Summary: Without knowing it, a newly married Anika Calhoun has walked straight into the Lyons' den.
Note #1: This story was written around the second season of Empire. At that time, I was using the ages from the original (unaired) pilot script, which cast Cookie and Lucious as 14 and 16 when they lost their virginity to each other. This is why they're much younger here than they are in the season three flashbacks, which cast Cookie as 16 when she first slept with Lucious.
Note #2: If you want to go straight to the Lucious/Cookie love, you can skip this chapter and not miss much.
___
Running into the Lyons on Hakeem's 21st birthday, Anika Calhoun was painfully reminded that she had three connections to this toxic, miserable family. She had been engaged to Lucious, the head of the Lyon family, and had a sexual relationship with Hakeem, the youngest Lyon son. The matriarch, Cookie Lyon, was the now-remarried wife of Lucious as well as the former flame of Anika's new husband, Malcolm DeVeaux. It was enough to make anybody's head hurt.
"We can leave." It was Malcolm's job to study things. He had spotted the Lyons after the silent shift in his wife's personality - first warm and excited, now cold and distant. While Malcolm's split with Cookie had been amicable, he had no more desire to talk to any of them than Anika did. "I can tell everybody that you don't feel good, and we can go home."
"No. We can't do that." The Columbia University cadre was due to meet in the back banquet room to welcome the newest members of their Navy ROTC staff. Only the good word of Malcolm's former commander, a master chief who was one of the cadre of Malcolm's military school, had gotten Malcolm the position that brought him back to New York from Washington, D.C. The last thing Anika wanted was for Malcolm to start off on the wrong foot. But there was no way to get to the banquet room without passing the Lyons' table, and there was no way the Lyons would let either one of them go by without a confrontation.
Seeing them all together – Lucious, Cookie, Hakeem, Jamal, Andre and Rhonda – guaranteed a clash. Andre and Rhonda were tolerable separately, but a pain in the ass together. Jamal was a punk who went in whatever direction his mother went...unless his father was going in a different direction. Since Lucious and Cookie would be united in torment, Jamal would be more extra than usual. And as for Hakeem...
Anika glanced over at Malcolm, who was expecting a battle with Lucious. She didn't even want to think about her almost-stepson. All Anika wanted to do was get through this moment with her dignity and marriage still intact.
___
Anika's meltdown had been slow in coming, and it was hard to pinpoint when it started. The best guess was when she slept with Mimi Whiteman to secure a $250 million investor deal in order to get Lyon Dynasty off the ground. Mimi double crossed them all and stuck with Lucious and Empire. The double whammy of sleeping with Mimi and failing to seal the deal was just too good for Cookie not to cut Anika with every chance she got, even though sleeping with Mimi had been Cookie's idea in the first place. Anika kept her head up and fired back her own shots at her ex-pimp whenever she could. Outwardly, she maintained her cool debutante demeanor. Inside, Anika bled to death slowly from a thousand invisible cuts.
"Let me guess," Cookie had mocked Anika the day she came to Cookie with news about Lucious's party. "Those five job offers never happened?" As if sleeping with Lucious, choking her out and dismissing her from Lyon's Dynasty wasn't bad enough, someone let it slip to every major recording label in the country that Anika had been dismissed from both Empire and Lyon Dynasty and why. The Lyons were too powerful to cross to take a chance on a pimped-out cradle-robber like Anika Calhoun. Even with Anika's work experience and education, every single company passed up on Anika.
Cookie brought Anika back into the fold at the beginning of the Dynasty launch, only to drop her on her head yet again once a concert that Anika help bring into fruition turned out to be a resounding success. Lonely, lost, and feeling like she had nothing, her heart filled with joy when Hakeem came to see her one morning out of nowhere. He had been kidnapped and beaten by a group of thugs looking to extort his family. Hakeem wouldn't talk about it that day, and Anika was too busy getting her ass smacked and her hair pulled to push the matter. She had been so lonely over the past few weeks - nothing to do, nowhere to go and no one to talk to - so even bad company was better than no company at all.
Hakeem closing the door in her face a few days later when Anika stopped by to see him was humiliating enough, but it was nothing compared to the reaction he had when she informed him that she was pregnant. "Whatchu tellin' me for?" Hakeem demanded. Threats to terminate the pregnancy were pointless since Hakeem didn't want the baby anyway, and threats to keep the baby were dangerous. The Lyons had already destroyed Anika's life; if she even thought about keeping her baby, Cookie and Lucious would destroy her thoughts.
