Chapter 46: Smart Girls Choose Their Alter Ego

Marley has a choice to make in this chapter. There's no turning back for her now.

The song:  a rap by an OG...Common. "The Light". The flow is not like today's rap but the words are amazing and so many syncs to Bodie and Marley's story...it's really kind of freaky, and I just found the song today

Marley

I don't why the hell we bought a house with a five minute drive to Darius' school.

Ten minutes is not enough time to brush your teeth, shower, shave your legs, tame your frizzy hair from said shower and apply mascara.

Okay, it's maybe enough time, but it's not enough time to shave without nicks.

Thank god I have no bikini wax issues to deal with. Mac is sometimes a handful but she's amazing about sharing her spa technician services when she has them out to the house.

I'm desperately trying to stop half a dozen spots of small blood flow when Bodie returns from school drop-off, calling "Jasmine!" from somewhere below.

For so long, I was afraid of that name. But I love the way he says it—with a heavy rolling Jaz and a clipped men. It feels familiar. Intimate. Even when he shouts it across the house.

"Still up here!" I yell back, frantically trying to stop the bleeding.

Bloody legs are not sexy.

They won't stop oozing. Damn triple blade razors. I decide as a last resort to try to blow dry my nicks, in the hopes that Bodie will stop to make coffee before he comes looking for me.

Then again, if he stops to make coffee, I guess the moment for doing the no pants dance has passed.

Because of said hair dryer, I don't hear him when he stops at the bathroom door. I jump as I catch site of him in the surround mirrors, pressing his fingertips to the frame and he leans in, watching me.

I pretend like I was drying my hair. Which only makes it more frizzy, of course.

He smiles the smile that has bereft a horde of fangirls of their panties.

Like he knows what I'm thinking, he comes to the vanity and wraps his arms around me, smiling at our joined reflection.

"You know what I think?"

I hold onto his strong forearms wrapped tightly over my shoulders. "What?"

"I think it was a good thing Darius interrupted us."

"Why is that?"

"Because it gives me a second chance to do it right."

I heat as I stare at him. "It felt pretty right."

His hand raises to stroke my jaw. "The sex couldn't be anything but right, between you and me. I've known that for a long time, because in the last decade and half not much has compared to my first time with you. But I'm talking about more than that." He walks around in front of me and takes my hands. "I'm talking about...treating you like my woman. My girlfriend." He wraps around me, and begins to move me in soundless dance. "I'm talking about taking you out, showing you a good time, romancing you."

I'm feeling like Jasmine so much lately, it's really hard to stop her sass from coming out of my mouth. I want to say, Boy, you already gotta girlfriend. I'm just your sidepiece.

But there is enough of Dr. Watkins left to recognize saying that would be self-sabotage. One more way to put tension between us, just like all my tears this week.

The truth is...I'm terrified of this thing with Bodie. Terrified he won't stay sober. Terrified he's going to get himself killed playing deep-cover-double-agent-drug-dealer. Terrified that Darius and I will never truly fit into his rock star lifestyle. Terrified of losing him in so many possible ways.

But of all the ways I am terrified, I'm actually the least scared that he loves Arabella more than me. Dr. Watkins has already informed me that my beef with Arabella has much more to do with my own insecurities than anything else. Arabella is younger than me, in better shape than me, more glamorous than me, more graceful than me.

So instead I say, "Your girlfriend, huh?"

Perhaps I'm fishing, but at least I'm not starting another fight.

Bodie is massaging the small of my back as he dances with me. "Well, it's hard to find the right word for you. Babymama means one thing—something important, sure, but it doesn't necessarily imply commitment. Girlfriend connotes love and loyalty, yes?"

I thought girlfriend implied more hits on your Insta, Rock Star.

Shut-up, Jasmine.

You shut-up, Dr. Watkins.

"I really like it when you use words like that." I smile at him.

He returns the bright white smile. I'm sure if I were wearing panties beneath this robe, they would have magically dropped. "Girlfriend?"

