Free Black: Part 4 (Black Series) by Kelly Harper Page B

let myself get suckered into something that I’d known I should have stayed far away from. I never should have agreed to our arrangement. I should have known that she was just going to use it as an opportunity to get back at me. She wanted to make me suffer for everything that happened before, even after I explained it all to her, even after I told her that she’d been wrong about me and wrong about everything she’d thought had happened all those years ago.
    I’d let myself get blinded by the hope that we could go back to the way things used to be. I’d been willing to pay any price to make that happen. And now I’m finding out just how steep that price is going to be.
    I’m standing at the curb, waiting for a cab when Sofie’s voice calls out from somewhere behind me.
    “Calvin, wait!”
    Dammit. I should have had a driver waiting for me.
    Her footsteps echo over the sounds of the city as she comes to a stop next to me. I keep my eyes locked forward, refusing to so much as acknowledge her presence. Anger boils through my veins and I’m worried that I might say something I’ll never be able to take back.
    She lingers for a moment, not saying anything. She’s probably waiting for me to demand an explanation—she’s probably waiting for me to say anything .
    Well, she can keep waiting. I don’t want to hear whatever she has to say. I just want to get as far away from here, and as far away from Sofie Bennett, as possible.
    Why are these cabs taking so damned long?
    “Calvin, it’s not what you’re thinking,” she says, finally. “I can only imagine how it sounded in there, but I swear nothing happened…”
    The anger boils over and I can’t stop myself.  
    I round on her.
    “Don’t play me for some kind of fool, Sofie. Wade told me what happened, and then you confirmed it.” I give her a hard stare. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing else that needs to be said. We’re done. I was stupid to try and make things right in the first place. I should have known that there’s no way we can go back to what we had… it’s been too long. We’re not the same people we used to be.”
    Her green eyes are wide and terrified as she shakes her head.
    “Don’t say that. I know you don’t mean it…” Her face turns red and she looks like she’s about to burst into tears, but she doesn’t break eye contact with me for even a moment. “It’s true. Wade did stay at my place the other night. But I swear to you… nothing happened . I could never do that to you.”
    I’m waiting for her to add some kind of remark about how I had done it to her—a snide reminder of how we’d gotten into this situation in the first place—but it never comes.
    “Why the fuck was he even at your place?” I say, allowing more of the anger to pour out of me. “Why the fuck does he even know where you live?”
    Her face tightens and she winces. There’s a pause before she responds—I’m sure she’s trying to come up with some kind of excuse that will explain her actions.
    Finally, she lets out a held breath. Her shoulders slump as she tries to explain.
    “I should have been more up front with you…” She begins. “I went on a date with Wade—”
    “—You did what? ”
    Rage fills me to the point that it’s nearly impossible to hold it back any longer. What the fuck kind of explanation is this supposed to be? Should I feel better about her sleeping with him because she went on a fucking date with him first?
    “It was a long time ago!” She’s practically yelling at me. I doubt I would have even heard her, otherwise. “It was before you and I decided to try and work things out…”
    My brow pulls together, tightly. My mind is trying to work through the anger to make sense of this new information.
    “Why didn’t you tell me about it?” I say. “We talked about him in the beginning and you told me that there was nothing going on. You told me that he was just a coworker and that I had nothing to worry