Vulnerable (22 page)

He reached for her hand. “Stop it, Tamara,” Rawn snapped.

“Come on. It's between you and me. Sicily, and D'Becca for that matter—they never have to know.”

She unfastened his jeans, and once her hand was inside his briefs, Rawn gripped her by the wrist and said, “Tamara! What the…are you doing?”

She laughed at him. “Please don't even try to play me.” She put her face in his crotch and once the fullness of him was inside her warm mouth there was nothing—not one thing—Rawn could do at that point but to acquiesce.

•  •  •

His head covered by a hoodie, Rawn rested against the stone-hued wall of D'Becca's, waiting for her. The temperature dropped considerably while he was at Tamara's, and Rawn had to keep his hands in his bomber jacket pockets to keep them warm. He tried to think of what—how he was going to handle the turn of events at Tamara's. While his mind moved in and out of competing thoughts, a dark and shiny Beamer pulled up. Rawn noticed it because no one ever got out of the vehicle; it sat idling for a few minutes on the side of the street opposite D'Becca's. Rawn moved away from the light of the crescent moon that replicated the island's
semi-circle landscape. He watched the Beamer for a good five minutes before a man stepped out and lit up a cigar. He appeared to be looking Rawn's way, although there was no way the man could make him out from the distance. The man leaned on the vehicle another minute or two before he pulled out what looked to be a cellular. With the cellular to his ear, he stepped back in the BMW. Soon after he pulled away from the curb. Unaware of himself, Rawn's heart slowed, and he exhaled. He could see his breath against the frigid night air.

Shortly thereafter, D'Becca stood at her door trying to open it with her key. She was totally unaware of Rawn standing in the shadowy corner. “Shit,” she said. Rawn knew she was inebriated. She wobbled while attempting to hold several shopping bags, and to open the door with her key simultaneously. After several tries, she still had not managed to unlock the door. She bent over to reach for the dropped keys. “Come on,” she coached herself. “You can do it.”

Rawn walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. D'Becca gasped. When she turned around, encircled in his loose arms, she was relieved but no less irritated. He could have been any black man coming out of the dark, and the hoodie shielded much of his face.

“Don't ever sneak up on me again!” she stated angrily. “It's dark, Rawn. How did I know it would be you?” She pressed an open palm against his chest and pushed him away.

“Everything all right, D'Becca?”

In unison, Rawn and D'Becca looked to the voice in the invisible night.

“Oh, hi, Charlotte. How was your Thanksgiving?”

“Went to Everett. And yours?”

“Lovely. Thank you.”

D'Becca rushed inside the townhouse. In one swift sequence, she tossed her keys into a crystal bowl and dropped her BeBe and Barneys New York shopping bags to the foyer floor. With a harsh sigh, she peeled off her jacket.

“Where have you been?” she shouted. “I called you,” she fussed loudly. “Did you forget that we were going to shop and see a film? How inconsiderate, Rawn—damn!” She planted her hands on her hipbones.

“I went to Pacific Place, but I didn't see you.”

She stared at him for a few seconds before she started to walk out of the foyer, half-stumbling, saying,
“Please!”
beneath her breath.

“Are you going to walk away while we're having a conversation?”

D'Becca stopped at the arched doorway that led to her grand living room. “Conversation?” She chuckled.

“What's the problem, D'Becca?”

“What's the problem?” She walked into the living room while Rawn remained at the entrance. “You're the problem!” She combed her fingers through her hair; D'Becca could feel that her equilibrium was way off.
I had one too many.
“What are we doing? Huh, Rawn?”

He looked genuinely confused. “What do you mean?”

“Us? What are?…Are we?…Never mind.”

Rawn was in doubt as to what he should do. He was still distracted by what went down at Tamara's. There was Sicily. No way could he ever tell her what happened, and for various reasons. But it had not occurred to him that what happened at Tamara's would in any way affect D'Becca. He tried to open his mouth to say something—anything! Still, his words would not budge.