"Connotes."

"Ah. Well, what do you expect? Your boyfriend is no slouch in the brains department. He graduated Summa Cum Laude, you know..."

"Me too," I scoff.

He pushes me against the wall, pressing himself all over me. "And that's why I love you. You are as smart as you are sexy." He hovers over my mouth, his breath drawing in. "You brushed your teeth."

I nod.

"Want me to brush mine before I kiss you?" he asks.

I shake my head slightly. "Not at all. It wasn't you. It was...me. I was just...self-conscious...before. I feel like...you are used to a different standard in a girlfriend."

He blanches. "Please don't do that. Don't compare yourself to...anyone."

We both know he means Arabella.

I rub my fingers across his perfectly formed shoulders. "It's hard not to. She's a very beautiful girl."

"Jaz..." he seems a little exasperated with me. His lips are moving, trying to find the right words.

He blows out a breath and begins to speak. "Her ugly behavior aside, yes...Arabella is a good-looking girl. I won't insult your intelligence by saying she's not. But a lot of her beauty is...contrived. She's had a team of people glamming her constantly since she was twelve years old. Hair extensions, fake lashes, collagen injections, teeth veneers, tattooed eyeliner and lipstick, constant skin treatments.

"Keeping herself up like that? It's part of her job. It's part of her routine. Even though she's mostly high, she spends most of her time working on her appearance. She takes diet pills and amphetamines to push through her insane workouts, and then she pops a few oxy and zones out during her endless beauty appointments.

"You are the exact opposite. You've spent most of your adult life doing real work—taking care of our son, being a good family member to the Turners, educating yourself, helping all your patients. You don't spend your life primping yourself, yet, you are more naturally beautiful than her."

I begin to shake my head, but he catches my chin.

"Yes, you are. You don't get to tell me you aren't ten times more beautiful than her, because that's exactly what I see."

This man. He's not perfect, but he's perfect for me.

I thrust my tongue into his mouth, kissing him with all the feeling that is pouring out of me lately.

He kisses me back. Very passionately.

It seems like the sex is back on as he begins to pull apart my robe. Then he drops down to his knees in front of me.

"What are you doing?"

He chuckles as he laps and sucks my jasmine tattoo. "Well...so I was thinking...maybe we should let Darius spend the night at TJ's tomorrow night, just as a trial, but while we are still in town. Just so everyone knows we are trying to be reasonable." I can hardly focus on his words, the way he's teasing a hand up my inner thigh. "And if we do that, I'm gonna take you out on a date tomorrow night and romance you, then bring you home and make love to you, with everything I've got. Sound good?" He's tracing the outline of flowers with his tongue now, looking up at me for a response.

"That...sounds...good..."

"Good." He's stroking my lips now, with the lightest touch possible. "But right now, I'd really like to get to know you a little better. I've been dying to go down on you, Jasmine. Would you like that?"

In truth, receiving oral sex is a relatively new experience for me. But I can't say it wasn't a good (few) experiences. I can't imagine how much better it will be from Bodie.

"I...I...yes...I...would. But I've never had it like this...standing up, I mean..."

He chuckles and puts my hands on his shoulders. "Hang on. If your knees buckle, I'll catch you."

"Oh god," I gasp.

His mouth trails toward my center. He stops, pulling back, his fingers tracing across the nearly invisible horizontal scar above my pubic bone.

"You...had a c-section?" he asks, looking up, eyes full of concern.

"Yeah. He just...wouldn't come. I was in labor for something like 48 hours."

He nods and plants a lingering kiss on my scar. Then his kiss moves lower.

The man has skills. He works me up like he drums. He takes his time, applying a base rhythm. Just when I think I know what to expect, he thrills with an added bounce. An unexpected run. Before long, he has me moving along to his addictive cadence, rising and falling with his tongue.

I'm flooded. I'm floored.

Oh god, I'm fainting...