A few days after Anika had her abortion, the entertainment world was abuzz with the latest Empire news: not only was Lyon Dynasty going to reunite with Empire, Lucious and Cookie were getting remarried. Anika went to her family home under the guise of needing some old pictures from her bedroom. What she really wanted was her father's pistol. Anika's jumbled, blurred mind was filled with fantasies of killing Hakeem, then Lucious, then herself - and all of this right in front of Cookie. She wanted Cookie to suffer. For the past six years, Anika had given her life to Empire and her love to Lucious, only to see both snatched away from her. But if Anika could ruin Cookie's life on the way out of her own, she would have the ultimate victory.
Anika never found her father's gun, but she did find her mother's painkillers. The last thing Anika wanted was for her family to come across her body, but Anika didn't dare risk taking the pills out of the house. She needed her pain to end now, so Anika told her mother she was going to take a quick nap while rush hour traffic settled, then went upstairs to her bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom. There, Anika swallowed every pill in the bottle and went to lie down. That day, Anika had nothing left to give and nobody to give it to even if she did. No job. No man. No children. No friends. No reason to live anymore.
Anika didn't drift into a peaceful sleep after swallowing the medication like she thought she would. Instead, she was seized with cramps and vomiting almost immediately. Her mouth was so full of saliva and vomit that she couldn't even call for help. Mrs. Calhoun rushed into the bedroom at the sound of Anika beating her head against the floor from above, choking and wracked with excruciating pain. Only the presence of Anika's father, Dr. Stanley Calhoun, prevented Anika from suffering a slow, agonizing death on the floor in her childhood bedroom.
Anika could no more kill herself correctly than she could dyke right. Over the sound of the ambulance and the sobbing and the chatter, Anika could swear she heard Cookie laughing.
___
Before taking two weeks vacation in the Cayman Islands for "exhaustion," Anika's doctor explained that it might take a few weeks before the medications she was prescribing would began to take effect. Anika spent most of her time on the island sleeping, but Anika's mind was clear by the time she returned to the United States. Anika still had nothing to do and no one to live for, but at least there was little chance that she would blow somebody's head off over it.
Three weeks later, Anika was rushed back to the emergency room. She had developed the potentially life-threatening Lamotrigine rash, which showed that she was seriously allergic to the mood-stabilizing medication. A battery of tests would keep Anika in the hospital for nearly a week. She bumped into Malcolm on the third day.
At Empire, Malcolm despised Anika, who had drugged a recovering addict before a concert just to make Cookie look bad. Anika had already defected to Creedmoor Records by the time Malcolm hooked up with Cookie, so Malcolm's memories of Anika were limited. His recollection of the former A&R was a woman who was always regal and composed, the very personification of poise and grace.
Here and now, Anika was nervous and twitchy, with her eyes constantly blinking and her hands forever fidgeting. Her skin was sallow and her nails were bitten so far down that they were crusted with blood. So after exchanging pleasantries, Malcolm politely asked Anika if she wanted to walk with him to the maternity ward to see his new nephew, not expecting her to actually say yes. She said yes. So Malcolm was stuck with her now.
"We haven't had a boy born in our family since me," Malcolm explained as they walked down the hall together. "That was over 40 years ago."
"Really?" Malcolm looked so much younger that it was easy to forget that he was Anika's senior by a decade or so.
"Yep. All of the babies born after me were girls."
Before they even made it all the way to the looking glass, Malcolm could sense that he had made a mistake. Malcolm didn't even really pay attention to the blogs, and even he knew the rumors about why Empire's former head of A&R was blacklisted from every major recording label in the country. It didn't take a genius to figure out why the unemployed record executive was weeping in front of a nursery full of newborns, although Malcolm had one crucial fact wrong: he thought that Anika had aborted Lucious's baby, not Hakeem's.
Malcolm helped Anika back to her hospital room, where Anika spent nearly 20 minutes either crying or talking in a stream of chatter. "I'm sorry," she kept saying every five minutes or so. "I'm just going on and on about Empire and Lyon Dynasty..."
