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Knowing the risk, I still chose you. I chose whiskey.
Assured by a touch, calmed by a stare, I chose you.
If we do, I hope we land for my impact first. I don’t want to miss you for a millisecond.
you'd rather die...
We dig our fingers into each other’s palms. I say a prayer that we will join in the afterlife, so desperately, I’d forfeit heaven if it meant I’d burn with you in Hades.
this gives "Pray you catch me..."
“I trusted you.” “I know.” “I loved you.” “Me more.” “But love doesn’t hurt. Love doesn’t crash you into the earth. Love doesn’t bring fear, or pain, or uncertainty.”
Then I prepare. I brace for what’s to come. Succumb to my destiny. I accept the memory.
So, I carry him with me. Like a secret untold. Until the day I am released. The day I part with my soul.
Two years ago, Tahli’s hysterectomy resulted not only from her mother’s ovarian cancer, but from the sporadic cysts that would double her over in pain. I’m going to dry up, Vin. I’m going to lose my sex drive. One of the minor woes expressed of forced early menopause. It hadn’t happened.
But a backshot to a bad bitch couldn’t compare to the stroke of Tahli’s nails on his goose-bumped skin, or her whispered words of encouragement tainted with elated giggles.
Soon, she would see him as a failure. As his thick fingers stroked her arm, all of those fallen pins reloaded on the conveyor belt of his busy mind. The outer corners of Vin’s eyes itched, and he wondered if she could sense his chest tightening. He blinked in the darkness, cursing the moisture tickling his ducts. Tears. Fucking tears.
welp
Everything had a price and Vin had the money. Money to get away with murder. But he’d never be able to buy this.
had he always been this way?
“You know I love the smell of your underarms after you sweat.” “That shit is gross,” he murmured into her hair, making her snicker.
🤣🤣🤣
honesty. “Promise me you’ll always know how much I love you,” Vin urged in his bedroom tenor. “You’ve been making me promise you shit since 2008, Dalvin Hayes. How about just a blanket promise to cover eternity,”
word, all these bulshit ass promises
“Promise me you’ll do whatever you need to be happy. If for any reason I’m not here to make you happy...promise me, you’ll still find a way to be.”
...well he let her go...
A fear he’d given to her by forcing her to love him in the magnitude he loved her.
oh look, he admits it
Tahli loved him with no blood ties and against everything she feared about love–the abandonment issues from her mother, infidelity trepidation from her father...her own standards.
Savor it all until after her most coveted holiday. Then...he’d beg her to get through the roughest turbulence they’d ever face.
ooof
“Nothing bad is coming,” he lied. Drawing her closer, Vin brushed his lips over her hairline, letting the haunting lyrics resonate. Nobody would ever love Tahli the way he had, even if it wasn’t the right way.
🚩
Powerfully. Drowning her. Tsunami reminiscent.
“How’d you end up here, Snow White? I’m the one who ordered the pretty blonde to my room.”
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Munch couldn’t adjust to the rules after all these years. Too much of his life had been spent doing whatever the fuck he wanted.
never gonna change
“What they call that shit? Gluteus maximus? Bitch got a gluteus minimum. Bare-minimum.”
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I’m about to lose my family... I killed a man, and I thought that part of me was buried with the last nigga I played God on... My son’s been being violated, and I did shit to protect him...
that keeping shit to himself used to be his strength...but now...
“I can do it,” she offered perkily. “I know Jodie’s your assistant, but I still work for you, Dalvin. I mean...Mr. Hayes.”
nah, why does this sound so damn familiar? 🚩
“Call me if you need me,” Munch mocked. “Call me if yo’ black ass wanna twist me up like a white-chocolate dipped pretzel. Talking about me, but Miss Pumpkin Spice dying for yo ass to add some whipped cream. Don’t she know ya big ass will break her tailbone?”
ain't wrong 🤣🤣🤣
“Always smart as a mothafucka when it comes to the street and corporate shit. But stay underestimating these bitches. Can’t never see a situation for what it is. ‘Til it’s too late.”
bingo
His wife. His Tahli. His baby love. His parachute. His stomach churned.
oh this sentence transition was smooth af!
“Fuck it. He can come live with me.” Munch ran a hand over his soft hair, and Vin gawked in awe. “And what the fuck would you tell Wynter?” “Shit,” Munch shrugged with a snort. “Tell her ass anything. I’ll tell her it’s my nephew. Tell her it was Jay’s long-lost kid. You know how much fucking my brother was doing,” Munch quipped.
dang...
