Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale by Shewanda Pugh Page A

Never—not even in labor—had he seen her so…disheveled. Curls frizzed and half out of her ponytail, blouse askew, button missing. He looked up to see her lips curl back into a snarl.
    She slapped him. It was like a branding iron to the face.
    Whatever confusion he had ignited into fury.
    “What the hell—”
    “Aubree Daniels is your friend, huh? Just your friend, you whore!”
    Of course. Had he really doubted that Mike would tell her?
    “Deena, listen to me. I love you. The night I met you was the night I fell in love with you.”
    “Oh, shut up.” She turned to the dresser drawers. Instead of snatching wildly, she rummaged, then stilled.
    “If she’s your friend, then why do you need this?”
    She chucked him in the face with a box of condoms. The corner sliced the slab of fresh directly beneath his eye, leaving him to wonder if his wife meant to disfigure him.
    “Dee—”
    “We don’t use condoms! We never have.”
    “Baby, I know. I just—.”
    He didn’t want to say more. Only, he needed to rein this in.
    “Tony,” he confessed, with the feel of handing her 30 silver coins. “I get them for Tony.”
    “Tony,” she echoed dully.
    She looked wash worn, rung out, and he debated taking the words back.
    “He’s eighteen,” Tak pushed on. “And I know we’ve encouraged him to wait—but it doesn’t change facts. He hasn’t waited, so I concentrate on making sure he’s safe.”
    “Tony,” she said.
    “Yes, Tony!”
    “Then why are they here? In your drawer?”
    God, he needed this conversation to end. Had he any leverage at all, any, he would have insisted on keeping things between him and his son.
    “I give him a few at a time,” Tak said. “Just to try and gauge, you know.”
    Deena stared.
    “So you think this is OK?”
    “I think what is OK?”
    “Our son being sexually active.”
    Tak eyed her. “I think it is what it is. That’s all.”
    “His father had him when he was sixteen.”
    “That has nothing to do with Tony.”
    “That has everything to do with Tony!”
    Tak shot her a look an exasperated look before going to retrieve a change of clothes. But the second he snatched up a shirt, his wife grabbed him by the wrist.
    “Did you love her?”
    Deena’s face was unreadable.
    He shook his head. She released him and looked him over with the eyes of a skeptic.
    “We were something in college, Deena. Never after. Never once. And I was honest with you when things started between us. Honest about how my life used to be.”
    “But Mike said—”
    He shot her a look.
    “Never start a sentence that way. You’ll wind up looking stupid.”
    Deena reared back, face bridled with anger, but Tak couldn’t help his irritated glare. She, of all people, should know to practice caution with his cousin.
    An image of the two locked away together, rushed fire through his veins.
    “You can’t blame this on your cousin,” Deena said. “These are your lies coming back for you. Now, tell me. How many times have you seen her since—since we’ve…”
    She choked on the words, body rigid as she worked to swallow the last of them.
    What her yelling hadn’t done, what the slap hadn’t, the almost-tears certainly did. They twisted Tak in the brutal winds of desperation, accosting him with his need to be her everything, all the while screaming he’d failed.
    Again.
    He’d been emptied out, hollowed to an aching cavern of pain. If she thought this—that he could be with another woman—then she thought nothing of him. Instead of anger, anguish rooted deep, carving a home in the rawness of his fears. She would not—could not—do this to him. The world had already claimed too much; it would not have his heartbeat, too.    
    “Please,” Tak said only to realize he’d only thought the word.
    “Please,” he tried again. The voice that found him wasn’t quite his own. 
    His arms went around her, steady as she resisted, there when she relented. Chin resting on her head, Tak’s