I woke up in a hazy blanket of warmth. My senses were dull to everything but the firm presence that held me to it. I was too relaxed to open my eyes; my body felt like a drugged weight, and this mysterious fog of heat was too enticing to pull away from. I snuggled deeper into it and felt a gentle rise and fall from the form next to me. I ran through my memories, trying earnestly to figure out what this source was and what I was doing cuddled into it. The mass shifted and pulled me deeper into its illusive web, shielding me from everything outside of our cocoon. Something nuzzled into my neck; air rushed against the sensitive skin of my nape causing me to hunch my shoulders against the tickling sensation. A deep chuckle was a shock to my system, rattling me out of the pleasant softness and into the light of the early morning. I opened my eyes and looked down at the vice grip around my stomach. I was nestled into the crook of Huey's side and his face was pressed against my neck and into the curve of my shoulder. I silently cursed myself for enjoying his embrace.
Over the month that I moved back in, Huey and I found ourselves in this position much too often for my liking. On most mornings he would slip out of bed and make no mention of it, on others he would pull me closer for a few minutes and then let me go. There were nights when I awoke in the middle of the night to find myself curled into him; he would never say anything but I knew he was awake, I knew he could feel the tears soaking his arm and shirt. The tightening of his arms around me gave him away. This particular morning proved him to be in a sort of playful mood.
"Let me go, Huey." My body felt too heavy to push him away.
"No." I could feel his grin on my skin. I huffed, half amused, half irritated at him.
"Someone's feeling affectionate."
"I just want to cuddle. You used to enjoy morning cuddling." Damn him for using my love of cuddling against me. I still don't know what it was about sharing his warmth as he held me that made me feel protected and safe, but I loved it. Ironic how the person who made me feel the safest ended up hurting me the most.
"You're right, I used to." Huey rolled on top of me, moving the tangled sheets out of his way, and rested on his elbows above me. He placed a butterfly kiss on my forehead then searched my eyes. I kept my hands firmly at my side, resisting the urge to tangle them in his afro.
"Let's renegotiate the terms of our deal."
"I'm listening." My voice was quiet, as if any harsh sound could break the fragile peace between us.
"I don't have a mistress, so you stop seeing Andrews. We stay exclusive." The confusion must have shown on my face. "Us screwing other people is not going to help, and we both know after all we've been through, no emotion nor feelings is not an option for us." I sighed and let the extent of his request settle before speaking.
"I haven't spoken to Dane since I moved back in." Huey's signature eyebrow rose.
"Then why—"
"Because I wanted you to know that I had options just like you did. I wanted to make myself feel better about coming back."
"Like your confrontation with Yani?"
"How did you—"
"Ed has a pretty big mouth when it comes to 'bitches liking the Scarface impersonation.'"
"I should have known." A smirk broke out on his face before fading back into a smooth line.
"Did confronting her make you feel any better?" I bit my lip.
"No. No it didn't." Huey recognized that I had more to say and didn't interrupt my thought. "I wanted to hurt her. I needed a place to direct my anger, and since you don't care about me, she was the next best thing. But really I just wanted to make you feel the pain I felt; I wanted to hurt you." I looked to the bedroom wall, refusing to let him see the watering of my eyes.
"Trust me Jazmine, seeing you hurt, hurts me." My head snapped back to look at him.
"If me hurting hurts you, then why did you cheat?" He sighed and shifted off me, then leaned against the headboard and pulled me into him. I rested against his side and allowed him to trace patterns into my waist until he found the words.
"When Granddad died, Riley and I were called by our parent's attorney. He had a letter and diary for us, from our mother." I stiffened slightly. It took a great deal of trust for him to divulge information about his parents; Kendra and James Freeman were considered no man's land for the Freeman brothers.
"X was almost 2 then." I whispered keeping a mental check of the time frame.
"Yeah. Riley and I read the letter and handled it two different ways. Riley played paintball a lot. It was similar to the training in the military and gave him comfort at something familiar. It was a way for him to release the anger that threatened to tear him apart."
"And you found release in another person?" He looked down at me and I up at him. He shook his head.
"It's not that simple. My mother wrote to us the circumstances that had led to their deaths. Their deaths weren't as tidy and clean as Riley and I had believed. Turns out our father was having an affair." I sucked my cheeks in. "Don't say it."
"I wasn't going to." I assured him. Now was not the time for jokes or bitter words. When he did not continue I prompted him gently.
"My mother knew about the affair, and she planned to do something that would make my father see the error of his ways." I could sympathize with his mother; a month ago I had the same idea as well. "The letter told us why it had taken so long for us to receive her diary and the parting letter; she wanted Granddad to be dead because she knew he would side with his son and wouldn't let us know the truth." I could hear the grief weighing down on his heart and voice. I switched our positions and pulled him down to rest on my chest. I stroked my nails lightly through his hair in a comforting gesture.
"You don't have to tell me." I whispered.
"You need to know." He whispered back, and then continued with his story. "My mother was bothered that her husband was cheating on her but what bothered her more was that he was cheating with a white woman. Not because the woman was white, but because that woman was the complete opposite of her. My mother was a very strong woman, but she had things that haunted her. She was almost…transfixed with the other woman's looks; they became a symbol of everything her husband wanted that she could not provide. My mother ended up shooting my father and his mistress, before shooting herself."