"It's okay," Malcolm would say, and then Anika would start all over again. Although Malcolm thought that it would be better for her to talk to a trained professional, Malcolm saw that the longer Anika talked, the calmer and more coherent she became. Anika had also given Malcolm a lot to digest. While Lucious's antics were no surprise, Malcolm was sad to hear about Cookie's transformation from a smart, savvy businesswoman to the cruel troll she'd apparently become – and a fairly stupid troll at that. Potentially hiring the men who kidnapped her child was the dumbest thing Malcolm had ever heard of, and he was surprised that Cookie would fall for it. "I grew up rich," Anika commented, "and even I know that was a dumb idea."
Pissing off the former A&R of a company one was trying to topple wasn't very smart, either. But Anika seemed to have no fight left in her. "I'm so tired, Malcolm," Anika said for the third or fourth time, still not understanding what all had happened or why Cookie hated her so much. "It's just that music is in my blood. I can't imagine my life without it."
Malcolm was only half-listening to Anika by this time, but a seed had been planted in his mind. "If you can't produce music," he suggested, "why not produce the music makers?"
"You mean teach?" The idea had never crossed Anika's mind before, but hadn't Anika always said that her most influential teacher had been her high school choir instructor? Mrs. O'Neal had died around Anika's third year at Empire, and Anika was so heartbroken that Lucious, who had been her boyfriend for about a year by then, escorted her to Cayman for the funeral.
"Why not?" Malcolm asked. "There has to be some sort of alternative teacher certification program you can go through." Teaching was both exhausting and ego-stroking, which was exactly what Anika Calhoun needed. Anika was the kind of woman who needed goals to meet and exceed. There had to be projects and products and results and work to wear her out, and she had to be the best. Why not give all that effort to teaching, rather than making spoiled, rich entertainers richer? "I can see you up at the Fame school banging a cane in the ground or something."
Anika laughed for the first time in what felt like years. "That's dance, silly."
"You didn't have to take dance at...where'd you go to college again?"
"BA from Julliard, MBA from Columbia." Anika shrugged when she saw how impressed Malcolm was. "Not that big a deal."
"It is when it took you seven years just to get an undergrad degree," Malcolm admired. "But that's because I went to the navy straight out of high school."
"I didn't know you had a college degree," Anika said.
"What, you thought I was just some muscle-head SEAL?"
"No, not at all. But I thought all people in the military with degrees were officers?" Anika remembered Malcolm explaining the difference to Lucious between an officer and a non-commissioned officer, and that Malcolm had been an enlisted sailor.
"It's actually pretty hard to get through the higher enlisted ranks without one. When it came down to the final selections to make chief – chief petty officer," Malcolm clarified, "the other sailor was more qualified, I would say. But I had a college degree and he didn't."
Anika nodded. "That's like with me and my master's. I've never really used it, but my dad always said it's better to have it and not need it..."
"...than to need it and not have it," Malcolm finished, smiling.
"Why didn't you through your university's ROTC program and come out an officer?"
"That's a long story."
Anika gestured around the room. "I'm not exactly busy."
"Well...okay, here's what happened." As time went by, Malcolm cracked Anika up with a number of old navy stories. ("Half-day? I was like, 'hell, yeah!' I didn't know they meant 12 hours...") while Anika kept Malcolm in stitches with tales of bad recitals, botched auditions, bum notes and bombed performances. ("I was just belting my little heart out, singing in the key of U-Flat...") It wasn't until Malcolm's cell phone went off that he realized that he'd been there for over an hour.
"My sister!" Malcolm had left her room to get her a Sunkist and never returned. "I have to get out of here before she kills me."
"Are you coming back tomorrow?" Anika blurted, then bit her lip.
"No, I go back to D.C. tonight."
"Oh." Anika tried to hide her disappointment on her face as she turned to the window. God, she sounded so desperate! It wasn't like she was asking Malcolm out for a date or anything. It was just Malcolm was so funny, and she felt so much better talking to him...
"What's your phone number?" Malcolm meant to say e-mail address, but there he was putting Anika's number into his contacts. When he leaned in to hug Anika goodbye, she smelled so good that Malcolm was propelled to kiss her cheek. Anika looked up at Malcolm in surprise. "I..."
