“No. You wouldn’t have seen it coming,” Messiah said. “Cuz I’m good at the shit. You wouldn’t have known shit until everybody was in the dirt. You only know because I told you the shit … because I loved you too much to keep hiding it, Mo. Hitting you was never an option, shorty. My issue was with Ethic. Day one I saw you, I wanted you, shorty. You were young, though, and I knew what I was there for, so it wasn’t even an option, but your ass kept chasing it. You kept begging me to pop that, and when I did, it was over. You got in my head that night at the falls, and then I fucked with you and everything changed. I couldn’t figure out how to touch Ethic without it tearing you apart. Then I started questioning if it was even worth it in the first place. Ethic was more of a brother than Mizan ever was, but there was pressure on me to make that right. Either I made it right or somebody else was gon’ come through and make it right, but somebody else might not play fair. Somebody else might touch you or B or Eazy. I was never touching you, though. Touching you is like touching myself.”

He sat there so pitiful, so dejected, and Morgan was conflicted. Eighteen-year-old Mo would have wrapped her arms around him. She would have broken every rule to have him a part of her world, but he had proved to be a disappointment. He had burned her, and she hadn’t been the same since. At twenty-one, she was a bit older, a bit wiser, a bit tarnished, and she held some resentments. She couldn’t deny that she loved him still. Even after 912 days, he made her entire body react just by being in her vicinity. He activated her spirit whenever he was around. She didn’t know what to say to him, what to do with him.

The buzzing of her phone caught her attention, and she picked it up to find she had missed calls. Bash. Ethic. Alani. Even Bella had been trying to reach her. “I’ve got to go,” she said.

“Don’t marry him, Mo.” Messiah’s words stopped her feet from working.

She was in the threshold of the door—all she had to do was keep walking—but her fucking feet wouldn’t move. His hands around her waist, pulling her back into the room, back into his arms, as he kissed the back of her head. He breathed deeply, inhaling her scent because he didn’t know if she would ever let him get this close again.