Secret Love

Chapter 6

"Hey Toni! It's me. Please talk to me. Give me a chance to explain. I haven't seen the kids or anything. You can at least let me see my kids. Call me back." Toni was listening to Keri's fifteenth voicemail message. She had decided to stay at Tamar's house instead of heading to New York early. She hadn't spoken to Keri in two weeks and he had been trying to talk to her the whole time. Granted it was hard for her to take care of both boys by herself but she was making it work. Luckily, Tamar was here and her other sisters were here often to check on her. Right now Toni was breastfeeding Diezel while holding Denim on her side while he sleeps. She sat her phone down on the nightstand and looked down at her babies. At that moment she realized that she would be doing most of the raising of her sons. Sure she had her sisters and mother but they won't be there for the late nights and long days of trying to juggle her career and raising her kids. She just wanted to find someone who would stick by her through anything and would never intentionally hurt her. Toni looked down and saw that Diezel had finished eating and had fallen asleep. She softly got up and laid him in his bassinet. On the nightstand her phone started to vibrate. She quickly grabbed it and stepped into the hallway to answer it. "Hello."

"Hello. Toni?"

"Yes?"

"Hey it's Shannon, I called you a couple weeks ago about Keri."

"Oh yeah. What do you want?"

"I just wanted to say that I was sorry about the way I gave you that information. I sincerely apologize. It wasn't right for me to be upset with you." For some reason Toni felt calm about the woman.

"It's okay. I understand your frustration. I'm not upset with you either. It's him and if you are carrying his child I want to make sure that we have a healthy relationship for the children.

"Exactly. I'm going to be honest. He's one of two possibilities. My boyfriend and I were going through it heavily and I used Keri to try and make me feel better. So I'm sorry for causing this rift in your marriage."

"It's not your fault. I should've just talked to you when I saw you guys kissing at the house."

"Wait. What? At the house?"

"Yeah about two weeks ago, I saw him kissing you in our kitchen and then a few hours later you called me to tell me about your pregnancy."

"Okay I'll admit to sleeping with him and all but I've never been to the house. In fact when we hooked up we were nowhere near LA."

"Wait, really?"

"Yeah, he was on some business trip when we were together."

"Where do you live, Shannon?"

"Houston." The amount of anger that bubbled up in Toni's body. But she had to stay calm.

"Wow, okay."

"Listen, I don't know what else he got going on but I wanted to speak directly to you since he didn't want to hear from me anymore and didn't want me and you speaking, I'd just call you directly."

"I commend you for that but may I ask how you got my number in the first place?"

"Well, after we hooked up I overheard him talking about his wife Toni and that's when I realized why he looked familiar. So I waited until he fell asleep and got your number out of his phone. I knew I would need it eventually. So when I got pregnant and he refused to inform you I decided to do it myself."

"Well why didn't you call after you slept with him?"

"I wasn't pregnant and he said that he didn't want you to know because he was making a change in his life."