Page 125 of The Promise

Ashira stood in the walkway, holding a glass of wine. The girls sat in their seats, watching TV. My dick was hard by the time I walked up on her.

“Come in the room.”

My shit was getting harder by the second, now smelling her braids, feeling her tight thickness against me. I ran my nose down her soft neck.

Ashira froze then from her profile, I could see a smile forming on her face. Then her lashes fluttered, “Ummm…” Her head shifted to the girls. “Jas,” she begged.

That forced my attention to them. Rainey was curled in the chair, a blanket covering her as she smirked our way. Amy sat in the same way in her chair but with a glass of wine. Her eyes were low, telling me of her tipsiness.

“Uhhh…” Amy coughed into her hand, fighting a smile. “Mr. Sinclair, should I go grab Chi-Chi?”

Rainey snickered, and that made Amy do the same. “Or maybe we should go to bed with her. We’ve got another four hours to go.”

Ashira, grinning, dropped her head into her hand. “Jas.”

“Because the amount of time you two took last night by the pool—”

“Rainey!” Amy giggled, covering her mouth.

“…or the day before, during ‘nap’ time, says we should call it a night,” Rainey continued, then made some goofy expression. She snickered to the point of tears while looking at Amy.

“Oh, shit!” Amy could hardly get out, laughing so hard. “I’msogoing to get fired!”

“Yooo!” Rainey squealed. “IknewShi-Shi was bangin’ your boss! I’m no fool!”

The girls fell into a giggling fit over that. Ashira was almost as tickled as they were.

“See what happens when you drink with the help,” I warned in Ashira’s ear.

She turned around defensively as I pulled out my vibrating phone from my pocket.

“Don’t do that. They’re fun. I made friends with them on this trip when you didn’t want to be mine!” She joked.

I knew she liked them. Amy and her girl reminded me a lot of Ashira and her crew; girls with no true care in the world, just wanting to have fun.

“Jos, whaddup?” I answered the call with my eyes on Ashira.

“It ain’t looking good, Jas.” I knew right away the connection wasn’t great.

“Hit me.”

I called Jos-Renee, Jug’s ex, to check in on him. His friend, Sabrina, had been down in Atlantic City since Jug was admitted into the hospital four days ago. Man took his family toDisney; Consuela welcomed a new grandbaby and could only get to the hospital once. Frankie had been going to check in with no real news to report back the first two days. Since then, she’d been taking meetings to expand my second-chance program, APrism Built Chance.

Jos-Renee was the only other trusted option for Jug. She agreed to stop at the hospital after work for some answers.

“He was in a medically-induced coma, they said.”

“Coma?” I repeated, alarming Ashira.

“Yeah. They’ve been waking him up since yesterday, saying they needed to do it to calm all his systems to figure out the problem.”

“Okay, so what’s the problem?” Ashira pulled me by the free hand, leading me toward the seats in the back. She sat across from me.

“They still don’t know, and check this. They say he has a collapsed lung, and it seems as if they don’t know if it came from the ventilator they had him on or what’s making him sick.”

My chest tightened. “What?” I sat back in the chair, resigning to my boy going out without a diagnosis.

God, please…

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