Love Locked Down

This book is purely a work of fiction and the names,characters,places and incidents contained within this body of work are not related to or portraying anyone living or dead. Any similarities are purely coincidental.

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Love On Lock

Candace Mumford

* * * *

1. Sampson State Penitentiary

Dana

D
ana girl you have reached an all time low!
I said scolding myself as I looked around the clean, though sparsely decorated mobile home. I had been through hell this morning...or at least it felt like it to me and it was only 8:30am. Now granted I had made the visit to this very same prison before with Tamera to visit her brother Terrence once before. And
yeah
I'd driven up here these past few months for our little Saturday visitations,but this shit right here? THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE? This mornings experience took my personal invasion of privacy to a whole other level!
I think that damn female guard was trying to feel me up too. That hoe was rubbing my titties two seconds longer than was necessary to do her goddamn job,
I thought frowning as I adjusted my breasts.
Ol' girl was trying to feel on me something tough!This visit damn sure better be worth it.
Today would be the first time I'd be spending time with my husband Terrence Hill. Real time that is. Hell, little did Sampson State Penitentiary know, it would be my first time visiting him outside of three months worth of Saturday visits period. Which is exactly how long I've know him. Three measly months. 90 days.
What in the hell was I doing here?
I barely even knew the guy. Well that wasn't quite true...anymore.

Six months ago I didn't know Terrence at all. Now I feel closer to him than anyone around me. The whole thing is just crazy but what could I do? I'd really needed him at the time and evidently he needed me too. For whatever his own personal reasons were. I was still clueless as to those exact reasons.
Terrence and I both seemed to be in serious binds so why not help each other?
I thought trying to calm my nerves. This could still work between us. I pulled out my tube of lip gloss and spread a thin coat on my lips. I always bite my lips when I'm nervous. The last thing I wanted my

“ Husband” to do was walk in and see me with some ashy,crusty ass lips! I quickly stuffed the tube down my jeans pocket, I knew I'd be needing it again. Sooner rather than later so I may as well keep it close.

At the time I got involved in this “ situation” I never imagined that I'd actually start caring about him though. I mean
really
caring about him.
Who am I kidding?
I'm in love with Terrence Hill. I'd never admit it. To anyone, not even him. But what the hell could it be? I've never been in love before. Do I love spending hours reading the latest fashion industry magazines? Yes. Did I routinely visit the Garment District, rubbing and feeling on every piece of fabric I could get my hands on until I knew
every
fabric
ever
made by touch alone? Damn right.

But this love shit? I had absolutely no experience in. I was 22 years old and had only been on maybe a dozen or so dates. It wasn't for lack of male attention. I just had other things on my mind like graduating from design school and hitting the first plane out of JFK to Paris,France. If I couldn't get there right away,Manhattan would do. As long as I was learning and perfecting what I know is my God given talent for fashion. I was determined to be the next Vera Wang or CoCo Chanel.

I glanced up at the clock on the wall.

Terrence would be escorted to our “home” in thirty minutes. I had a mere thirty minutes to calm myself before actually being in the same room as my convict of a husband for the last three months. Thirty minutes to convince my stomach to stop doing flips and turns like it was a member of the U.S.A. Olympic gymnastics team. Gabby Douglas I was not and my tummy needed to get it together and settle the fuck down!

I mean it wasn't like Terrence is in jail for murder or anything. Yes drugs were bad for society but it's not like he was making anyone do drugs. If a junkie didn't get their dope from him, they were going to get it from someone else anyways right? Besides, he wasn't even in jail because of that.
Well
, I thought,
he did damn near kill someone he was beating the hell out of. But that was completely justified
. It was because he was defending my friend Tamera. His sister.
How the hell did I get myself into this
I thought? My mind began drifting to when it all began three months ago.

* * * *

2. A Sisters Regrets
Tamera
Three Months Ago

I
sat in my bedroom thinking of my brother Terrence with a cloud of guilt and helplessness surrounding me. Honestly even though I was the reason my brother was locked up, it rarely ran across my mind. But when it did? The guilt hit me like a ton of bricks. The person closest to me in the world sounded like he was about to go insane. My big brother. Thinking back to our conversation two nights ago had me on edge. Terrence kept saying he didn't have anyone to really talk to. No one that really cared about him and what he was going through.
Where the hell did he get that shit from? Ain't I damn near always home to take his calls? In all this time I only let the money on his books slip three times. Then the nigga had nerve enough to take me off one of his accounts and had his lawyer start handling it. Terrence act like those Ramen noodles and honey-buns were going somewhere! Hell I forgot, I have a life too shit,
I couldn't help but feel immediately guilty about my thoughts. After all, I was the reason he was locked up anyways. Terrence never
tried
to make me feel guilty. At least not intentionally. Terrence had always taken responsibility for landing himself in Sampson State. It was just hard to think about him being depressed and unhappy. Terrence had always been the rock in our family, even when he was doing wrong, he did it for the right reasons. To take care of his family.

