Page 3 of Omar

"I'm good."

He nodded, not pushing it, and went to his car.

I got in the Range Rover. A man came out of the bodega across the street and turned uptown. A cab cut the light. The block kept going. None of it had anything to do with the fact that Asha Cole had just walked through a side door in Supreme's warehouse and told the room she'd never seen me before in her life.

I put my hands on the wheel. My thumb moved along the stitching on the grip, back and then forward. I thought about the half-second before she'd gotten her face under control. How her expression had locked the moment she saw me, everything in it going flat and still. Fourteen years and she'd pulled it off in under a second.

I'd taught her that. We'd been sixteen and hiding something from her pops and I'd told her: give them nothing. Whatever you're feeling, keep it behind your eyes.

She'd kept it there ever since.

She'd kept it there for the man who'd just slapped her ass for sport in front of three of his crew and called her that's mine right there. Kept it there while she walked through the door without looking back, like nothing in that room mattered to her. Like I didn't matter to her.

I knew better.

I started the engine and pulled away from the curb, and I drove in the wrong direction for two blocks before I realized I wasn't headed home.

Chapter 2

Asha

The door clicked shut behind me and I sagged against it.

Omar Baptiste.

Omar Baptiste, sitting at Supreme's table.

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

My heart was kicking so hard I could taste it in my throat. I clamped both hands flat over my chest like that was going to do anything at all and dragged a shaky breath in through my nose. Held it. Let it out slow. My hands wouldn't stop trembling so I curled them into fists and pressed them against my collarbones to make them stop.

I'd held myself together for the seven seconds it'd taken to look Supreme in the eye, lie, and walk out of that room. The second the door closed I'd nearly slid down the wall to the floor. I made myself move. If Supreme came looking I needed to be anywhere but pinned against this door with my eyes blown wide and my chest heaving like I'd run a mile. I crossed the upstairs hallway of the warehouse, slipped into the small office at the end of it, shut that door behind me too, and pressed both hands over my mouth.

It'd been fourteen years.

We were sixteen, both of us. In love so deep it had its own gravity, before the lies, before the breaking, when the future was still up for grabs. We had it all planned: a daughter named after his grandmother, a son after mine, a brownstone with a yard, a dog. He'd work for his dad, I'd do hair. We'd be the couple old people pointed at and said, They've been together since they were kids. And we meant every word.

Then Ray, I can't even bring myself to call him dad anymore, came home one random Wednesday with that look on his face I knew, the one that meant he was in trouble, and told me to pack a bag. By Thursday afternoon I was in the back of a U-Haul on I-95 heading to Atlanta, my whole life folded into a duffel, and a boy, my Omar, on a corner in Bed-Stuy who didn't yet know I wasn't coming back.

Until now. I'd been back for just one month.

Supreme had kept me in Atlanta for the three years we'd been together. He said the city had enemies, that he didn't want me near his business. A year in, he bought a house outside Atlanta and stayed there with me, rarely bringing me up to New York.

Then a month ago, he showed up with two of his men and that tone in his voice, the one I knew too well. He said he was bringing me back to Brooklyn. Things were getting hot with TK. He needed his baby close.

Close, he'd said, like that was a tender thing.

Only back a month and I'd already ran into Omar Baptiste.

Supreme's slap was still smarting on my ass. I was almost certain he did it because he'd seen something on my face he didn't like when I locked eyes with Omar. Fuck. And even though we'd both denied knowing each other, deep down I could tell he wasn't convinced. I'm sure he had to do that to remind the room what was his, and I had to take it standing because flinching would've made it a hell of a lot worse.

My phone buzzed in my cardigan pocket. Nene.

Denise 'Nene'. My best friend in the world. We'd first met in Atlanta back when I was rebuilding my life from a duffel bag. She'd been the one constant through all of it. Then eight months ago she'd packed up her shop and moved to Brooklyn for a man. I'd cried the first night without her in my city, and now here she was, on the same part of the map as me again, the one person who could text me at this hour and mean something.

You good, sis?

She was the only person on this earth who knew the truth of what I was actually living. The only one who knew about my dad, Ray, the debt, the deal that I was stuck in. Who knew that boyfriend was the polite word for what Supreme was, that I'd been paying my father's tab with my life for three years. The only person who could ask me you good, sis? and mean it.