Anika's heart was beating so loudly that Malcolm could hear it. "I'm sorry, Anika. I shouldn't have-"
"No! It's-it's okay." A lifetime ago, Anika once overheard Cookie telling Porsha that Malcolm ate pussy like a starving man. The very thought make Anika grow dizzy as her cheeks turned bright red. She wondered what Malcolm's lips would feel like on other parts of her body. "Um..."
A knock on the door brought them back to earth. It was Anika's mother, who had seen and heard all. "Mom, this is Malcolm." Anika lowered her eyes and pursed her lips to keep from smiling. "Malcolm, this is my mother..."
Malcolm smiled as he introduced himself. The smile on Mrs. Calhoun's face screamed blood sacrifice in exchange for handsome son-in-law. "Mom," Malcolm heard Anika saying as he left. "He's just a friend." A generous title, seeing that Malcolm and Anika were strangers just two hours ago.
___
Malcolm wasn't as starved for human interaction as Anika was, but the silence in his apartment could be overwhelming. He texted Anika the next day to check up on her. Anika texted him back to tell him that her tests were clear. From there, the two off them stayed in touch - an email here, a text there, a voicemail left during hours that no sane person would be talking on the phone.
It turned out that Malcolm and Anika were both avid gamers, so they bought headsets and friended each other's Xbox and Steam accounts. Between hacking and slashing and looting, they came up with far better things to talk about than Lyon Dynasty or Empire.
"...movie was awful. I hate military movies, and war movies are the worst..."
"...everything goes right, I should finish my certification in a year, but then there's this program called the Teaching Fellows..."
"...enlisted in the Navy Reserves, and I can still max out all the PT tests, so I don't think...
"...12 hours from my first master's degree, so - did you just snipe me? Did you just snipe me!?"
Malcolm's security job placed him in New York often, which gave him a number of opportunities to visit Anika. He never spent the night with her, though, because Anika never offered. The last time Malcolm visited her, which was the first time she let him into her apartment, Anika had to put her hands up and physically push herself from his arms. "It's not that I don't want this, Malcolm," she explained. "It's just..."
"You don't owe me an explanation," Malcolm assured, even though he was hard enough to explode. He never visited Anika with the expectation that she would sleep with him, but it didn't stop him from hoping that she would. Meanwhile, Anika was still working to build her self-esteem back up, and it took every ounce of Anika's self-control not to sleep with Malcolm. At any other time in her life, Anika would have felt obligated to at least suck Malcolm off before he left her apartment, just to offset the inconvenience of not sleeping with him. But now? Let Malcolm get himself off, just like Anika had to do as soon as he left her apartment.
___
Just as Malcolm predicted, Anika began to shine again as she made her way through teacher certification classes, choosing a university-based alt cert program at City College. She spoke tentatively about taking additional hours to earn a second master's degree in education, which Malcolm encouraged her to do. He spoke tentatively about leaving his security job for a position as a naval ROTC instructor at George Washington University, which Anika ordered him to do.
When Malcolm was presented with a university battalion crest the first day of the fall semester at GWU, he gifted it to Anika. Anika wore the crest as a good luck charm during every one of her finals, her certification exams, and her interviews at a number of schools for her student teaching semester. By the new year, Anika knew the difference between a PT, a PX and an FTX, and Malcolm could recall Maslov's hierarchy of needs and how to pronounce the name Gagné.
Around the time Anika was finishing her student teaching, three dozen roses with a formal invite to GWU's annual Military Ball was delivered to her home. "So we're chaperones or something?" she asked, fingering the flowers' wide petals. Anika couldn't remember the last time she was supposed to dress up and be pretty, and the only crowds Anika had consistently been around over the years were Empire crowds at Empire events.
"Nah. These are college kids. We're more like imprisoned guests." As the newest member of the cadre as well as a senior non-commissioned officer, Malcolm's presence was mandatory.
Anika had never been to a military ball before, but Malcolm was so insistent she be there that he'd paid for her ticket to D.C. Where Anika would be sleeping, however, hadn't come up in the discussion. "What's the dress code?" she asked.
"Formal. Fancier than church, but not as fancy as a debutante ball. Wear your pearls," Malcolm teased, knowing that Anika hadn't replaced the set that Cookie broke so long ago.
___
"Chief Petty Officer Malcolm DeVeaux and Miss Anika Calhoun."
