Coveted: An Alpha Male Romance (16 page)

I was standing in the procession line, waiting for my name to be called. I kept looking back at my family; my brothers, my mother, Madea, Tanisha and Courtney. They were smiling and taking pictures of me as I waited in alphabetical order. Everyone was there, except that person that gave me air. It broke my heart that Roc wasn’t there. He’d been there the entire time I’d studied and worked my way through this program; rubbing my feet during long nights of studying, making sure that I passed every test, and encouraging me. But as I swallowed the heartbreak, I knew that he deserved better than to be here and so did I. We deserved a life without forcing his family to accept me.

“Yanna Elizabeth Hill.”

I smiled through the heartache as I stepped foot on the stage. I could hear my family cheering. I could hear Courtney’s loud, squeaky squeals. “Yaaas! Wheeeew! That’s my girl!”

Their cameras flashed as I took the diploma from Professor Leonard Fine, the Head of the Department of Education. Just as he and I posed for the professional photographer, I heard the loudest roar from the most familiar voice.

I lost all composure just as the photographer snapped my photo. Surely, the proof of the picture that the school would send me would reflect my confusion and excitement. My eyes darted around the audience, but I could see nothing but the continuous flash my family’s cameras.

I left the stage with wobbly knees. I took each of the five steps very carefully, ensuring that I didn’t fall and embarrass myself in front of the auditorium of over five–hundred people. Before I sat down, I tried to scan the crowd quickly, but could not find his eyes. However, one look at Courtney and Tanisha told me that they’d heard it too.

Daddy was there.

The rest of the commencement went by in a blur. It was the longest hour of my life. Even as we marched out, I tried to find him and continued to fail.

Maybe I was hearing things.

But my heart knew differently. I had heard his voice, but as I scanned the lobby of the concert hall, full of friends, family and graduates, I started to think that he had come and gone, scared that I would dismiss him because of the way that I had been ignoring him.

“Yanna! Over here!” I followed the sound of my mother’s voice. They were behind me a few feet away wearing the same proud smiles that I’d seen on their faces as I received my Master’s degree.

“Oooo, I’m so proud of you!” Madea squealed as I walked up to them and hugged her.

They all took turns hugging me and just as Courtney did, I saw his eyes grow as big as the moon. “Girl, here he comes.”

My heart started to do flips as I turned around and fell into those eyes as green as the most beautiful forest.

“What are you doing here?” My heart was beating so hard and fast that my breath was weak and my words came out choppy and full of anxiety. “Have you been here the whole time?”

I wanted nothing more than to be close to him. Being in his presence caused all common sense and logic to escape me. I fell into him and hugged him so tight.

“I was not going to miss this.” His deep voice in my ear brought tears to my eyes. I realized right then why I had stood by him for seven months, no matter what the de Michele’s thought of me.

I wanted to express that. As we held each other, our embrace bringing life back to our broken souls, there was so much that I wanted to say. Yet, just as I opened my lips to speak, he ended our embrace and dropped to one knee.

Again, common sense and reality escaped me. My hands flew over my mouth as he retrieved a black, velvet box from his pocket. I could hear nothing but the gasps and screams of my family and everyone in the lobby that saw this beautiful man, on one knee, presenting me with a five‒
carat, round, brilliant diamond surrounded by stunning round side diamonds. It was breathtaking, but what was even more stunning was the unconditional love that I saw in those green eyes.

He asked me in the way that Roc would. “Marry me, Baby.” And seeing the love, emotions and even fear pouring from such a stunning man as he awaited my answer, made me weak.

“Are you proposing because you want to marry me or because you want me back?” I was just curious. We had only been together for seven months. He’d just told me that he loved me and we had yet to speak about marriage.

Yet, even though we had been apart for a month, still felt like I was his, as I always had.

His smile was full of guilt. “Is both wrong?”

It wasn’t. Nothing about our love was wrong, so I nodded with a face full of tears as the entire lobby erupted in cheers while Roc slipped the ring onto my trembling finger. After it was secure, I grabbed his face and brought him to his feet. I attempted to take his mouth into mine, but he resisted. “Say yes. I want to hear it.”

