Page 18 of Omar

I didn't tell Supreme. Telling Supreme would've meant explaining what Holt said and what Holt implied and whether I'd done something to make him think he could say it. I already ran that conversation in my head and decided I wasn't having it.

Now someone had jumped Holt last night and put him down hard enough for a doctor.

I sat at the kitchen table and worked through what that could mean. Holt had enemies. Supreme had enemies. Brooklyn had a thousand reasons for a man like Marlon Holt to end up bleeding somewhere. It didn't have to connect to me. It didn't have to connect to yesterday.

But Supreme had asked what Holt was doing on Nostrand.

I went to finish my makeup in the bathroom.

The bride's name was Jessica. She wanted an updo with loose curls framing her face and baby's breath woven through the back. It took me two hours to get it right. She tipped me a hundred and fifty dollars in cash, asked three times if I'd come to Atlanta in June for the wedding. I told her I'd think about it.

I packed up my brushes and my hot tools. Did a last check of the kitchen to make sure I hadn't left anything, then went out the front door with my bag on my shoulder.

Omar Baptiste was leaning against a parked car half a block down on the other side of the street, a black sedan with tinted windows. He wasn't standing on the corner or anywhere people would notice him. He'd positioned himself where he could see the door without drawing attention.

I stopped on the top step.

He straightened up when he saw me but didn't wave or call out, just waited where he was.

My feet wanted to turn around and go back inside but I made them take me down the steps. I walked toward him slow enough that I could still change my mind. He stayed where he was with his hands in his jacket pockets and his eyes on me the whole way down the block.

Up close he was taller than the warehouse room had let him look, broader through the shoulders, with lines at the corners of his eyes and weight through his chest and arms that fourteen years had put there. But his face and the way he looked at me hadn't changed at all.

We stood there for a moment without saying anything. A woman walked past us with a stroller. A delivery truck beeped backing into a spot across the street.

"I waited for you," he said. His voice was low. "Two years, Asha. I kept going back to our spot and I waited."

My chest went tight. "Omar."

"I know it's been fourteen years. I know everything's different now. But I waited for you to come back or call or send me somethin' that said you still remembered."

"I never stopped remembering."

"Then how'd you end up with him?" He didn't give me a second to answer. "I saw you in that warehouse. I saw his hands on you." His own hands tightened in his pockets. "How'd that happen?"

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. How was I supposed to explain Ray's debt and Supreme's offer and three years of my life that I couldn't get back. How was I supposed to tell him I'd been traded like property to clear what my father owed.

My phone rang.

I pulled it out of my bag. Cee's name was on the screen.

"I have to take this," I said.

Omar nodded and stepped back to give me space.

I answered. "Hey."

"You good?" Cee's voice was careful. "You been in there a while."

"I'm good. Just finishing up. Give me five more minutes."

"Aight."

I hung up and looked at Omar. He was watching me with an expression I couldn't read.

"That was my driver," I said.

"I know who it was." He glanced down the block. "I can take you wherever you need to go."