Malcolm hadn't said anything about a receiving line. "Just smile and say hello," Malcolm whispered to her. "Don't worry about ranks or anything like that."
After being Hakeem's side piece for so long, it felt strange to be so publicly claimed. "Chief! Chief!" they heard all night long, and Malcolm would introduce Anika to this cadet and that officer and the adjutant over there. It was just Malcolm's first year at GWU, but he was well respected by both the cadets and the cadre.
While mingling with the future naval officers of America, it hit Anika how young Hakeem had been when they were together. I'm young enough to be some of their mothers, she thought, and she felt ashamed all over again. But Malcolm looked so handsome in his dress blues that Anika couldn't dwell on it for too long.
Even though she was dressed in a simple lavender ball gown, Anika was so breathtaking that even Malcolm inwardly did a double take. She was especially beautiful under the stars, where the two of them swayed in each other's arms at the call of last dance. Hours later, lying on Malcolm's bed wearing nothing but moonlight and sweat, Anika was exquisite.
At first, sex with Malcolm made Anika feel like she was under a microscope, with Malcolm examining every detail of every kiss and every touch he gave her. Anika tried her best to maintain her composure, but Malcolm saw right through her. "Just let go, okay?" Malcolm coaxed her. "I got you. I promise."
Malcolm wasn't a psychotic, middle-aged monster whose say-my-name-you-nasty-bitch demands bordered on demeaning. He wasn't a barely-legal kid who equated good sex with how hard and fast he could pound her. And he wasn't one of the many nameless, faceless hookups Anika briefly burned through before her first hospital stay. Malcolm was a man – a stable, secure, well-adjusted man with a mind-blowing long stroke combined with a sick tongue game. Despite her efforts, it wasn't long until Anika was screaming Malcolm's name over and over until she lost her voice. And Malcolm was just as impressed with Anika's skills. "God-damn, girl...shit!"
"Do you think we could spend some of the summer break together?" Malcolm asked after Anika finally stopped trembling when it was all over. "We could take a vacation somewhere. Miami, Jamaica..."
"Ever been to the Cayman Islands?" Outside, Anika played it cool, but her heartbeat always gave her away. Malcolm didn't bust Anika for it, though. He just cuddled with her while Anika stroked his hair and kissed the scar over Malcolm's eyebrow. Anika's heart was bursting with happiness. And Malcolm didn't feel so alone anymore.
___
Anika and Malcolm spent a week in Guyana, where Malcolm's family was from, then another week in Spain. They spent the rest of their time in Cayman. Anika's family owned land and property on the islands. Without her parents there, it almost felt like the two of them were living together on a huge stretch of beachfront property. They worked out together and apart, studied together and by themselves, argued and bickered and made up and made love until they were drained, but needing each other even more.
There was just one thing needling at Anika. One small thing that she couldn't get around, no matter how hard she tried. "Malcolm, do you love me?" she asked early one morning as they bathed together in the warm ocean water after one of their beach runs. Anika had sworn that she would never tell Malcolm she loved him before he said it to her, but she did. The words felt so natural on her lips that she said them almost daily. Malcolm always smiled and kissed her or slapped her butt and told her to say it again, but she never recalled him saying it back. Anika knew Malcolm loved her...thought he loved her...maybe he loved her. Did he?
"Of course I love you," Malcolm answered. "Why?"
Anika exhaled. She didn't realize she'd been holding her breath. "You never tell me you love me, Malcolm. Not in public or private or anywhere. I don't think you've ever said it once."
"I didn't know I needed to. You need to hear me say it?"
"Yes." Anika knew they were just words, and words really didn't mean anything. Lucious had told Anika all the time that he loved her. Even Hakeem had said it once or twice, though they'd been having sex when he said it. Malcolm was the kind of man who believed in showing his woman that he loved her, not telling her. But Anika needed to hear those words so badly from Malcolm's lips that she couldn't stand to wait any longer.
"Okay." Malcolm stood to his full height and bowed at the waist so low that his chest touched the water, making Anika laugh. "I love you, Anika Grace Calhoun. I love you, I like you, I'm in love with you. I'm crazy about you." Malcolm pulled Anika into his arms and kissed her neck. "I want you to have my baby," he whispered in her ear, and the hardness against her leg let Anika know that Malcolm was ready to start on that goal right then and there.