As pleasure rips through me and the world tilts, Bodie rises, holding me up against the wall when I want to collapse, reviving me with a tangy, demanding kiss.

"We share, okay?" he murmurs in the fevered kiss. "Morning breath...the taste of each other. We share everything real. I want real with you."

I nod and kiss him back fervently. He picks me up and carries me to the sofa in the bedroom, wrapping my robe back around me, drawing a throw over us. I have a mind to reciprocate, of course, but when I fondle him gently, he says, "In a minute. In the shower."

"Okay," I agree eagerly, adding a suck of a spot on his neck as I continue to stroke his shaft. It thrills me that I can kiss and touch him now.

He gives a breathy smile at the sensation, smoothing my hair. "Tell me."

"Tell you what?"

He puts his hand over mine, stilling my hand to cup his balls.

"Mmmm, I like your hands on me. But tell me about Darius being born."

I consider what to tell him. The truth is...Darius' birth is the single most traumatic thing that has ever happened to me.

Prison is no place to have a baby. Especially for a young girl with no prior experience. There were no childbirth classes to prepare me. No loved ones to encourage me. Very little prenatal support and no preparation, except for what my prison family told me. Mostly they focused on how to tell if I was actually in labor, because the guards were prone to get irritated if I made too much fuss with false alarms.

When my water finally broke-two weeks after my due date—I was immediately taken to medical and given an epidural. My labor stalled and it wore off. I suffered through more than a day of natural childbirth, one hand handcuffed to the bed.

I was terrified. I was in serious pain. And that was nothing to the agony that came after.

When I started to pass out from low blood pressure and the baby's heartbeat started to falter with the contractions, I became hysterical, thinking both my baby and I were going to die. They knocked me out with something. When I woke up, I was no longer pregnant. I lay alone in a room for what seemed liked forever, not knowing what had happened to my baby.

Finally a nurse brought him to me.

He was beautiful. He was perfect. I had never known such love. Such contentment. Such completeness.

Then he was gone.

"Marley?" Bodie is searching my face.

I don't want to tell Bodie what ii was like for me, but I steel my will against tears and I do it anyway. He's right. We need real between us.

I tell him everything.

I sum up the sad story with a little self analysis. "I shut down, after the delivery. I had to. In order to survive in there. Even when Pat and TJ brought Darius...I loved him, I know I loved him and worried about him and wanted to see him...but I didn't feel right. Fully, I mean. I was emotionally closed. I guess that's why he and I struggle. To be honest, I didn't feel a whole lot ever again, until you. Until now. I think that's why I'm such a mess right now. Why I'm crying over everything. You've pretty much ruined Dr. Watkins, you know..." I snuggle against him. "Detachment may be a necessary practice for a psychologist, but it was a sucky way to live. Thank you for showing me how to feel again."

Bodie pulls me too him so tightly I can hardly breathe. He says nothing for a long time.

Finally he says, "I can't believe you are thanking me. I'm surprised you don't hate me."

I shake my head against his chest. "Me getting pregnant was not your fault and I don't regret Darius—"

"I know that. I don't mean that. Actually I'm glad I got you pregnant. If I hadn't, Daemon would have. I meant...hate me for getting you sent to prison. That was my fault, Marley."

"No. Also Daemon's—"

"No. Not totally. I've thought about this a lot. There wasn't much to connect Jasmine Jones to Marley Watkins. If I had been smarter that night—if I had separated you from that damn case full of drugs...if I had hid you, dumped you in a neighbor's house, whatever...if you hadn't been arrested, interrogated and confessed to your true identity...you could have just walked away from the neighborhood. From Sixmob. You could have gone home to your adoptive family.

"Or maybe if I had managed to keep us both out of jail, but Daemon still got locked away, maybe you and I would have stuck together. You couldn't have hidden your pregnancy much longer. Seeing you pregnant? I probably would have been in your face about who the daddy was. And when I found out it was me? I wouldn't have left you to deal on your own. Maybe we would have gotten over the bad feelings from the initiation. Maybe we would have been together even then. We were both smart, ambitious. We could have made it work, with help."