"Oh Huey." I couldn't say anything else. To find out that the mother and father he had loved so much had died that way was hard in the best circumstances, but right after losing his beloved grandfather and having a brother, wife, and child to be strong for; the stress could have caused him to snap. It was also a wake-up call to myself. I could have easily gone as far as his mother did; I had all the factors, I just didn't pull the trigger. It was scary realizing that I could have shared the same fate as his mother. He buried his head deeper into me. For the first time I truly saw the strong man that was my husband crack, and I wished I didn't. It was heartbreaking to see the man who had been a pillar of strength and reason for all those around him bury his head and cry. He didn't say a word as the tears continued to stream down his face. I said nothing as I rubbed his back and held him against me; all the words in my vocabulary seemed empty and hollow, so I decided that silence was the best choice. Huey raised his head and I knew the story was not finished yet.
"I was numb for a while, still trying to process everything. I began to feel something I never thought I would feel, guilt. I felt guilty because of my choices for a wife. Every time I looked at you—"
"You saw the features that had haunted you mother." He nodded.
"I couldn't look at you without thinking of her, and before long I began to fill suffocated and sick. I needed to get away from the constant reminder of my mother."
"So you went to Yani, the furthest thing from me." Again he nodded.
"She took away the anxiety for a while; I could just relax around her, until she started to sound like my mother."
"What do you mean?"
"She began comparing herself to you. Criticizing your looks because you looked nothing like the woman an activist like me should have married. I started to see the same insanity over looks that my mother allowed to consume her consuming Yani, and I tried to put a stop to it. I examined myself and realized that I had become my father; hurting the woman I had sworn to be faithful to with the exact opposite of her. By the time I ended it with Yani, we were already in counseling and you had already found out about her." He took a deep but slightly shaky breath. "And now we're here, trying to figure out where we go now."
I was shell shocked. In his story, Huey had cleared up many of my misconceptions.
"So it wasn't me that you didn't love anymore?"
"No baby. It had nothing to do with you personally; just old demons that hadn't been properly laid to rest."
"Did you ever love her?" I braced myself for the answer, dreading what he would say. He gave a half chuckle before answering me.
"I thought I did. I honestly thought I loved her. I convinced myself that Yani was a good woman who my mother would have approved of. But then you walked out on me, and I realized that I didn't love her, not the way I loved you. In my mind she became a way to connect to my mother, but I would much rather have the woman I loved, than a reminder of a dead woman was so careless to leave both of her sons without a mother or father." It took me a moment to respond. This explanation was deeper than I had expected.
"You said loved." He sat up and looked into my eyes.
"I still love you, Jazmine."
"I don't have the strength to love you anymore Huey."
"Then let me be your strength. Allow me to fix what I've destroyed. Give me the second chance I don't deserve and I promise you I will never hurt you like that again Jazmine. I will make mistakes, but for you I will be a better man." He cupped my cheek in his hand and refused to take his eyes off of mine. I had two choices. I could choose to hold on to the hurt and anger and wield it like a double edge sword, let it eat away at me until there's nothing left, or I could let go and rebuild the foundations of my relationship. One had the potential to hurt me, one would kill me. I met Huey's eyes; only a flicker in their wine depths betrayed his earnest begging. My husband begged for nothing, not even from me.
"Ok." I whispered and nodded. His shoulders dropped and he instantly looked younger as the stress melted from his muscular frame. He opened his arms to me and I went to him. Locking my arms around him I began to release my stress, resentment and hatred. As I was snuggling into him I looked at the clock and was shocked to see that it was almost 10 a.m.
"Don't you have to go to work?" I asked him.
"No, I took the day off." His eyes were like smoldering coals, belaying what he wanted to do with his day off.
"What a coincidence. I took it off too." His eye lit up and I could practically see the possibilities flinting through his mind. He laid me down into our bed and began to kiss down my neck. "Huey," I breathlessly called him. He looked up at me, but did not stop his trail of kisses.
"Yeah?" My mouth went dry as he deposited his shirt onto the floor. It was hard for me to pull my thoughts together as his roughened hands caressed down my sides.
"I still want the baby." I barely stuttered out. Huey pressed his body against mine and began sucking on the artery of my neck, leaving love bites.
"I do too."
"What?" I pushed him off of me, a little stunned at his confession.
"You thought I didn't want the baby?" He gazed down at me with confusion.
"I—I didn't,"
"I wouldn't have agreed if it wasn't something I wanted as well. Besides you're right, we never planned for X to be an only child. Now if you're done being cute and confused, I'd like to get started on that new addition to the family." I giggled as he blew air on the shell of my ear.
"By all means, go ahead." He smirked at me and removed the skimpy T-shirt and panties I was wearing.
The day was a lazy day for our family. I told Rosalind to take the day off since we all decided to stay home from our responsibilities. We assembled a pile of junk food and watched movies together all day. X was happy to get to spend time with us, and it was nice to spend time with my family. Even though I had to smack Huey's hands a few times for acting like a horny teenager and trying to feel me up whenever X went to the bathroom or to get another snack.
After we tucked X in and confirmed that he had to go to summer daycare this week before school started, Huey practically barricaded us in our bedroom and kept me up all night; only allowing me a few hours of rest before coaxing me into another round. I would never complain though; I loved being the center of his attention.