"Boy, you must be crazy." Anika splashed Malcolm playfully, only to be pulled into his arms again. "You want me to have your baby, then you better make me your wife."
Malcolm laughed along with Anika as he floated on his back. With every second that stretched out in silence, Anika began to hurt more and more. "Well?" she said when far too much time had passed.
"Well, what?" Malcolm tossed back casually, his eyes still on the sky.
"What do you mean, 'well, what?'" Anika pushed herself away from Malcolm, who stood back up, wondering what had brought all this on. "You'll give me a baby, but you won't marry me?"
"I was just teasing you, Anika," Malcolm explained. "I know you don't want to have my baby."
"Yeah, but I don't want to be your girlfriend all my life, either!" Anika said hotly. "And I do want to have your baby, Malcolm. Just not until we're married."
This was news to Malcolm. He was under the impression that Anika didn't want any children for obvious reasons. "Anika, 10 minutes ago, we were talking about expanding your lung capacity in water. Now you want to get married? And you want to have a baby?"
"Why not? We can get married in one day here in Cayman. And you're talking about babies like I'm 18 or something. What if we have trouble..." Anika's voice trailed off. They'd never discussed her abortion, and Anika didn't want to think about that time in her life ever again.
"Anika, is this why you brought me here?" Malcolm asked, his voice growing hard. "You thought we'd do some kind of living together island experiment and I'd drop to one knee at end of this trip?"
There was no mistaking the bitch-are-you-crazy look on Malcolm's face or the inflection in his voice. "Forget it, Malcolm!" Anika screamed. "Forget I said anything!"
Malcolm didn't follow Anika as she ran into the house, trading the pounding of the ocean for the sound of the shower. There, she burst into tears, realizing that she'd fallen back into the same pattern as always. Old Anika, new Anika, Malcolm's Anika, Hakeem's Anika...she'd fallen too hard for a man, asking too much from him too soon, and humiliated herself all over again.
When Anika came out of the shower, red-eyed and shaking with anger, she found Malcolm sitting on the bed waiting to talk to her. "One day," he said aloud.
Anika brushed past Malcolm. He sounded so much like Lucious now that Anika could hardly stand the sight of him. One day, one day, one day...and one day never came. "When, Malcolm? Because if you think I'm moving to D.C. to shack up with you-"
"No, I mean one day." Malcolm closed his laptop. "You're saying we can get married down here in just one day?"
Anika's heart began to race. Was he asking her to be sarcastic, or to kill time, or... "We'd have to go to the Passport office, and we have to find a Marriage Officer, but I can just call my uncle for that...just as long as we have the paperwork, then yeah."
"Okay," Malcolm said while Anika fished around for some clothes to wear.
"Okay, what?" Anika said over her shoulder. She was still too angry to even look at him.
"Okay, call your uncle." Anika whipped around and saw Malcolm standing behind her. "Let's get married," he proposed with a huge smile on his face.
"Malcolm!" Anika screamed and jumped up and down until her towel fell off her hips. She threw herself into Malcolm's arms, kissing his face over and over as they tumbled onto the bed. "Are you serious?" she demanded, laughing at crying at the same time. "Are you sure?"
"Sure, I'm sure." Malcolm hadn't even thought about marrying Anika, but now it seemed like the best idea in the world. He was a grown-ass man who was gainfully employed, loaded with military benefits, and had the most wonderful woman in the world asking - well, demanding - to be his wife. Why wait? "Call your uncle so we can get the paperwork squared away today. Let's get married tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" Anika was thinking more along the lines of at the end of their trip. "I was thinking we could invite our families and-"
"No. Tomorrow." Suddenly Malcolm found himself wanting to get married even more than Anika did. "I love you, Anika. I love you." He'd said it more in one day that he had in a year. "We don't need a big wedding. All we need is each other. Right?" he prompted when Anika didn't say anything.
Oh, my God. He's serious. As much as Anika hoped against hope that she wouldn't fall in love with Malcolm too soon, he'd stolen her heart for good the minute he kissed her cheek at the hospital so long ago. "Right," she agreed. "We don't. But I'm not changing my name," she added. Lucious had demanded that she become a Lyon before he would marry her. She'd grudgingly agreed back then. It would never happen again.
