Adair didn’t answer right away because there wasn’t a clean answer. Because itwasn’tjealousy. Not in the traditional sense. It was that she was ready. Ready for someone else. Ready for anight out, a sexy dress, a new hand to touch the one he used to hold.
“I just…I wasn’t ready to hear that.”
“You thought she was still waiting?”
“No,” Adair said. “I thought maybe…we were finding each other again.”
They both sat there with that.
“Ion think she like completely closed off to you. She told Narri she didn’t even know if she wanted to go,” Tate said. “Almost canceled.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No,” Tate said. “She didn’t.”
“You know what that feels like? Knowing that the first time your wife put on a dress for another man, she had totalk herself through itbecause part of her was still holding space forme?”
“Do you want her back?” Tate asked. Not pressing. Just real. “Because if you do? Thendobut if you just want her because another nigga got her? Let her go, Adair. For real this time.”
Adair looked him dead in the eye. “You ever look at a woman and think, ‘I could’ve been everything if I’d just been ready when she needed me’?”
Tate’s silence was his answer.
Adair ran a hand over his face.
“I’m not mad that she went,” he said. “I’m mad that I gave her every reason to.”
Tate exhaled hard and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “That’s why I came,” he admitted. “Not to start no shit.”
There was something about the way he said it—low, cracked at the edges—that made Adair freeze.
“I been fuckin’ up, bro,” Tate said, staring at the floor. “Narri told Sabine I hurt her so bad she angry all the time now. Said she love me, but she don’t feel good enough.” He released a hollow laugh. “You know howthatshit feel? To hear the woman youride for, would die for, the one you hadtwokids with, think she don’t even measure up?Shethinkshenot good enough forme,” he scoffed at the idea. “That’s how I made her feel.”
Adair didn’t offer a response. He honestly didn’t have one.
“Then,” Tate said, shaking his head slowly, “this the kicker—Narri cried, A. You know it take for somebody to die or somethin’ wit Bine to get that woman to cry. I don’t even remember her cryin’ while pushin’ out my babies. I think about how many times she probably cried like that but hide it from me. I think about how much shit she keep tucked cause what we got is what became normal for us. Bro…” he shook his head. “We ain’t fucked in a minute. Told Sabine last time we did, she didn’t even want me to touch her that night but she let me. And now…now she pregnant again.”
“What?” Adair sat up straighter.
“She pregnant,” Tate repeated, barely above a whisper. “With my kid. Again. Givin’ me all that good shit for a third time and…she thinkshenot good enough.”
“Damn,” Adair said.
“Yeah. I ain’t come here to joke. Shit, I ain’t even come here to drink but a nigga always got that Henny on ‘em. I came here cause…”
Tate was doing his best to be vulnerable with his brother in loyalty. With the person who knew him more than anybody in the world because his ways were hurting the person he loved most in the world.
“I didn’t know who else to be…thiswith. Who else know what it feel like to have a real one? Not just fine. Not just good on paper but arealone and fumble that shit like a rookie.”
“You tryna kick me while I’m down?”
“Nah,” Tate shook his head, and they shared a laugh. “Forreal though, I thought maybe, for once, you and me could sit in this L together. Not like clowns. Just…two men who got loved deepand didn’t know what to do with it until the women we wanted ain’t trust us no more.”
Adair looked at him. Really looked. Tate never got this deep. Never this raw. He was jokes and jabs. Cocky in the way only a man with too much pain and not enough tools could be. But right now? He wasn’t wearing any of that. No bravado. No deflection. Just a man who looked cracked in the middle and finally stopped trying to hide it.
Tate had been through shit. Real shit. He learned to be loud early. Learned to fight so he wouldn’t fold. But love? Loving a woman like Narri? That had exposed something in him he’d spent years trying to pretend didn’t exist.
And now, here he was—standing in Adair’s kitchen, finally naming the weight he’d carried. Finally admitting that maybe he didn’t know how to be the kind of man she deserved, but hewantedto be.