Page 275 of When a Soul Cries

Not awkward.

Peaceful.

Joe played softly through the speakers, smooth R&B filling the truck while the city gradually disappeared behind us. Buildings gave way to stretches of highway, trees and rolling land, and the farther we drove, the more Sol seemed to relax into the seat.

She sat beside me with one leg folded slightly beneath her, scrolling through her phone. Every few minutes, she’d smile at something on the screen or let out this soft little laugh to herself.

And every damn time, my eyes left the road for half a second.

I didn’t ask what she was looking at.

I was too busy looking at her.

The past couple weeks had fucked up every plan I had to take this shit slow.

I’d meant it when I told her I’d give her space. I understood why she needed Eastview. Understood why she needed her own keys, her own job, her own money and her own routine. After everything she’d lost, I wasn’t about to become another man telling her what her life needed to look like.

But what I hadn’t told her was that I was getting real tired of driving home every night.

Since that dinner at her townhouse, I’d found my ass back over there damn near every evening.

Sometimes I brought food. Sometimes I didn’t bring shit.

Sometimes Halo wanted me to read the same book twice. Sometimes she fell asleep on my chest before I finished the first page. And after she went down, me and Sol would sit on that couch talking.

Sometimes about important shit.

Sometimes about absolutely nothing.

I didn’t care.

Then Halo called me Dada.

That shit had done something to me.

How the hell did Sol expect me to take that title seriously from across town?

I wasn’t interested in being no part-time daddy. If that little girl was gonna reach for me when I walked through the door, fall asleep on my chest and call me Dada, then I wanted everything that came with it.

Tantrums. Sick nights. Daycare pickups. Doctor appointments. Bedtime stories. Six-in-the-morning wake-ups for no damn reason.

All of it.

And if I was being completely real with myself, Halo wasn’t the only reason I kept showing up.

Her mama was.

When Kai caught that case and damn near disappeared behind prison walls for the rest of his life, something in me changed. The streets stopped looking like power and started looking like a graveyard with a waiting list.

So I got out.

Got legitimate.

Built something.

Then built something bigger.

Real estate became one property, then several. Investments multiplied. Development deals got larger. Eastview had become more than another project.