I Will. (Urban)

31

Domonique

I love when he holds me like this. It makes me wish I never even left his arms in the first place.

In the silence I thought about everything. Everything. From the moments I used to run from his house because I didn't want him to know where I lived, the second I knew we were friends, the moment I knew I wanted more.

After all the years that kept us apart, I was glad we could even have something like this. Even if it was just for a few seconds. Even if the guilt of what I had done, and what I was going to do, was eating me alive.

"You wanna talk about it?" Jay spoke, placing a gentle kiss on my head. I furrowed my eyebrows, confused, but he wasn't buying it.

I had already explained what had happened in the time I was gone. As painful as it was to say it all, I owed him that. You don't just run off for as long as I did without communicating and come back with no story to tell. That would be too fucked up, even for me.

I guess he could read it on my face, or the uneasiness of my breath, or the way I played with the ring on my finger like I did when I was nervous, but he asked if I wanted to talk about it anyway. And I knew that 'it' wasn't about my brother killing our other brother and our mother, their sick and twisted relationship, Sade getting shot, or anything in between.

As promised, I did set Sade up in her new apartment, with Rah's money of course. I split my time between here and there, mostly here because I couldn't stand the sight of them two together. It was like my brother and my sister were fucking, and that thought made me gag.

Raheem and I were still a work in progress. I didn't expect us to just go back to normal like nothing had changed, cause our worlds were completely different now. He needed someone to talk to about what went down, and the hardest thing for me to do was realize that I wasn't gonna be that person. But as he worked through his shit with the other people in his corner, our relationship improved, so I couldn't be too mad.

"No," I said, because I really didn't wanna talk about it. I'd rather just spend more time wrapped up in him, thinking about nothing and no one else for a few minutes before everything came crashing back in.

"You sure?" Jay asked again, pleading. I knew I couldn't stay in this fantasy for much longer, and I think a part of him knew that, too.

"I love you, you know that?" I nodded, letting him fill the silence, the few moments of peace we had left. "Even if you are about to wreck my shit."

I went over this moment a thousand times in my head, but I still didn't feel ready. My hands shook and tears threatened to spill over my eyes, even though I had promised myself that I was done crying.

"I don't think I've lived yet. Since I was little, since they left me, I think I've just watched the years go by, tryna find somewhere safe to hide in case God decided to take something or someone else from me."

I celebrated my 24th birthday this year and still felt like I was running. Not like it used to feel when I ran sprints or relays, when I could feel the wind rushing past my ears and my spikes hitting the track. No, this was running for my life. Like there was no finish line, and if I stopped I might die.

"I can't remember a time where I was all smiles and there wasn't nothin' else to it, where fear didn't have shit on me. Coming back to you, I've had moments where nothing hurts anymore, and it's just us. In those moments you could tell me that everything was exactly how it should be, that my family was complete and nothing was wrong in the world and I'd believe you."

I chuckled, imagining a life where that was actually true. That version of Domonique would be smiling from ear to ear so much that it hurt.

"For 6 years I stopped living completely. I hid, because I didn't want God or the universe to take my life from me. They took you, but at least you were alive. Wren, too. For me, it was a second chance at life, but I still wasn't living. Just running, until I couldn't no more."