Desired Too (15 page)

He offered, “I had some business in San Francisco about six months after you left. Since I was in town, I figured I’d look you up to see how you were doing.”

I asked skeptically, “And you knew where I lived?”

He chuckled. “Come on, baby, there’s no place you could hide from me where I wouldn’t find you. I just made a few calls, and I had your address just like that.”

I didn’t believe him. If he was able to find me anywhere, why didn’t he come for me? What I couldn’t do was bring myself to ask him that.

Instead, I asked, “Wow…Um…That’s a bit on the stalker side, don’t you think? You could’ve just called me, saved yourself the grief.”

His reply was a shrug of his shoulders.

I laughed and shook my head, “You are a mess.”

“Yeah, I’m a lot of things, aren’t I?” he queried.

“Yes, you are,” I agreed.

“But I can be so much more if you let me,” he added, his gray eyes aflame.

I tried to keep my eyes on him, but it was hard. The intensity and focus that was there was too much. I nervously brought my glass to my lips and concentrated on wetting my mouth.

This was a bad idea coming here. I can’t handle this shit.
Grown woman my ass!

I shook off the feeling and asked, “So you found me, and then what?” I moved to the loveseat, keeping as much space between us as I could. I just couldn’t remain standing on my weakening knees.

“Well, I was surprised to see someone else, either your roommate or company, answer the door.”

I frowned again. “What do you mean someone else? I didn’t have a roommate and no one was staying with me. I lived alone.”

He shrugged, showing his confusion as well. “Yes, I know you did, which was why I was so surprised. I asked the man his name and he told me... something… Igor or Iraq…” he frowned and shook his head.

I was stunned yet again. “Ira?”

He snapped his fingers and pointed at me, “Yes, that’s the little shit’s name.”

Forgetting that I was trying to keep distance between us, I moved to the couch. “If you’re speaking about Ira, I have to say, one, he wasn’t little. Ira is at least as tall as you.”

Angel however just looked at me blankly as if I hadn’t said a thing. I added, “And, two, I know for a fact that he wasn’t living with me. He and I weren’t roommates, and he couldn’t be my “company” if I wasn’t there. Besides, he always left when I did. He couldn’t have answered my door.”

“Well, baby, when I came to visit you, you were living right outside of Chinatown, about five blocks from it. I may not remember the address specifically, but I know that much. So, yes, he answered your door.”

“And you talked to him? You told him that you were there to see me?”

“Of course I did. He told me you were at work and told me when you were getting home. He was very forthcoming.”

I shook my head. “No, that couldn’t have been Ira. First, he never told me that you came by. Second, he was a very jealous man. He wouldn’t have freely given you that information.”

Angel stared at me for a minute as if he was waiting for me to remember something that I was missing. When I didn’t say anything or give him the reaction he wanted, he sighed. “I never said he
freely
told me anything.”

My eyes grew. “You didn’t put your hands on him, did you?”

He shook his head, leaned back against the cushions of the couch and pulled from his cigar. “Nope, I didn’t.”

Confused, I asked, “Okay, so if you didn’t then-”

“He and my cousin Lincoln had some words. My cousin is not the kind of person that possesses patience. I asked Igor some questions and he said a few things that I didn’t like and neither did my cousin, so…”

I stood. “Oh my God!”

Somethings were slowly starting to come back to me. First, I had a table that I purchased from some Asian guy in Chinatown. I’d put it right by my apartment door. One day, around the early months of our relationship, I come to find it broken. Ira had told me that while I was gone, he’d tripped over his bag and broke my table. And second, I had noticed Ira had fresh bruises on his face. I had asked him about it but didn’t think anything of it when he told me he got into it with someone from a case he was working on.

I stared at Angel as if he’d grown a third eye. “I can’t believe you!”

“He started it,” he barked.

“He started it?” I asked incredulously and shook my head.

Angel, however, remained unfazed by me and added, “All he had to do was answer my questions. Instead, he wanted to make things hard on himself, test my fucking patience. Do you actually think I would let that kind of shit go?”

“You are such a thug, a bully. Do you know that?” I started pacing in front of him, trying to calm down. “I mean who does that? Who goes to someone else’s home and assaults their company because you didn’t like their answers?”

“Oh, so now he was your company? A minute ago you said there was no way he could’ve answered your door because he left when you did.”

I frowned, “Don’t try and change the subject.”

Angel shrugged indifferently, “Look, he had a choice to cooperate with me and he chose to be difficult. I didn’t provoke him at all.”

“I know that’s a lie,” I rebutted.

“Is he the reason why you left California?”

“It’s none of your business why I left.”

It was time for me to leave. I came here with the intentions of just being friends, getting to know each other first, taking this slow, but I realized he didn’t know the meaning of slow. He wanted control. I refused to give it to him.

I went to his kitchen and placed my glass in his sink. I grabbed my purse, thankful for the confirmation that he and I just weren’t compatible. When I turned to make my exit, Angel was standing in front me, that hard look in his eyes back with a vengeance.

“Tell me why you’re home,” he ordered.

“It’s none of your fucking business!” I answered.

I was heading for the door when he grabbed me.

“Would you rather me go find him and ask him myself?” he asked

“What?”

“I suddenly have all the time in the world. I’m sure it’s not hard to find Innis. And when I get to him, I pray he tells me to go fuck myself again.”

There is something very wrong with this man.

I tossed my purse on the couch and folded my arms underneath my breasts.

“Have you lost your damn mind? Did the smoke from that cigar damage your brain or something?”

“Why are you home all of a sudden? Did he touch you? Threaten you…?” Angel queried.

