Page 32 of When Love Takes Root

Domonique knew how to enter a room and make the room correct itself.

For three years, I gave her what a man gives when he thinks effort can become certainty. Dinners. Trips. Flowers. Bills handled before worry touched her. Time, even when I was tired. Grace, even when she’d earned correction. I was faithful because Pops had shown me anything less made a man a thief in his own house. But faithfulness and trust had never been the same thing between us, and my body must’ve known what my pride kept dressing up as patience.

I never touched Domonique without protection.

Not once.

Not when she rolled her eyes and called me dramatic. Not when she climbed into my lap with that pretty mouth glossed and persuasive. Not when she tried to make desire sound like proof and a condom sound like distance. Even when intimacy moved to her mouth, I kept myself covered. That might’ve sounded cold to another man. To me, it was instinct wearing discipline’s clothes. Some part of me, buried deep beneath love’s effort and a man’s hope, had always kept one hand on the door.

Still, every time I looked at rings, my spirit stepped back.

I’d stand at the jewelry counter with all that glass shining beneath white lights, and something inside me would go still. Not scared. Not confused. Just unwilling. The saleswoman would talk about cuts and clarity, and all I could think was, why does forever feel like I’m forcing a locked door?

Kacey used to laugh when I brought it up.

“You moving slow, bro,” Kacey would say.

“Marriage ain’t a race,” I’d say.

“Nah, but women like to know they chosen,” Kacey would say.

He said it like advice.

I heard later it was competition.

Kacey had always studied what didn’t belong to him. My truck. My business plans. My house. My discipline. Domonique’s laugh when I said something low enough for only her to hear. He clapped for me in public, but his face always arrived late, like support had to pass through envy before it could reach his mouth.

The night I caught them, rain had been tapping the windows hard enough to hide the sound of my truck in the driveway. I’d left a job early because a client’s permit got pushed to the next morning. Domonique thought I was across town. Kacey thought friendship made him invisible.

My key turned in the lock.

The house went too still.

Not peaceful.

Caught.

A wineglass sat on the coffee table with lipstick on the rim. Kacey’s watch sat beside it. The same stainless-steel watch he bragged about buying after I helped him get that subcontractor gig he swore he needed. Domonique’s heels were near the sofa, one upright, one tipped over on its side like it had tried to run and changed its mind.

She came from the hallway, clutching a throw blanket around herself. Her silk press was no longer sleek. The middle part had blurred, loose strands sticking to the side of her face where sweat or guilt had gathered. Her eyes were wet before the tears came, but I knew Domonique well enough to know the difference between sorrow and strategy.

Kacey stepped out behind her with his shirt half-buttoned, belt loose, and fear trying to decide whether it wanted to be arrogance. He looked at me. Then at the door. Then back at me.

That was what almost did it.

Not her blanket. Not his shirt. The calculation.

“Siah,” Kacey said.

He shouldn’t have said my name.

I crossed the room before either of them finished breathing. My fist caught him clean. Pops had taught me too well for the punch to be messy. Kacey’s head snapped to the side, his shoulder hit the wall, and one of Domonique’s framed pictures swung crooked above him. He stumbled, tried to catch himself on the console table, and knocked over a candle that rolled across the floor. Domonique screamed. I barely heard her.

Kacey lifted one hand, blinking hard, blood shining at the corner of his mouth. “Man, wait. Wait, Siah.”

I grabbed the front of his shirt and drove him back against the wall. The picture frame rattled. He grabbed my wrist with both hands, but there wasn’t enough strength in him to move me. I wasn’t swinging anymore. That was worse for him. A punch was quick. My stillness made him see the whole inventory of what could happen next.

His eyes went wide.