"As long as I can call you my wife, you can call yourself whatever you want." Malcolm pulled Anika's still-damp and near-naked body on top of his. "Sooo..." Malcolm drawled, replacing the tears on her face with kisses, "does this mean we can stop using condoms?"
"Sure does." Anika reached into the nightstand by her side of the bed and pulled out a shiny foil package. "Starting tomorrow."
___
Even after getting all the paperwork together and sitting down with her Uncle William, Anika worried that Malcolm would change his mind the next day. He didn't. The following evening, Malcolm and Anika were married on the beach with the sunset behind them. Malcolm wore a set of slacks and a polo shirt, while Anika wore a blue sundress, no shoes, and a floral wreath in her hair. Malcolm had no ring, so he pinned his hard-earned SEAL trident on Anika's dress and promised that he would love, honor and cherish her until death did them part, hoo-yah. Anika was so happy that she didn't tell Malcolm that his trident had ruined her $723 silk dress.
Like Malcolm, Anika didn't feel anxious or afraid during their ceremony. Undressing in his arms hours later, Anika felt secure for the first time in years. "Give me your baby, Malcolm," Anika whispered in his ear, lying next to him on top of a thick, cozy blanket under the stars.
Malcolm laughed as he pulled his new wife close to him, then on top of him. "I'll try," he promised.
Anika didn't have a care in the world that night as she experienced nothing but wetness and warmth between herself and her husband for the very first time. But every morning would bring all of Anika's deepest fears to the front of her mind. Would Malcolm had eloped with her if he knew she'd slept with Lucious's youngest son? What would Malcolm do if the truth – the whole truth, not just drips and drops of tea on blogs – ever came out? And how would Anika be able to cope if Malcolm didn't want to be with her anymore because of her past? How much does Malcolm really love me?
Their legal status now meant that Malcolm couldn't just up and leave her. But he could up and divorce her. All Anika could do now was pray that she was able to conceal her fears for as long as she possibly could, at least until either her questions were answered or she felt secure in knowing that they would never need to be asked.
___
"Who do you think is going to start trouble first?" Malcolm's voice cut into Anika's thoughts.
"Definitely Cookie," Anika was trying to sound casual, but Malcolm could hear the faint sound of Anika's island accent, which only pushed its way through when she was becoming upset. "If she sees you, she'll flirt. If she sees me with you, she'll throw shade and still flirt." Even with all the time and effort Anika had put into rebuilding her career, self-esteem and sense of worth, Anika feared that a well-timed dagger from Cookie Lyon could reduce all that work to rubble. "You?"
"My bet is on the King of the Assholes." Malcolm deemed it safest to put his money on Lucious. If anything, Malcolm vowed to draw attention to himself to keep Lucious from attacking Anika. Malcolm would weather the slings and arrows from the Lyons, but he'd be damned if any of them would get away with taking shots at his wife, including Cookie. Especially Cookie.
"Wanna bet on it?" Anika asked playfully.
Even for as long as they'd been together, it was impossible for Malcolm to know the depths of Anika's anxiety because he didn't know the full story. But Malcolm knew enough to know that this simple walk was about to turn into a trial by fire, and Anika was going to need backup. "Sure. Winner wakes up to slow head every morning for a week."
Anika stuck out her hand. "You have a bet, Mr. DeVeaux." Malcolm shook his wife's hand, then pulled her close to him for a quick kiss. Even though her legs were wobbly and she felt faint, Anika would be damned if she let any of these bastards run her away from anywhere she had the right to be. "Alright. Let's do this."
"Uhh...Anika?" Malcolm said before Anika could march off into battle single-handedly.
"What?"
Malcolm took Anika by her waist and drew her close. "You're my wife, Anika. So hold your head up high." Malcolm kissed the tip of her nose. "I love you, Nikki," Malcolm whispered, touching her forehead to his. "I love you so."
"I know." Anika couldn't stop shaking, and her heart was pounding loudly. Still, Anika smiled, especially at the use of her nickname. She'd absolutely hated until Malcolm started to use it. Anika wiped her lipstick off Malcolm's lips with her thumb, then took his hand and squeezed it. "Let's go," Anika said. With her husband by her side and her confidence restored, Anika had all she needed to march straight into the Lyons' den.