My body creamed immediately. I’d missed this man, his presence, his aggression, more than I even realized.

“Tell me,” he insisted, as cameras continued to flash around us. “And promise that you’ll never leave me again.”

I gazed into his eyes, melting, like no one else was in the room. “Yes, I will marry you.”

“And?”

“And I will never leave you again.”

Finally, he allowed his lips to touch mine, and I felt like my world was right again. “Promise,” he urged as he took my tongue.

And I breathed into his mouth, “Promise.”

Present day…

He was absolutely correct. I had promised to never leave him again, and I was ashamed that I had broken that promise. However, since I had made that promise, we were still fighting the same demons, and I was ashamed that I had lost the strength to fight.

“I’m sorry,” left my lips as I broke down into tears. I felt so defeated. I wanted nothing more than to wake up to this man for the rest of my life, but I could no longer do it without being his wife because I was not good enough.

So, I ran, through the house and toward the back door. I had sat out there all night, on the swing that I had played on when I was kid. I always sat there when I was broken. For some reason, it soothed me like a blanket. But as I charged through the back door, the swing wasn’t there.

“Oh!” I gasped aloud at the sight before me. Arrangements of white roses and lilies made the backyard unrecognizable. Chairs were aligned in a fashion that they created an aisle that was lined with white linen. My eyes couldn’t fix on one thing; my mother, my brothers, the preacher, Matalina, Joseph, Tanisha, Courtney, or a few of our close, mutual friends; all dressed immaculately in white.

“Oh my God! Kenyatta!!” I was floored and too overcome with emotions to run towards her. It was hard for me to stand up straight as I tried desperately to catch my breath and stop my tears.

But I lost what little composure I had left when I saw Alesandro de Michele. He was perched stubbornly beside Matalina, and he did not look happy. His face was still and expressionless, but he was there.

I was out of control. Everyone was looking at me with smiles as I stood at the end of the aisle crying to the point that I was belligerent as I felt a strong hand on my back.

When I turned to him, he had the most adorable smile on his face.

“What is this?!” I was breathless. I literally could not catch my breath. Every word left my throat in heaves and gasps for breath.

“It’s our wedding.”

“Wh– How– When?”

My father’s personal feelings never had anything to do with the reason Baby and I hadn’t gotten married yet. It had everything to do with Madea.

The moment that the cancer started to make Madea so weak that she could not make it through her days, I knew that our wedding plans would have to be on hold until she won her battle with the disease. Madea and Yanna would have wanted the wedding to happen regardless. But Madea wasn’t well enough to walk her down the aisle, and that was the highlight of Yanna’s wedding day whenever she spoke of it. I wanted Madea to be the picture of health on our wedding day because Yanna and Madea were so close. But I never wanted to say anything if, God forbid, Madea didn’t beat cancer. If she had died, I didn’t want our wedding day to have the shadow of her death over it. But the moment I got word that she was cancer free, I started to plan this day, even before she walked out on me at the estate.

“Madea is all better now. She can walk you down the aisle.”

Baby fell into my arms, sobbing uncontrollably. Our family and friends looked back at us with emotional smiles all over their faces, even some with the same tears in their eyes as Baby.

As I tried to get Yanna to calm down, Madea appeared next to her dressed in her all white. She’d done as planned and left to get dressed once they got home. She looked like an angel in her white, flowing dress, and her gray hair pulled back in a bun.

“Yanna, sweetie…” She too was trying to calm Baby down, but once Baby laid eyes on her, all dolled up, she lost it again.

“Oh my God, Madea!” She was so full of happiness that she couldn’t stand up straight. She held on to me while embracing Madea with her free arm. “I can’t believe this!”

“Come on, sweetie. You have to go get dressed.”

“Dressed?! I have a dress?!”

“Of course, you do,” I told her. “And I have to get dressed too. So let’s go. We have to hurry. We can’t keep everyone waiting. It’s hot as shit out here.”

