Page 8 of Kissed By the Trillest Thug 2

I turned slightly, and my father was standing there, leaning just enough into the doorway to let me know he had been therelonger than a second. For a moment, I just looked at him. Then the question came out before I could stop it.

“Have you heard from Tahari? He told me earlier that y’all would be together, but I haven’t heard from him.”

His expression didn’t change.

“Yeah,” he said.

That answer alone made my stomach drop. I straightened slightly while turning fully toward him. My dad wasn’t an explainer and never had been. If you wanted anything from him, you had to ask and then hope that he was willing to tell you anything.

“What do you mean, yeah? You spoke to him?” I asked. “When?”

He didn’t move from where he stood, and something about that made the tension in my chest tighten even more.

“You’re not going to be seeing him anymore,” he said.

Just like that. My dad’s tone was flat and held no buildup. There wasn’t even an explanation to his request. The words didn’t even process right at first.

“What?” I asked, my voice was sharper than I intended.

I never carried this tone when talking to my father, but this shit didn’t make any sense to me.

“You heard what I said,” he replied evenly.

I shook my head. Confusion was mixed with panic, and I hated this feeling. Tears started to build in my eyes.

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t I?—”

“That’s enough,” he cut in.

His tone wasn’t loud, but it shut everything down instantly.

I stared at him, waiting for more, waiting for something that made sense. But it didn’t come.

“Why?” I pushed anyway, my voice cracking as tears slid down my cheeks. “What happened?”

For a second, it looked like he might say something else. Then his expression closed off.

“That doesn’t concern you. I said what I said.”

And just like that, the conversation was over. He stepped back from the doorway and walked off without another word, leaving me standing there with more questions than answers. The shit absolutely did concern me. Telling me that I couldn’t see the man I was in love with was insane, especially without an explanation. I walked over to my door and then slammed it so hard that one of the picture frames on the wall had fallen.

My heart was beating so hard in my chest that I felt the beat in my ears. I looked back at my phone, and it was still sitting there with no new notifications, no missed calls, nothing from Tahari to explain any of this. Tears fell at a rapid speed now as reality started to settle in. Something had happened between him and my father. And whatever it was… It was big enough for my father to step in like that. I slowly sat down on the edge of my bed. My mind was running through every possibility, trying to figure out where things could’ve gone wrong. But nothing made sense. All I knew was that everything had just changed, and nobody was telling me why.

BLEEK

I sat on the ottoman that stood at the end of the bed with my phone in my hand. I was staring at the screen for a second before finally hitting Ty’s name to FaceTime him. The call rang twice before he picked up.

“Yeah,” he answered. His voice came through clear, but the background was anything but quiet.

One of his kids was yelling about something I couldn’t make out, another voice cutting in behind it, and I already knew he was somewhere in that house trying to pretend he had control over it. I shook my head slightly.

“You sound like you’re in the middle of a daycare,” I said.

“I am,” he replied without missing a beat. “What’s up?”

I leaned back against the foot of the bed and ran a hand over my face for a second before getting straight to it.

“Maliah little boyfriend? The one I told you about.”