Page 27 of Dirty Lyrics
“Y-you were with her at the video drop. I heard you on the phone,” she whispers, and it is breaking my heart wide open.
“That was business?—”
“Isn’t that how it always starts? As business,” she says.
She’s not wrong. I know plenty of guys who do what I do and fuck around on their women. But not me. I thought she knew me better than that.
“Look I’m not trying to insult you, Rico. It is what it is, right?”
My throat tightens, my voice dropping lower, raw and dangerous.
“Fuck the insult, Maya. That you’d even believe it? That’s what tears me apart.”
I slam my palm against the wall beside her head, close enough to make her jump.
Not to scare her—never to scare her—but to keep myself from shaking apart.
“You were it for me,” I whisper harshly. “You still are. Don’t you dare put another woman’s name between us. Don’t you dare take what we had and make it cheap.”
Her lip trembles, and I can see it—her doubt, her pain, her own jealousy eating her alive.
But underneath it, there’s something else. The same ache burning in me.
And it’s the only thing that gives me hope.
chapter 11-maya
“Take your bath, Maya. We’ll talk again later.”
His voice is flat, almost too controlled.
Then Rico turns and walks out, the door clicking shut behind him.
I stay frozen where I am, staring at the empty space he left behind. My arms drop uselessly to my sides.
The echo of his words lingers, heavy and sharp.
He sounded angry. Hurt. Like I’d cut him deeper than I meant to.
And maybe I did.
For long minutes I stand there, replaying the look in his eyes, the pain that threaded through his voice.
My throat tightens.
Could I really have been wrong about him?
Eventually, I shake myself out of it. The tub is full, the water steaming gently.
I slip inside, sinking into the bubbles I set on low. The water’s warm but not too hot—I was already flushed with heat from the summer wave, and my hormones make it worse.
My body sighs into the comfort of it, easing some of the tension strung so tight in my chest.
I tilt my head back, close my eyes, and for a little while, I let myself float.
When the water cools, I step out, wrap myself in a towel, and steel my nerves. I know Rico.
He doesn’t let things go. I’m braced for him to be waiting, for round two of a fight I’m not sure I can survive.
