Page 234 of Kentrell

My spine straightened, and despite everything, a small smile pulled at the corner of my mouth.

She would never stop being my mama.

“I know who he is.”

There was a pause on her end, but I didn’t wait for her to push.

“I know his daddy was a pimp and his mama ran the streets with him,” I said, feeling a little strange admitting that out loud—especially to my mama, after everything she’d just confessed about running from that same kind of life. But I was tired of that label hanging over him like a shadow that didn’t fit anymore. “But I also know… he’s not them. He’s so much more than what people think.”

Zora went quiet again.

Longer this time.

And when she finally spoke, her voice was soft. Knowing.

“You love him,” she said. Not a question. A statement.

Her words hung in the air like slow perfume—thick, sweet, impossible to ignore.

Of course she would know. I came from her.

Still… this was the first time I’d admitted it outside of my own head.

I swallowed. “Yeah… I do.”

There was a sigh on the other end—not disappointment. Something heavier. Something sadder.

“Be safe, Zoe,” she said, her voice dropping low like she knew something I didn’t. “The world I tried to shield you from… it found you anyway.”

My brows pulled together, a slow frown tugging at my mouth. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

But she was already shifting back into mom mode, brushing past it like she hadn’t just dropped something cryptic and loaded.

“I gotta go, baby,” she said quickly. “Zonda wanna go to the store before Ahmad get home from work.”

“Okay…” I hated that I wouldn’t get to press her on it, but there’d be another time.

We were just making up. Finally pulling back the curtain on years of secrets and tiptoeing. And as somebody who’d arbitrated more cases than I could count… I knew most breakthroughs didn’t happen this fast. They took weeks. Months.

I was one of the lucky ones.

Most of the work that needed to be done between us… had been fixed with this one call.

And for now… that was enough.

“Love you, Mama.”

“Love you too, Zoe baby.”

I stayed in that chair long after the call ended, phone resting face down on my lap like it had betrayed me by carrying so much truth in one conversation.

Without thinking, I pulled my knees up to my chest, tucking them tight like I used to when I was little and couldn’t sleep after a nightmare. The oversized sleeves of Kentrell’s hoodie swallowed my hands, but that didn’t stop the tears from coming.

At first it was just a slow burn behind my eyes. A tight pinch at the back of my throat.

But then the dam broke.

And I cried.

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