I wouldn’t say that I’m easily whipped. I’m just weak. I have a weakness for pretty things, and when I get them, I get addicted. Like any other man or boy, I like big, pretty trophies that say “first place.” When I met Savannah’s beautiful ass, it felt like I had caught a fifteen-foot, 700-pound marlin with my bare hands. I wanted to take a picture with her standing next to me, hooked to show off my prize-winning catch. I knew instantly that I was in the presence of the Most Valuable Player trophy, and I had to make her mines. If baby needed a little polishing up, I didn’t mind giving her a spit shine.
It must have been all the weed smoke clouding my vision, though, and throwing my psyche off, because Savannah ain’t shit. I should have checked out her shoes. One quick glance down, and I would’ve realized she was walking on toilet tissue and not the red carpet.
Baby has the potential to be priceless, but she prefers to have no value. I know it sounds backward, but that’s how it is. Savannah walks around like the world is in debt to her, and she can do whatever she wants. It’s time I show her that I don’t owe her ass shit. Every move I’ve made has been on the strength that I love her. I thought if I showed her what love is and hit every spot that those random niggas she was fucking had missed, I could change her. I thought that with some home training and a display of Southern family morals, I could mold her into what I wanted her to be. I thought if I could get her to build a relationship with God, my daughter would have her mama, and I’d have my wife. That’s what I get for reading a children’s book on life. This shit ain’t no fairy tale. But maybe there is still a chance for our happily ever after.
Part One
Dre
Chapter One
The Decision
“Open the fucking door, Savannah!”
I couldn’t have been talking to myself, and I doubt the bitch went deaf after asking me to identify who I was as I knocked. The door never opened once I told Savannah that it was me, nor did I get a response from the other side of it. All I heard in return was my heavy panting from the workout I was getting from trying to get in that room.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I kicked the door twice flat-footed with my back turned to it like a donkey, hoping to get a response. The sole of my booted foot stung and caused my toes to tingle from the impact of both kicks. The act backfired and left me irritated from the self-induced pain. I turned to face the door again, grabbed the doorknob, and twisted it as if it would magically unlock. But who was I kidding? I knew before I touched the knob it wouldn’t open. It just felt like the right thing to do next.
The word “mad” didn’t do any justice or come close to describing how I was feeling at that point. I was infuriated and seeing red. My foot was throbbing, my body was trembling uncontrollably, and my heartbeat sped up with more bass and depth to it than I had ever felt. The power in its beats made my pulse feel like it was on the verge of bursting every blood vessel in my body. An aneurysm was growing, I just knew it, with severe hemorrhaging and my death to follow. I had to take a second to laugh at my exaggerated thoughts. I can’t believe how this chick had me going crazy, but fuck it. It is what it is. My normal rational way of thinking had flown out the window without a sign of returning. The fact that I had no control over being permitted to enter was driving me insane. All I could do now was keep pounding on the door and yelling, hoping she would let me in.
“Savannah, I said open the motherfucking—”
My yell was interrupted by the bell that alerted the elevator’s arrival on the floor. I watched as the doors opened, heard the sound of someone pushing a button rapidly, and then watched the elevator door close without a soul getting on or off of it. I couldn’t tell if it had been a guest or hotel staff from where I stood, but that didn’t matter to me anyway. The unknown passenger or passengers weren’t a big enough distraction to make me forget what I had been doing. Curiosity wasn’t shit when it was up against my fury in the past, and today wasn’t an exception. My focus was beating on the door until I was allowed entrance, and fuck everything and everybody else. I probably should have questioned that elevator’s ghostly arrival and departure, but I was in a trance. My mind wouldn’t allow my body to walk to the elevator and investigate. Getting in that room was my number one priority.
I yelled at the door again. “Open the door, Savannah.”
How could a simple request take this long to play out? The delay in action was causing my body to have physical reactions. Now, my vision was blurry from the heat of my blood flowing through the veins behind my eyes. The dimly lit hallway wasn’t making it any easier on my sight, either. All the color had gone, and I was left with black-and-white static. I looked around the hallway to focus on the sunlight that should be shining through the windows, but there weren’t any windows on this floor. I double-checked my surroundings. I remembered this floor being brighter than this. I was standing in this very same spot less than two weeks ago. I had gotten high and was coating my throat from the weed smoke with a bottle of Rémy. I don’t really remember what happened next. I just remember standing outside this door, ready to terminate that lawyer nigga Savannah was creeping with. I’m sure the lights had been a lot brighter than this.
I shot my eyes up to the ceiling and saw two of the track lights had been broken. I looked down and saw that there were small pieces of glass on the ugly mint-green carpeted floor. It must’ve been the detective in me or my criminal instinct that instantly made me notice that the security cameras were on the other end of the hall. If you got off the elevator with your back to the cameras and came straight to the door, you wouldn’t be identifiable under these broken lights. That would make it easy to commit murder.
Maybe someone else wanted Royce’s head as much as I did, or maybe Savannah had shown her face too many times around here, and the plot was to get her. I had to shake my head to clear that last thought from forming. I couldn’t get caught up being Savannah’s protector right now. She was fucking me over and wasn’t opening up the door. I turned my focus to my rapidly numbing hands. I had to make myself remember that it was because of Savannah’s creeping that my hands were swollen like I’d eaten too much salt. It was hard to make my hands out clearly because of the lights and my vision, but the tingling sensation in my knuckles gave away their condition. They were fucked-up. Both hands were busted and swollen. I didn’t think I had knocked on the door that hard, but then again, I didn’t care. I tried to ball my hands into fists and open and close them to revive the feeling in them, but anger was easing the pain and forcing my hands to feel numb. I balled my fists one more time out of frustration, cocked back, and hit the door with everything left in me.
“Fuck,” I screamed out in agonizing pain as a single tear made its way to the inner corner of my left eye. “Savannah, are you gon’ open the door and let me in, or do I need to make my own key?”
I took my nine out of its leather holster, cocked it back, then I aimed at the electronic keypad on the door. My hands couldn’t take anymore. I was tired of knocking and even more tired of playing these ho/snitch games with Savannah and her mama. I waited a few seconds more to give her an opportunity to respond, but she never did. That’s when the reality of it all hit me. I had really changed. The old Dre—that wild, not-giving-a-fuck-ass nigga that I used to be—wouldn’t have waited for a response. I would’ve shot the lock off the door by now, booted the motherfucka in, and said fuck being permitted, but luckily for Savannah, that side of me is in a coma now. It was knocked out by growth and the many nights I spent praying for change while I was in jail.
I had grown, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t more growing to do. All it meant was that I had learned to make force my last option instead of my first choice. I wouldn’t let this shit have me sitting behind bars—Hell naw. I wasn’t going to be behind bars over a bitch ever again. My baby mama Tasha had taught me a lesson in loyalty that I’d never forget. She turned key witness for the DA against me. That’s an experience I never want to go through again, so growth from my last mistakes made me wait another twenty seconds. Hell, I even knocked three more times with my gun-free hand just to show off my newly found patience.