“I care about you, D'Becca.”

“You
care?”

“Yeah.” Rawn watched D'Becca wear a similar expression Janelle
had worn when he used that very same word—
care
—with his ex-fiancée.

“You never told me you were once engaged.”

Rawn managed not to expose his surprise. She must have talked to Sicily.

“What else haven't you told me, Rawn? Since you
care
about me.”

“D'Becca…” he exhaled in frustration.

“Am I just some—some curiosity to you?”

Sicily could get a little free with her mouth when she had a few. Obviously, D'Becca and Sicily met up earlier and had some sort of bonding afternoon; a lot of drinking was involved, and at the same time, he and Tamara were—whatever they were doing. What happened at Tamara's today had nothing to do with him and D'Becca. Sicily, if she were to find out, would be wounded.
It's between you and me.
No matter how awkward it would make him feel in Sicily's presence, Rawn was going to have to live with that.

“Are you even listening to me, Rawn?”

“Yeah,” he said in a voice that lacked conviction. “I'm listening.”

D'Becca, a good four feet away, saw something in his eyes she had not seen before. Something had changed. It showed in the way he was now
treating
her. His face was guarded and cold. While she was out of town, something happened, or it was about the evening they spent at Sicily's. They were not the same. Her feelings were stronger than his; she could see that now.

“Good night, Rawn.”

She bypassed him; he reached for her. “D'Becca, wait!”

“Let go of me. Leave!” she argued.

“D'Becca…”

She slapped him good across the face, and Rawn, shocked, reached for his cheek. He was not exactly sure what to do. “What's wrong with you?” he fussed.

“Get out!” she shouted.

“D'Becca, what?…”

“Get the hell out!” She yelled at the top of her lungs,
“Get ouuut!
Damn you, get
out
of my house!”

When he closed the door behind him, he locked eyes with D'Becca's neighbor returning to her townhouse from walking her dog. The Doberman pinscher barked ferociously at Rawn. It took several ongoing loud barks before the neighbor told the dog to “shush.”

“Good evening,” he said.

She stared at him for several quiet moments—a look of criticism on her face—before she said in a tight voice, “Good evening.”

•  •  •

D'Becca sat at the top of the staircase, her face buried in her trembling hands. It was no mistaking, she told herself. Although it happened without her realizing it, she was in love with Rawn. Troy had asked her just the day before: “Where is this going, Becca?” For so long she did not use a title to define the man in her life. She never once thought of Rawn as anything other than a man she felt comfortable being with. When, how did she lose herself to him?

F
or many years, the tree at Rockefeller Center represented everlasting joy in Imani's mind. Yet while she stood watching the sun breaking through soft clouds, she did not feel the same connection to the Rock's ambiance; not as she did when she was a child.
Am I too jaded?
With such passion, she loved ice skating and spending time with Dante, and to sip hot cocoa while they strolled along the energetic streets, observing tourists shopping at the high-end stores. Although he traveled a great deal and he was always on the road, when Imani was a child, Dante made it a point to be home for the holidays. In every city he played, he sent her a postcard, and Imani would wait with bated breath for each one to arrive in the mailbox. When she was in her first year of college, she met someone that reminded her of Dante. Not physically, but in spirit. Even though things did not work out between them, she searched for the same qualities in that man from her sophomore year in every man she would meet. She could not forget how she trusted him, and he listened to Imani. The thing that touched her deeply was how attentive he was toward her.
Like Dante.

So it came as a surprise even to Imani that she chose Blaine, and fell so hard for him. With dark and stunning good looks, she met him at a rooftop bar when he was in his last year at Princeton. She was twenty-nine and he was twenty-six. While she admired him working as a model to pay his way through an Ivy League university, something about his marketing briefs did not sit well with Imani. Especially since the advertisement was plastered on every other
bus, bus stop, and taxi in the city, not to mention on a billboard in the heart of Times Square. Kenya said she was being judgmental, and perhaps she was biased, although unconsciously. Therefore she put her narrow-mindedness on reserve and began going out with him. Looking back now, she cannot believe how gullible she was, and it made her heart ache years later reminiscing their time together. When they began dating, a woman he had once been romantically involved with lived with Blaine. He told Imani he was helping her out, and that they were “just friends.”

