Thug Lovin'
Authors: Wahida Clark
Tags: #General Fiction, #FIC048000, #cookie429, #Kat, #Extratorrents
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Wahida Clark
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
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First eBook Edition: August 2009
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The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-446-55209-7
Contents
To all my readers, I would not
be here without you.
Karen Thomas, once again you showed me
how awesome you are. Special thanks to you
for having and using your editor’s eye.
I really do appreciate you.
Keisha Caldwell, Tobias Fox, Antoinette B. Barnes, Treena Wright, Nydia Benders, Tracy Bebe Johnson, and my Lil’ Wahida. You
all are the best critics. To my typists, Roz, Kisha, Sherry Porter, Hadiyah and Zakiyyah Muhammad, and Hasana. Thank you again
and again.
Linda Duggins, thanks for getting me in wherever I could fit in. I’m ready to do it all over again.
To all the booksellers and book clubs…
THANKS
!
L
isten up, everybody! My name is Rosalyn Tasha Macklin. But everyone calls me Tasha, my middle name. That’s right, I’m married
to the one and only Trae Macklin. His ass is supposed to be officially retired from the game and enjoying life as a family
man. But I’ve learned that you can take the thug out of the streets but you can’t take the thug out of the man.
The ladies love Trae, thanks to his arrogant, cocky, by-any-means-necessary, I’ma-make-it-happen attitude. And you can’t discount
the fact that the nigga is the real deal and I hear how all of y’all chicks be sweatin’ him telling Wahida that he is y’all’s
man. But don’t even think about it. I know he’s fine as hell. It’s a fact that he’s a cross between Tyson Bedford and DMX,
thugged out with a pinch of Tyrese. That bald head and Hershey chocolate skin, a little over six feet, 210 pounds, with the
body of a god. He’s all the thug lovin’ I could handle.
Shit, I’m known to turn a nigga’s head as well. After three kids, yes three! I still got it going on. As big as I got with
both pregnancies, I didn’t even think I would get back down to 155 pounds. Trust and believe my body is bangin’ and them babies
did something good in all the right places. I told Wahida when she gets my story on the big screen, she better represent and
don’t do me dirty and have some B-list actress play me. She better have somebody like Megan Good, Gabrielle, Sanaa Lathan
or somebody on that level play my character. Somebody cute.
But anyways, there is no doubt in my mind that Trae is my soul mate. He is ecstatic that I gave him three sons. A set of twin
boys, Kareem and Shaheem, and then I had my baby, Caliph. He undoubtedly loves the ground I walk on and vice versa.
Everybody is all in our business and wants to know what happened after Trae got out the game and him and Kaylin beat that
drug case by the skin of their teeth. Well, me and Trae hightailed it to the Islands and laid low for a minute. But now we
livin’ Hollyhood large up in Cali. We live in O. J.’s old neighborhood. But now I’m not so sure that movin’ to Cali was the
best move for us. Shit has gotten downright crazy. The transition from illegal to legal hasn’t been all peaches and cream.
I thought I was going to catch a case at one point. And the club? I wanted to burn that bitch down to the ground. Let me stop
before I tell it all. I’ll let Wahida, “The Official Queen of Thug Love Fiction,” put it down for y’all.
Peace!
Tasha
CHAPTER ONE
Ocho Ríos, Jamaica
Three years ago and before the twins were born…
B
oom! Boom! Boom!
The sound of the first-floor door being kicked down woke Tasha, Trae’s wifey, out of her deep sleep. Trae jumped out of bed,
going for his gun.
“Baby,” Tasha said as she jumped up and peeked out from behind the curtain of her third-floor bedroom window and saw jackets
with huge lettering—
FBI, ATF, DEA
—and unmarked squad cars stationed in front of the three-family house and in the middle of the street.
She placed her hands on her pregnant belly as her knees hit the floor.
“Baby, throw something on.” Trae Macklin was rushing to put on his boxers and some sweats. “You see they’re coming in. C’mon,
baby, please get up. They’re coming, baby.” He hopped over to her, one leg in the sweats, one leg out.
“I love you, Trae.” She looked up at him in disbelief. She was a hustler’s wife, undoubtedly. But she had been sure that this
hustler would be out of the game before it was too late and before it came to this.
“I know you do, Ma, but I need you to put something on.”
“Then why are you doing this?” she screamed. “Why do you keep leaving me? The babies, Trae, our babies, they need you.” Tasha
was expecting twins any day now.
Trae’s adrenaline rushed through his veins and he fought to remain calm as the sounds of steel-toed boot-wearing police rushing
up the stairs grew closer. “C’mon, baby, you gotta put something on.” Concern over Tasha’s frame of mind was evident in his
voice.
I know she is not going to fold on me
, he thought.
Tasha had been through raids, search warrants and this same drill numerous times with her ex, Nikayah. It all came with the
territory of being a hustler’s wife. But she had sworn she would never get involved with another hustler again. Not in this
lifetime. Trae had managed to convince her and swore to her that he was getting out and it would be different with him. He
was going legit. Now here they were. However, she would rather her door get kicked in by law enforcement than by some niggas
trying to take their heads off.
