“Nes, I’m afraid I’m gonna fuck it up. I’m too closed off and Easton is so pure.” I closed my eyes, knowing I sounded ridiculous. “He doesn’t hide anything. He looks at me and I can see how bad I could hurt him. I don’t know if I’m built for this.”

Nesto’s hand slid across the table and he gripped my wrist hard. His face as serious as I’d ever seen it. “Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit, about you not knowing how to be a good man to the people that love you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I swear to God, Patrice. I hear you on being afraid, all of this is scary as fuck.” He laughed then and looked around the dining area of his restaurant, taking it in as I noticed he did sometimes.

“We’re our ancestors’ wildest dreams, mi hermano,” he said, waving a hand between us. “You and I, we came here from both sides of that island with nothing. Not even the language. Our mothers and us, we busted our asses to have the lives we dreamed we could have.”

He was right, it had been a long hard road. Remembering those first years in school when I could barely understand what the teacher was saying, and I begged my mom to just let me stay home, still made me shudder. But I’d done it, we’d done it. I was a college professor at an Ivy League school, for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t that I thought I couldn’t do what was hard, it’s that I didn’t know if I had it in me to be the lover Easton deserved.

I pursed my lips, trying to find a way to explain. “Yeah, but that we knew how to do, Nes, hustling is in our DNA. That was the plan from the moment we hit the ground here. Work, school, that was the script.” I pointed to the courthouse where I knew Easton must be preparing for his trial. “I have no game plan for this. My mom was my father’s mistress, Nesto. I only saw that man on his way in and out my mother’s bedroom a few times a week, for the little bit of time he was even around.”