to go out to eat with him at a restaurant in Raleigh. When he called to remind me of our date, I was already out on a date with this other dude. I didn’t want to go out with Stephen that night. My mother had just died, and I knew he wanted to talk me through losing her. I didn’t want to talk about my mom. I didn’t even want to go to her funeral, let alone talk about her dying on me. She had always abandoned me when I needed her the most; her death was no different. If I would have just went out with Stephen that night, he would have never been shot. I felt guilty. That conversation could have saved his life.
“ Parecías feliz con Stephen; you looked happy with Stephen.” Saint had to remind me.
I couldn’t even respond, afraid that I might start crying.
“My nigga loved you, Kourtney.” Saint just kept rubbing it in. “It didn’t matter to him whether or not you had one, two, three, or five muthafuckas in your life. He was determined to change your state of mind. Personally, I don’t see what he saw in your mean, stuck-up, always-talkin’-shit, conceited ass.”
I looked at Saint, still fighting the urge to cry. He always had got-damn jokes at the wrong time
Saint grinned, grabbing my hand, intertwining it in his. “He saw a beautiful woman who was hurt and used sex as a pain reliever. He saw a woman who needed him. He saw a woman who refused to fall, even when she was pushed. He saw a woman whose last name he was determined to change. If he would have lived to this day, I guarantee you wouldn’t be living here with Nina. You would’ve been in Puerto Rico, making babies with that nigga. He was that one nigga who you know would never give up on you, who you could depend on for anything. I grew up with Stephen. Ran the streets with this nigga since I was a teenager. Ain’t no replacing him. I miss that nigga.” He held my hand to his lips, kissing it.
I sighed, feeling the tears rising in my eyes. I fanned them away with the hand he wasn’t holding. “I miss him too,” I admitted for the first time out loud. “I was so mean to that boy, Saint. And he loved me anyway.”
“We all have our story, Ma. There’s a reason why you don’t know how to love,” Saint whispered.
“I used to love, but…I don’t even have it in me anymore,” I whispered back.
“What happened?” Saint asked.
Chapter One
When I Was Just a Little Girl
The 90s…
When I telling you that it sucks to be Kourtney Marie Chambers, I really mean that shit. Sure, I was always the pretty one of the crew, but that was all that anyone ever saw. No one had ever seen the girl behind the hazel eyes, behind the light skin, behind the tapered waist, behind the long legs. Let me tell you how pretty I was. I was so pretty that my eighteen-year-old cousin, Priscilla, molested me from the age of five until the age of ten. I was so pretty that she made me play in her pussy every time I went over my Aunt Janise’s house. She even went so far as to make me play with myself in front of her and her boyfriend when they had sex. She had this dildo that she’d make him insert inside of me while she played with my clit. I didn’t know what was going on; all I knew was that it wasn’t supposed to be going on.
It went downhill from there. At the age of ten, my mother met Mario. She barely knew this man but let him watch me every night when she worked the night shift on base. The two dated for about five months. Towards the end of their relationship, my mother went on temporary military duty for six weeks and let this nigga keep me at his house because he was already keeping his twelve-year-old daughter, Sonya. She didn’t talk too much. Every time you talked to this girl, she was in tears. My mother should have known something wasn’t right with Mario, but she was too busy being happy that she’d found a man that she didn’t take the time to see that the own man’s daughter was afraid of him. I’ll never forget that girl. He