Bodie is so incredibly sweet. But he's so wrong about that.

With my head still on his chest, I say, as gently as possible, "What help, Bodie? Your mom was struggling as it was. My adoptive parents wouldn't take the baby in, that's how he ended up with Pat. So you tell me, how a fifteen year old ambitious babybanger would have earned? Foodstamps don't buy diapers."

"Okay, Eminem," Bodie chuckles at me. "I get what you're saying. The quickest way for me to earn would have been in Sixmob. Especially with half of Sixmob in jail and a lot of lieutenants spots available. But we couldn't have stayed in the neighborhood. I couldn't have moved up in Sixmob. Daemon ran that gang from prison. He would have had us both capped.

"Naw, we would have gone to Athens. My mom would have sent us both to Tam's parents. They would have helped. Maybe we would still have gone to college there. It would have been hard, but it might have happened. We might have been happy. We might have been a family."

"Somehow I don't think there would have been enough time in your schedule for Soundcrush," I whisper. "Bodie...this is all moot. Believe me, I have fantasized, too. So many times, but might-have-beens are rarely helpful. Me going to jail wasn't your fault and even if it was, I could never hate you.

"I love you. I want the best for you. I'm sorry for your time in juvi but it brought you where you are today. It gave you...everything. Fulfillment. Success. Wealth. Opportunity. I don't regret a single thing. Well, that's not true. I regret dragging you back into Sixmob's world. But I still wouldn't change it, if it meant Darius not knowing you. I just want to hold onto you, now that we've made our way back to one another."

"You got me, Mama," he kisses the top of my head. "Lock, stock, and barrel."

I sigh. "I could have done without the gun metaphor."

He chuckles. "Yeah, bad choice of words. But I swear to you, I'm gonna get us out of Sixmob. Out from under Daemon. All three of us."

Or die trying, I think.

"Speaking of that, I've got some business to do today." He looks grim.

"What kind of business?"

He tugs on my hair, pulling my face back, delivering a closed mouth kiss. "The kind a ride-or-die doesn't usually ask about."

We stare into each other's eyes. This is it. The moment where I have to decide once and for all, if I am Jasmine or Dr. Watkins.

Turns out I am not that smart, but I am in love.

"Just promise me, no guns or drugs in the house."

"That I can promise." He chews his lip. "I did have a gun in the house the night you were shot at. Darius wasn't here. I still have that gun available when I need it, but it's not in the house and it won't be again. Our exterior security is carrying. You know that, right?"

I nod. I also note that Bodie said he had a gun available when he needs it. Not if.

I fist his t-shirt in my hands. "You have to do everything you can to stay safe. That includes not drinking or using. Drugs impair your decision-making, increase reckless behavior and risk-taking—"

He kisses me hard. "I know, baby. I'm not falling off the wagon. I have way too much at stake. I swear to you..."

His words fade, but his kisses come on strong. I feel his fading erection rising again underneath my hand as we press our mouths and bodies together. Suddenly, my world is upended as he throws me over his shoulder and heads to the bathroom.

"I really need that blow-job now, Jasmine," he says bluntly.

I bob as he carries me, but I manage to smack his ass lightly. "You think you can demand a suck-off?"

He's adjusting the shower nobs. Steam is rising like the mist of a fantasy.

He puts me down. He strips. He gently drops my robe. I make no protest, except one arched eyebrow that shows I'm still expecting an answer.

He rocks me backwards into the shower, pressing his member against my belly. "Not demanding. Begging. A man has needs, Jasmine. And I need your lips around my dick. It's been fourteen years and I still fantasize about my very first sexual experience. Your mouth was so soft and sweet. You blew my fucking mind. Baby, please—"

His sweet sexy talk makes me so hot. No one else has ever brought that out in me before. I put a finger to his lips as I slide to my knees. He holds my hair, and I hold the power of his ecstasy.

I love every second of it.