Page 45 of Omar

"Asha."

I turned back.

"Same time next week?"

I should have said no. I should have walked out of that coffee shop and deleted his number and gone back to Cee's car, Supreme's house, my savings account and my plan. I should have been smart.

"Yeah," I said. "Same time."

I walked the two blocks back to the building where Cee thought I was doing a home visit. Eight minutes to spare. I came out the front door, texted him and he pulled up a minute later.

"All good?" he asked.

"Yeah. She wants the same appointment again next week."

"Cool."

I got in the back seat and we drove home. Supreme was on a call when I came in, pacing by the window with his phone pressed to his ear. He glanced at me, mouthed hey baby, then went back to his conversation. I mouthed hey back and went to the bedroom to change.

Afterwards in the bathroom, I locked the door and sat on the edge of the tub looking at my own face in the mirror across from me.

I was in serious trouble. The worst trouble I'd been in since I came back to Brooklyn. Omar Baptiste was texting me from a number saved as a color correction client. I was sneaking out of my driver's sight line to sit in coffee shops, kiss him, tell him things I hadn't told anyone except Nene. I was lying to Cee, lying to Supreme, lying to myself every time I said I had this under control.

My savings were three thousand away from the number I needed. My plan was still intact. My exit strategy was still possible. Everything I'd spent two years building was still there, still real, still mine.

But I'd just kissed a man in the back of a coffee shop with both hands on his jacket and his thumb on my pulse and I could still feel it. All of it. Every second.

I was in the worst trouble of my life.

And there was a growing part of me that didn't care.

Chapter 17

Omar

Itexted her at nine in the morning. Same place. Noon.

She replied twenty minutes later. I'll be there.

I spent the next three hours at APEX going through territory reports with Devon that I couldn't concentrate on. He caught me checking my phone twice but didn't say anything. At eleven I told him I had somewhere to be and he nodded and kept working.

I drove to the building on Kingston Ave where Cee dropped her off for the home visits. Parked half a block down and waited. At twelve-fifteen Cee's sedan pulled up and Asha got out. She said something to him through the window, he nodded, and she walked into the building. A minute later she came around the side entrance and I flashed my headlights once.

She got in the car and closed the door. Her hair was pulled back and she was wearing jeans and a sweater and she looked at me with an expression I couldn't read.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey."

"Where are we going?"

"My place."

She didn't ask anything else. I pulled into traffic and drove to Bed-Stuy. The apartment was fifteen minutes away. Neither of us talked on the drive. She sat with her hands in her lap, her eyes on the street, and I kept mine on the road and tried not to think about what was going to happen when we got there because if I thought about it too much I'd run a red light.

I parked outside the building and checked the street before we got out. Nobody on the block who looked like they belonged to Supreme. We went up quickly, third floor, end of the hall. I unlocked the door and stepped aside to let her in first.

She walked into the apartment slowly, looking at everything. It wasn't much. A couch, a table, a kitchen that I used maybe twice a week. The bedroom through a door on the left. Clean because I kept it clean, not because I'd cleaned it for her. She ran her hand along the kitchen counter, looked out the window at the street below, then turned to face me.