Seeing that she wasn’t going to move, Trae snatched up his T-shirt, put it on her, then hurried to the dresser and grabbed
a pair of panties for her. “C’mon, baby, they’re at the door. Get dressed.” He managed to get her to stand up. Just as Tasha
pulled up her panties the front door damn near flew off its hinges and the law enforcement agents pushed their way into the
bedroom, screaming.
“On the floor! On the floor, now! Let me see your hands! Get down!” Trae knew the routine all too well. Most of his life he
had heard these orders.
“She’s pregnant, man!” he yelled as they threw a distraught Tasha to the floor and handcuffed her. “Why the fuck are y’all
handcuffing her? Y’all came here for me!” he yelled as they put the ghetto bracelets on him.
“That’s right,” the agent in charge said. “We don’t need her. Not yet.” He smirked. “And read Mr. Macklin his rights.”
“It’ll be okay, baby,” Trae assured Tasha as they led him away with nothing on but sweatpants.
“Okay? Okay? They are taking you away and I’m eight and a half months pregnant with twins.” She screamed, “Trae, you promised
me. You promised me you wouldn’t leave us.” Tasha was trying to run toward Trae, but the white female DEA agent was holding
on to her.
The agents began searching—more like destroying—their one-bedroom apartment. They went from room to room ransacking the apartment
and flipped over furniture, emptied out drawers, snatched clothes out of the closets, tossed papers around and dishes out
of the cabinets. In a few short minutes it looked as if a tornado had struck. The agent in charge yelled, “Oh, he’s leaving
you all right. He’s leaving you for a very long, long time, unless you tell us where he keeps his drug money. If not, by the
time he has a chance of getting out of prison, that baby you’re carrying will be raising a family of its own!” Tasha spit
on the agent and he lunged at her throat. The entire room burst out laughing.
“Aaagh!” Tasha sat up, gasping for air as she awakened from this horrible nightmare. Her fingers clenched the bedsheets so
tightly her knuckles were turning white. Her breathing was rapid; her body was pulsing from the thundering of her heart as
it tried to beat through her chest. She tried hard to shake her head clear. As she wiped the sweat from her brow, Trae sat
up and turned the lamp on.
Since the day their drug case was overturned, and Tasha picked up Trae and his partner in crime, Kaylin Santos, from the courthouse,
they had been at the bungalow in Ocho Ríos. They had the same bungalow where he had promised her that after he got out of
the game they would come back and chill until they got tired of it. It was a gift from the dons. Their first couple of nights
there, Tasha had begun having that awful nightmare, but after about a week it had stopped. Now, exactly three months later,
it was starting again.
“What’s up?” he asked as Tasha kept shaking her head from side to side and rubbing her eyes to make sure she was dreaming.
As he reached over to comfort her he realized how badly her body was shaking and saw the tears rolling down her cheeks. He
pulled the sheet off her to make sure she wasn’t bleeding. He wanted to be certain that the babies Tasha was carrying weren’t
in any danger. She was expecting twin boys. He sighed in relief as he looked between her legs. “Baby, what’s the matter?”
“That dream. It’s starting again. That same dream.”
“It’s okay, baby. It’s over. I told you, I’m not going anywhere.” He used his thumbs to wipe her tears away. “Are you listening
to me?” He grabbed her face.
“It was so real, though. Oh, God, it was real,” she gasped. “It’s a sign, I know it.”
“It’s not real, Tasha. Don’t say shit like that. You’re jinxing a nigga. It was only a dream. Trust me, Daddy ain’t going
nowhere.”
Shit, I’ll hold court in the streets first
. “I’m free. Me, you and the babies are far away from Jersey and New York. Aren’t we?”
She hugged him. “Sorry, baby.”
“Don’t apologize. Everything’s fine. It was only a dream.” He could still feel her trembling. “I need to be the one apologizing.
It was my lifestyle that got you so shook. I’ma make it right, baby. I promise.”
“Just tell me you’ll never leave us.” Tasha felt as if she could never get enough of his reassurance as she held him tighter.
He reached down and rubbed her stomach. “Baby, you should know by now that if I have my way, I’m never leaving my family.
But you know I did so much shit in the past. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” She pushed his hand off her stomach, jumped
up and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
Trae followed her to the bathroom. They had decided to move to California and start fresh as soon as Trae stopped hustling.
“Maybe it’s time for us to raise up outta here,” he suggested from the other side of the door.
“What you think?” he yelled as he turned the doorknob. Of course it was locked.
A
jet-lagged and exhausted Trae hopped out of the limo before it had fully stopped, as it pulled up to the entrance of the
Wilshire Grand Hotel. It used to be one of the best-kept secrets in LA, sitting on the corner of Wilshire and Figueroa. Trae
watched as the bellman retrieved their luggage and the driver helped a sleepy Tasha out of the limo. He decided right then
and there that this spot would suit their needs perfectly as relocation central. It was the beginning of September and the
weather was sunny. A picture-perfect day.