“But I gotta wait. I gotta let her have Christmas. I’m already about to ruin her perception of me. I can’t ruin my baby love’s Christmas, too.”
yes. you'll just ruin the Christmas of years to come. How sweet .
“I’m about to lose my fucking wife, man. I can feel it in my fucking bones.”
Vin and Munch lived separate lives. Family gatherings and business connected them, but Vin wasn’t as privy to Munch’s everyday moves. It dawned on him that he hadn’t heard Munch mention other women for a while now.
...soooo it is still very much Vin first? poor just standard growing up stuff?
He’d combust at the idea of someone else getting his Tahli.
“Hey! Tell Lo, no matter what…don’t hit her back. I love you.”
the irony
Blubbering Sophie. Stupid-ass Sophie. Fucking simple bitch, biggest regret of his life, ass Sophie.
not you made because you didn't use your sense?
Sophie’s obsession with his wife’s social media had tapered but never died off. Even with her dating other people, Sophie was constantly comparing herself to Tahli.
but you kept the weird bitch around...
“You know it, too. None of this would’ve happened if we would have been a family. Why couldn’t we be enough? Why couldn’t you make it work with me? Why…why couldn’t I be your parachute?” She had the gall to cry out.
🙄 but Munch talked too much?
It meant regretting Dalvin Jr. and it felt disgusting. But was it true? Not the child. The situation. Still, the situation created the child. Internal dilemmas he chose to ignore.
...ain't this how Tahli felt??
But his dollar wasn’t good enough. It was too wrinkled or too old and therefore rejected. He was sent to prison at his young age with his wrinkled dollar and regrets. Then one day, after a few court dates and freedom on the horizon, he was back in front of that vending machine. This time, it somehow accepted his crumpled dollar. Opportunity hadn’t gotten away from him. It’d just been postponed. He paid up and waited to select his destiny. But the bag got stuck. What he had chosen sat dangling in view but wouldn’t drop. He could see the dream - the life he desired - but he couldn’t grasp it.
...more
😱 whoooooo writes metaphors like this?!?!?!??!
Abby looked like she was about to go shoot up again.
oooo caught a stray
Vin was a man harnessing a tornado.
the inagery!!
“Get up, Tahli,” Vin caught the pain drenching his orders, quaking each syllable. “Tahli, please. Get the fuck up.”
the orders can't work here 😞
Her stubborn ass kept her eyes shut, chest peacefully rising and sinking, like tides to the shore. Nodding in a silent agreement with the man he knew was pulling the strings, Vin kissed his teeth.
...this isn't funny but why is this a cross between Quasim being melodramatic and Vin thinking everything is about him?
“I will save your wife. If you step aside and let me.”
I mean, we all gotta make weird promises
“Yo, if she doesn’t pull through this shit…and I wasn’t there to protect her…I’ll never fucking forgive myself.” There was a silence weighted with Vin’s shame and Robert’s judgments. “Neither will I,” Robert broke it to mutter. “I’ll never forgive you, either.”
finally!
“I walked my daughter down the aisle and gave her to you,” Robert reminded him. “I trusted you, Dalvin. You promised me, no, fuck that…you gave me your word!” Robert’s voice hiked in an anger audibly spiked with fear.
oh thank goodness!
“Fucking fight for her, Dalvin.”
drop that fucking 4:44 nigga!
Divorces were painted much prettier in movies. Quick and blithe signatures, strippers and divorce parties. Champagne. There was no champagne. She fiddled with her fingers, waiting with everyone else for Vin to answer. No shock when he didn’t. “My client has no objection.”
“Is this what you really want, Tahli? Be honest with me. Tell me, baby love. Because…I’m willing to do anything. Like, if it’s even a fucking fragment of a chance, I’m a take it. But look in my eyes and tell me that this is real, Tahli. This is really happening.”
“I’m fucking dying, Tahli. I don’t want to be divorced. I want to be with you. I wanna…I wanna be with you until I fucking die, and I…I wanna wake up to my kids every day,” Vin sniffed, waterlogged eyes pleading into hers. “But is this…?” His face pruned at whatever he was considering as if he was bracing for the impossible. “Is this what you really want?”
“Because unlike you, Dalvin, I know that there are things bigger than what I want. I know that I can’t go around doing whatever I want and there not be consequences. That I can’t fuck somebody in the middle of an argument, make a baby, hide a baby, and think life can just go on. That as much as I want to move past this and keep our family – and I do…I really do want that,” Tahli nodded, aware of everyone’s focus on her words, especially Vin. “I know the consequence would be…” her eyes drifted to a rest on the glossy wood of the table before finding his again, “agonizing. Moving on with you
...more
