Page 81 of Crash: Love in Scrubs
“Yes, I was handling it. I wanted you to focus on school and Samaj.”
She whipped around to face me, her eyes blazing. “Handling it? By keeping me in the dark while someone violated our privacy. While they took pictures of us in your bedroom? And who is the other bitch?”
“I didn’t want you stressed.”
“Stressed?” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I’m stressed now, Malik! I just got humiliated in front of strangers who had intimate photos of me. Photos I didn’t even know existed!”
I reached for her, but she backed away. “Sametra, listen to me. I was protecting you.”
“Protecting me? Or protecting yourself? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you were more worried about controlling the situation than trusting me enough to be honest.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” Her voice cracked. “Fair would’ve been giving me a choice. Fair would’ve been letting me decide how to handle threats against my own shit, my own privacy.”
The front door opened, and Samaj walked in, moving much better. He took one look at us and stopped.
“What’s going on?” he asked, his eyes moving between his mother’s tear-streaked face and my defensive posture.
“Ask him,” Sametra said, pointing at me. “Ask him about all the secrets he’s been keeping while playing house with us.”
I saw the moment Samaj’s expression changed. The confusion gave way to something else, understanding, maybe guilt. He knew our conversation in Alabama had followed us home.
Which pissed me off even more, because I’d told myself when we got back from Alabama that I would go to HR myself and report our relationship, deal with whatever consequences came from it. But I’d thought I had time since Ashe was laid up in the hospital recovering from his beating. I thought wrong. That motherfucker had never planned on keeping quiet; he’d probably submitted those reports the moment he left my spot on some hating ass bitter shit. And then telling them I assaulted him, on some bitch shit.
“Ma—” he started.
“Don’t.” She held up her hand. “I can’t deal with you defending him right now, Samaj.”
“I’m not defending anybody. I’m just saying maybe you should hear him out.”
“Hear him out?” Sametra’s voice was getting higher. “Your ain’t shit, father was stalking us, taking pictures of us, and this man knew about it and said nothing. What else is there to hear?”
“We were trying to protect you,” Samaj said quietly. I appreciated him trying to take some of the heat. But I was going to be in the doghouse, I already knew the deal.
The room went dead silent. I watched Sametra’s face change as she processed what her son had just said. I closed my eyes, preparing for the wrath I knew was coming.
“We?” she whispered. “You knew too?”
Samaj looked at me, then back at his mother. “He told me in Alabama. About the blackmail, about what Ashe was trying to do.”
“You both knew.” Her voice was barely audible now. “You both knew and decided to keep me out of it.”
“Ma, it wasn’t like that.”
“Get out.” She was looking at me now, her voice steady but deadly quiet. “Both of you. Get out of my house.”
“Sametra…pl…”
“GET OUT!”
I’d never heard her scream like that before. It cut through me like a blade but for some reason, I was aroused as fuck. She looked so damn sexy mad, brewing. Gah damn. I rubbed the back of neck trying to calm down before I yoked her ass up and took her upstairs to her bedroom.
“Ma, you’re overreacting,” Samaj said, but even he sounded uncertain now. Her phone rang and she silenced it immediately.
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“Go with him for all I care, since that’s where your loyalty is. I can’t believe you two.”
