Chapters (48)
- Cover
- PRAISE FOR ALEXA MARTIN’S PLAYBOOK SERIES
- Titles by Alexa Martin
- Dedication
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Epilogue
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
I have made an effort to not put labels on anybody for any reason. When something happens, I never factor race into it. And maybe that’s naive of me. I never missed the way store clerks would follow me in stores, but never my friends. I witnessed the way officers handled pulling over my dad versus the Black men I dated. But I never attributed it to race . . . even when I knew deep down it was the reason.
Standing in this room, still reeling with the heartache of Quinton walking away, staring at a man who will never respect me, I feel like my entire life has been summed up in two moments. I just can’t win. When I was a kid, my dad would say things about how we should all be color-blind. I can’t help but resent those words now. It’s how I’ve tried to live my life and it’s impossible for me. I can’t ignore color, I am color. Trying to do so has caused so much damage. What I should’ve been doing is acknowledging and accepting all of the pieces that make me who I am instead of trying to force myself into a box I’ll never fit into.
Maybe Quinton was more right than I wanted to admit. Because when I think about it, I was so afraid that if I pointed out racism, I was inadvertently calling my family racist. I thought that I could protect myself from racism if I shielded myself in whiteness. But it doesn’t matter how much I straighten my hair, how many stories I tell about my white dad, or if I never address racism ever in my life, some people won’t see anything beyond my Blackness.
“You know what?” I stand up, ready to walk away from Mahler and Glenn Chandler. Vonnie was right, I hate this job. “I quit.”
“You what?” He chokes on the cigar smoke he just inhaled. “You can’t quit!”
“I can and I did.” I grab my purse, not wanting to waste another second in the same room as this man who makes my skin crawl, and walk out of the room feeling ten feet tall.
I pull out my phone, first sending a text to Jen from the Rue to see if she’s still looking for an in-house event planner, and then one to Marie and Liv, hoping they’ll forgive me for ghosting them and show up when I need them . . . again.
—
THE GENTLE SNOWFLAKES falling make the cemetery look ethereal. It’s so much different than the last time I was here, watching his coffin as it was lowered into the ground.