Even though he'd been locked up for over a year with months to go, he was still providing for my mother and I behind prison walls. Terrence was the only son of our parents, Angela and Terrence Hill. We'd been an average working class African-American family. That is until our father was killed leaving Terrence as the man of the family. He was only 15 at the time. My brother found out fast he'd have to step into our fathers shoes if our family was going to survive. Terrence loved our mother more than anything, they'd always been close. So it wasn't hard for us to see even as children, her downward spiral after our father was killed in the car accident. In a word; our mom was weak. Without her husband it was as if she couldn't function. Loving Terrence Sr. and being a housewife and mother to his kids had been her only aspiration. When my dad had been killed it was hard for my mom to transition and realize she would now have to be the bread-winner if our family was going to be taken care of. Mom didn’t digest the new reality that our families survival was now dependent solely on her. She just didn't fuckin' get it.

There had been no huge payout from the insurance company. In fact even though we had insurance and our father was found to not be at fault, the insurance company paid out very little and our mother was too distraught to fight a case we could have won. We relied on the help of the few family members that were in the city with us. But when they were struggling as well, how much help could they actually be? It was tough asking for a handout from people that were barely eating themselves.

Growing up in Brooklyn exposed my brother Terrence to many things. Both good and bad so when faced with the possibility of our family starving and being homeless, Terrence didn't feel he had any choice. Terrence was only sixteen at the time and we'd spent the last year struggling. I was twelve and our family was in desperate need of the money. Terrence knew he could easily make what we needed to survive. Especially when he could see guys he knew from the block flaunting easy money. Money they spent on the latest jeans, sneakers and eating out.

We needed it to survive. To pay the rent our mother wasn't paying. To put clothes on our backs and keep our bellies full. Terrence was sixteen years old when he started and what I know scared him the most is how easy it all came to him. So easy that by the time my brother was nineteen, he was one of the top soldiers in the Jamel's crew. The Jamel Owens crew was a crime organization that ran deep through Brooklyn and other boroughs of New York. Each area they had a hold on had it's own specialty. Terrence's area of expertise was soon cultivated in the drug game.

In all the time Terrence worked with the Jamel's crew he'd avoided any run-ins with the law with the exception of the one incident that found him in his current situation. Terrence had been given two years in Samson State Penitentiary after he'd been convicted of aggravated assault against some muthafucka who'd been harassing me at the time.

I'd actually been so mad at Cordell that I'd ran my ass straight to Terrence complaining about Cordell harassing me. If only I'd just listened to him and stayed away from Cordell, things may not have gotten so bad. They say a hard head makes a soft ass but I guess it was a lesson I was still learning because even though my brother was doing time behind my bullshit with Cordell, I was still fuckin' with the nigga. I was addicted to him. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't leave his ass alone. So for the last year I'd been seeing Cordell behind closed doors.

Terrence and I had discussed the situation many times in the past,he said he couldn't honestly say he regretted it. He didn't. Though he hadn't intended for the police to roll up on him in the midst of beating the shit out of that “pussy ass nigga”. His words to describe Cordell. Terrence had great lawyers so he was lucky to get the relatively short sentence he did get. He was already on probation when it happened due to a previous altercation with this same nigga Cordell which was why he got the two years.

Regardless of the fact of how it all went down, I still felt awful. It was all my fault my brother was locked up. Terrence told me constantly not to worry about it and that he'd do it all over again to protect me but I could hear something in his voice every time we spoke.

Something was changing with him.

Terrence's voice sounded heavy, he wasn't talking as much and the cheerful demeanor he'd managed to maintain over the last year was slowly but surely disappearing. Was he getting depressed? His time was almost up. Terrence had come too far to give up. All he needed to do was hold on a few more months.

We...or rather me,since our mama wasn't really about shit, all did the best they could to make his time in Sampson State go as easy as possible. At twenty-two, I was over one of his accounts. Terrence saved every dime he made. Making a point not to splurge on overly extravagant items that would call attention to himself or our family. He provided my mother and I with everything we needed and most of what we wanted but always in moderation. Not that our mother would have ever noticed since she was oblivious to anything beyond a drink in her hand.

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