Imani thought about those postcards Dante sent her a lot lately. When she purchased her Seattle houseboat, the first thing she did, with a bottle of wine at her side, was to lay out hundreds of postcards on the floor and carefully selected dozens and spent hours making a collage. The next morning she headed for Aaron Brothers and purchased a 36-by-48-sized frame. For weeks it was the only thing she had in her houseboat: a collage of postcards from every corner of the world hanging on her bare wall. After leaving New York and Blaine, she wanted Seattle to be a new beginning. When it came to men, the postcards were like Imani's anchor. They reminded her not to settle for good looks and unadulterated charm. Nothing good, she knew in the pit of her soul, ever came out of falling for a man when his looks and charm carried a girl away and made her lose all sense of basic logic.

With her eyes pressed shut, Imani breathed the thought:
I miss you so much.
She did her very best to bite back tears. She wanted to be strong; still, she felt the sadness and loss of her father so deeply. Since her mother's death, she had leaned on Dante more than she realized. His death brought that to mind. Naturally, when someone dear passed on, suddenly there was so much to share. Things left unsaid for years were bold and fierce in the mind, and desperate to be expressed. While she and Dante were very close, it was her mother who was there all the days and weeks and sometimes
months Dante was not. Something her sister, Kenya, never quite understood—Imani too was an abandoned child.

Blaine advised her to go back to Seattle. He would keep tabs on the investigation of Dante's death, and inform her right away of each and every new lead. He promised. Imani would be
physically
in Seattle, and would make an effort to begin her healing process. Yet her mind, her heart, her spirit would die a slow death in misty, hazy Seattle. The only person she felt closest to was Jean-Pierre, but she missed Trouble something crazy. Still, she needed to stay in New York and be a face for Dante. While she trusted that the NYPD was taking his death quite seriously, her staying in New York and being close to the investigation was something Imani needed to do. The detectives assigned to his case gave them hope; still, Imani and Kenya looked at them with skepticism. While he might have been a popular musician and notable public figure, Dante was likewise controversial. He had been very outspoken about nearly everything that just pissed him off—Vietnam and America's racial injustice throughout the seventies, apartheid in South Africa in the eighties, to only name a few. From their respective television sets, Imani and Kenya, while growing up over four hundred miles apart, watched their father being handcuffed and sent off to jail.

“Hey!”

Imani looked around and found Blaine holding Dean & DeLuca. “No foam.” He winked.

She reached for the cup and put effort into something close to resembling a smile, but Blaine, more than any other man except Dante, knew her too well. She sipped through the opening of the cup's lid. “When do you drive back up?”

“I want to get back before dark. So, soon. I'll come down next weekend. In the meantime, try to go through Dante's things. I know it'll be difficult, but it'll also help.”

“It's been too emotional to even consider looking at his finances, his will…Kenya's
good at this kind of stuff. I'm letting her handle all of Dante's business affairs.”

“She went back to Toronto?”

Imani sipped her espresso. “She'll be back Friday.”

“Will you be okay all alone in this city that doesn't know how to sleep?” Blaine swallowed, touched by the woe her father's death produced in Imani. He gazed at her taking in the cold morning, and he could tell she did not want to be alone.

“I can continue to go through all the letters and cards and notes we received. It really helps to read the love perfect strangers had for Dante. Kenya and I decided to respond to every single one, no matter how long it takes.”

For a little while, silence played between them.

“Blaine?” She squinted to look up at him. While it was a frigid late morning in New York, a glacial sun filled the lively streets.

He looked into her soulful eyes. “What?”

“I forgive you.”