“So . . .” She walked into the apartment and started looking around like she was surveying the damn place. Then she looked back at me. “You gonna introduce me or what?”
“Cherry, this is Dakoda, my son.” Dakoda grinned immediately. “And this is Lyrius, his mom.”
“Your . . . s-son?” She damn near choked on her words. “Well.” She laughed once. Her eyebrows lifted slightly before she looked back at me. “I definitely missed a chapter somewhere. When did you get a son?”
“About five years ago.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I just found out about him. Hence why I disappeared.”
Cherry’s eyes bounced between Dakoda and me for a second. “No.” She pointed between us. “No, no, no. You’re not about to say that like it’s normal.”
Dakoda frowned and looked between us, his little eyebrows wrinkling together. “What’s normal?”
Before Cherry could answer, I looked at Lyrius and nodded toward Dakoda. “Take little man outside and get those pictures. I’ma holla at Cherry real quick and be right out.” Lyrius’s eyes flicked to mine. For half a second, she looked like she wanted tostay, like she wanted to hear the conversation, then she nodded and took Dakoda out in the hallway. The second the apartment door closed behind them, Cherry turned to me.
“A whole child, KO? A whole child?”
“Surprised me too.”
“What the hell are you doing, KO?”
“Being a father.”
“You disappeared for an entire week.”
“I know.”
“You skipped press.”
“I told you to reschedule them.”
“What? You just packed up and moved to Shoreline. What about the home you just purchased?”
“It’s temporary.” I shrugged. “I’m spending bonding time with my son.”
Cherry stared at me like she was waiting for me to argue back harder, but I didn’t.
Five years ago, missing a week of training would’ve felt impossible. Five years ago, boxing was the first thing I thought about when I woke up and the last thing I thought about before I went to sleep. But I didn’t have a son waiting for me back then either.
“You’re sleeping with her again, aren’t you?” I stayed quiet. That was an enough answer. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “You are.”
“Whether or not I am ain’t got shit to do with business, Cherry.”
“Ain’t got shit to do with business?” she repeated. “KO, every other week, you in my damn bed, but now, suddenly, I’m supposed to pretend your personal life ain’t my?—”
“Me fucking you never gave you access to my personal life.” Cherry’s mouth snapped shut. “So don’t come up in my son’s house, acting like you get a say so in it.”
“You’re serious right now?” Cherry laughed sharply.
“Dead serious.” Cherry stared at me, and I stared right back at her ass. “We crossed the line a few times. Cool. But let’s not start rewriting history. You knew what this was.” For a second, neither one of us said anything. I wasn’t her nigga and never made her think otherwise. If I was being honest, Cherry was just something easy, and fucking her didn’t require me to trust anybody. If she thought that gave her the special privilege to dictate shit in my life, she was tripping.
“Wow.”
“Wow, what?”
“This ain’t about your son.” She threw air quotes around the wordson. “This about her.” My jaw flexed. “You want to downplay whatever the hell we had? Fine, but let’s not pretend this is about your son.”
“Whatever, Cherry. I’m not doing this.”
“She knows about me? She knows you fucking your publicist?”