“You’re unbelievable!”

“If he laid a hand on you…” he started.

“What in the hell would you do?” I laughed “And shit, why do you care?”

Angel stepped back from me slightly and didn’t reply.

“Yeah, please enlighten me why you care. It’s none of your concern. I’ve never been your concern.”

“You have always been my concern,” he argued.

I sucked my teeth. “Please, when, Angel? Because as far as I can tell, before all of this, before we slept together, I was just Victor’s little sister to you. I mean, why do you think… You know what? Never mind. I’m outta here.” I put my hands up, signaling that I was done with him and this conversation. I moved to get my purse when I felt Angel grabbing me.

“Don’t touch me,” I said, smacking his hand away. I pushed him in his chest, letting him feel how pissed I was. “You’re so full of shit.”

“Oh, I’m full of shit? How the fuck do you figure that?”

“How dare you tell me
now
that you came to see me in California three years ago? All that time I was gone and you never reached out to me. I never got a phone call from you, a text message, email; hell, not even fucking smoke signals! I mean
nothing
, and you have the audacity to expect me to believe that you actually give a shit about me? All of that bluster about you claiming me, me taking my rightful place beside you; how do you figure I belong with you, much less to you, when you never told me that you wanted me until the other day? You had ample opportunity to tell me how you felt about me and you didn’t. If you so-called came to California to see me, why didn’t you tell me then? So, you came to California one time; what the hell should that mean to me?”

“I never said that I only came to see you once.” He nodded and moved closer to me, “Yeah, I’ve been to that address and the countless others you’ve had multiple times. And every fucking time I came to see you, you were with that son of a bitch. All hugged up, in fucking love, all dreamy and shit. It was evident that you’d moved on. That you didn’t feel the same way I did.”

“Wow? I moved on?” I interrupted, feeling my anger rising with each heartbeat. “From what, Angel? What in the hell did I move on from? There was nothing between us.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. You know for a fact that there was something between us. You felt it every time we were together that night just as much as I did.”

“Felt what? Lust?” I blurted.

I could see that I was getting to him, the rise in his frustration evident. It didn’t faze me one bit, though.

“Was that all you felt?” he asked me and mystified the shit out of me. “When you came to me that night at the bar? Was that all you wanted? To fuck?”

I faltered slightly, and he shook his head. However, I refused to show weakness and allow him to win this argument. I recovered finally and countered, “And you’re saying, you didn’t?” I moved closer to him, bringing my hands to my hips, oblivious to the warning bells going off in my head. “If you felt something, anything other than lust, why didn’t you say anything before I left? I know the big, bad Angel isn’t scared of anything.”

“What did you want me to say to you? You were leaving!” His voice rang throughout the room.

“Oh, I don’t know, Angel! Maybe you could have just asked me to stay!”

“Really?” His arms crossed his chest. “I could’ve just asked you to stay and you really would have stayed? Now, who’s full of shit?”

I pointed in his face. “No, you’re still full of shit, Leo. God, I had the biggest crush on you. If you would have asked me to stay, if you would have told me that I had a small chance with you, then yes, if you would have asked, I would have stayed. But you didn’t.”

“No, I don’t believe it was that easy,” he replied.

My hands instantly flew in the air. “Damn it! Why do you think I was so quick to leave? Yes, it had mostly to do with my brother and father being controlling. I could’ve fixed that by moving out of the house. Instead, I moved way across the country because of
you
,” I confessed.

“Me?!” His eyes dubiously watched me.

Again, I moved closer to him. “Yes, you asshole. You were the main reason why I needed to get clear away from this city. You think I wanted to be around you and never get to touch you? To see other females throw themselves at you and you take them, you give them your attention, your touch? I was in hell. I had feelings for you, you Neanderthal. You were constantly on my mind. I wanted to know what it felt like to be in your arms, what your lips felt like, what you would taste like. I wanted you so fucking much that I threw myself at you on the very last day that I was leaving so that I wouldn’t have to stay and see rejection in your eyes.”

I took calming breaths and realized a few things about my surroundings. First, my heart was beating clear out of my chest. Second, I was frantically trying to control my breathing and to top everything off, I was only inches away from the very man that was making it very hard for me to breathe.

Angel stayed quiet. He just watched me, studied me, breaking me. It was his eyes; it was something about the way he was looking at me that had my nerves starting to take over my body. I felt the tremors that his closeness was causing, and they started to get stronger. My legs began to weaken. What wasn’t affected was my mouth. Damn alcohol was clouding my judgment, and I couldn’t stop my mouth from moving. I said to him, because hell I was on a roll, “Do you want to know why I left California? Why I picked up my life and moved back home?” I didn’t give him a chance to reply before I spat, “I was tired of pretending.”

He frowned, a confused look coming over him, so I explained. “I wanted to move on from you. You didn’t want me, so I needed to find someone that did, and Ira-That’s his name by the way, not Innis or Iraq, but
Ira
- was it. He was sweet and caring and despite his anger issues, he loved me. However, my dumbass wanted more. I wanted that feeling I had the moment you kissed me for the first time. When you touched me for the first time, and God, when you made me feel things that I had never in my life felt before.

“You’ve destroyed me. For three long agonizing years, I’ve longed for that feeling. I’ve dreamt about it, and no one could make me feel like you could. Not even Ira, no matter how hard he tried. So my ass thought I’d come back home and see if I was stupid for holding on to an idea of a man that just doesn’t exist. I didn’t expect you to be this controlling ass who thinks all he has to do is stick his tongue down my throat and fuck the shit out of me and I would fall in line.”