me close, I had no idea that I was trembling.

He dropped a kiss on my forehead and whispered, “I got you, beautiful. You never have to worry about that sort of pain again.”

Chapter 8

Andrès

TWO WEEKS LATER

“Oh my, God, Drè. You’re such a cheater,” Calliope whined.

I laughed and shook my head. “Listen, I didn’t cheat. I won fair and square. Don’t be mad because I’m a pool shark.”

“You’re supposed to let me win.” She was leaning over the pool table with her ass jutted out. I knew that she was trying to distract me because she kept doing it throughout the game. I wasn’t going for it, though.

“Why?”

“Because I’m your date,” she proclaimed, standing up and gripping her pool stick.

“Sorry, baby girl. It doesn’t work that way,” I whispered as I leaned into her from behind.