Baby and Madea broke into giddy laughs as Baby finally let me go and followed Madea into the house. I followed, on my way to meet Gabe in the basement where he was already getting ready to be my Best Man.

My dress was beautiful. It was perfect for the hot, summer, August day. Crisscross ruching gathered at the side waist and was accentuated with beaded motif. A thigh–high slit in the front skirt gave it just enough sex appeal. Spaghetti straps extending backwards laced up the breathtaking open back for a sultry look. Courtney and Tanisha had picked out what was exactly my style. There was a makeup artist awaiting me upstairs as well. Within thirty minutes, I was walking down the aisle, with Madea’s hand in mine staring at Roc, dressed in white linen. Gabe, was of course, by his side, and Courtney and Tanisha stood across from them, as my Maids of Honor.

The ceremony was short and sweet. And I managed to only cry when Roc said his vows to me that he’d written himself. “As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, I will always love you. The feeling hit me the moment we made eye contact when your mother brought you to my home when I was five years old. It was so immediate and powerful—far deeper and inexplicably beyond any calculation of time and place. You don't describe a feeling like that. You also can't replicate it or force it. You just let it flow in and around you. You go where it takes you… You are my lover and my teacher. You are my model and my accomplice, and you are my true counterpart. I will love you, hold you and honor you. I promise to love and care for you, and I will spend every day proving that I am worthy of your love. As sure as the stars shine at night, I will always love you. Your love is like water. Formless. Shapeless. It is peaceful, strong and always just what I need.”

Though I was not prepared for this, I still spoke from the heart when it was my turn to vow my love to him. “Today is an ordinary day; the sun rose, babies were born, people slept in … and we just so happen to be getting married. But the not‒so ordinary part is how, though we are the epitome of difference, I could not imagine myself standing here; I could not imagine growing old with anyone else, but you, Rocco de Michele. I, Yanna E. Hill, take you to be my husband, in equal love, as a mirror for my true self, as a partner on my path, to honor and to cherish in sorrow and in joy, till death do us part. I vow to love you under any circumstances; happy or sad, easy or difficult, through the sunshine and through the rain for the rest of my days. Most of all, I vow to never ever leave you again.”

As soon as we said “I do” and kissed, staff that Roc had hired for the day began to move the chairs and flowers and created our set up for the outdoor reception.

♪
And this is our story from beginning to end

Baby, listen, you'll see how we became lovers

Turn it up, you'll hear how we became friend
s
♪

A dreamy smile swam across my face as our song played and he held me in his arms. Roc had held me many, many times through the years that we’d been together, and although every moment in his arms was more loving than the last, I had to admit that nothing –
absolutely nothing
– was better than this.

While we swayed back and forth, all I could focus on was the way that his smell captivated me as he hummed the words of our song. It was hypnotizing and unnerving. Erotic chills played a game of tag down my spine, and I had to fight the urge to turn such a loving and angelic moment into the porno that his smell evoked in my mind.

Suddenly, I was snatched from naughty thoughts when I felt his big, strong hand on the back of my neck, summoning me to look up into his emerald eyes. The moment I did, those eyes seemingly sparkled with love and lust, as the sun bore directly into them.

“Ti amo tanto.”

I smiled as my heart melted. Roc never spoke Italian and his attempt to further blow my already–scrambled mind with additional notions of his love, further convinced me that submitting to him, wholly, so many years ago was the best mistake I’d made in my life.

He was my beautiful mistake.

“I love you too,” I whispered, as I lay my head on his chest and fell into the rhythmic sway of our dance. As my favorite song played, I was reminded of our love story. I sank so far into my thoughts. The sound of others eating, laughing, and silverware clanking faded away and all I could hear was his heart’s beat in my ear.

It mirrored mine…hard and fast, and told me one thing: He was happy too.

♪
Love is a part of our story

Hate is a part of our story

Making up, breaking up

It's all in here if you just turn it up

It's our history to a beat

And, girl, here is our story

I put it all in here

The good, the bad, the happy

The sad … and that is our story ♪