To Break a Vow Read online

Opening up a drawer on the island, he removed a gallon-size plastic bag containing a folded apron, brimless cap, and a pair of reusable gloves, all gifted to him by Tasha. Once he was outfitted, he snapped to attention, opening cabinets under the island and pulling out the necessary bun pans and utensils.

  My mama took a seat next to me, eyes roving my face intently and making me wish I’d put on a little bit of concealer so she wouldn’t be able to spot the dark circles under my eyes. “He still hasn't come home?”

  I shook my head, eyes on the envelopes in front of me. It had been six weeks since Jereth left on a “break”, and he’d yet to darken my doorstep again.

  She folded her arms on the table. “Has he at least called?”

  “He calls me every day.” My face heated as memories of last night’s call flitted through my mind.

  “He’s calling you every day, Tonya?”

  The tone of her voice made me cut my eyes at her. She sounded like his constant phone calls were supposed to mean…something. As if phone calls could mean anything.

  “Yes, Mama, but that’s not enough.”

  With pursed lips, she shook her head. “It’s enough to show that he cares about you. The man is making an effort.”

  “It’s not enough,” I repeated.

  A heavy, exasperated sigh fell from my mother’s lips. “As soon as he comes back, the two of y’all need to enroll in some marriage counseling and quickly.”

  I flinched, masking it by rolling my neck with a stretch, and grinned as I grabbed her hand and squeezed. “What do I need counseling for when I have you? You’re the smartest woman I know.”

  She gave me a side-long glance but couldn’t hide her soft smile. “You need counseling because I’m tired of watching you make a right into a brick wall after telling you to go left. Maybe you’ll be more inclined to take the advice when you’re paying for it.” Pushing back from the table, she went into the kitchen, washed her hands and pulled on a pair of gloves, leaving me with my thoughts.

  As she began to line baking sheets with parchment, I returned my gaze to the envelopes in front of me. Most of them were invoices for bills that auto-debited from my account, so I didn’t pay them any mind, tossing them to the side to be shred and added to my parent’s recycling bin. A dark blue envelope from the social security administration caught my eye, and I slid my letter opener along the seam curiously. My eyes scanned the letter quickly, words jumping out at me and causing my heart to thump anxiously.

  Congratulations.

  Latonya.

  Jereth.

  Maiden.

  Married.

  It was a reminder from the government to change my last name to Hawkins from Black before it was too late to do it online.

  Although Jereth often called me Mrs. Hawkins, I hadn’t put much thought into changing my name, and he’d never pressured me into doing so. It hadn’t ever been a big deal but something about seeing this letter, this reminder of my less than perfect marriage, hit me hard in the chest.

  Why would I change my name for a man who didn’t even consider me family?

  That’s what I asked Danielle when I met with her two weeks later. That’s how far out she was booked when I decided my needs deserved an actual appointment instead of just half-hearted advice over lunch.

  “You don’t.”

  “Okay, so what do I do?”

  Danielle raised her brows in surprise, staring at me from across her neatly organized desk.

  “Are you asking me?”

  I huffed. “Duh.”

  Uncrossing her legs, she sat forward, tension ball rapidly inflating and deflating as she squeezed it constantly.

  “Since you decided to make an appointment as a new client, I’m going to treat you as I would any other woman who walked into my office for the reasons you gave my secretary.” Her light brown eyes were intense, and I found myself swallowing audibly. “You know exactly why you’re here. You didn’t come to me for advice; you came to me for actions. You know what you want to do, and you know that I’m the person you see to do it. My only question for you is annulment or divorce?”

  “Uh,” I rubbed at my neck, suddenly warm, “I can’t get an annulment, right? Because it’s been more than ninety days?”

  “Tonya, you know that I don’t play games, and I definitely don’t waste time saying things I don’t mean. If I said the word, it applies.”

  My mouth went dry. Did I want to annul my marriage? Did I want to say that everything we’d experienced over the past eight months was nothing? I shook my head, the very idea making my stomach churn. It was bad enough that I was here in the first place; filing an annulment would be too much.

  “No. Jereth has been the man who told me he was from the beginning. The problem is that he never told me much at all. He said he was private and I stupidly thought that there were levels to his privacy that I would pass—by default—as his wife. A divorce is enough.”

  Nodding, Danielle swung her chair over to her computer and began to type while asking me questions that were fairly easy to answer until she asked, “What’s the address that I’m sending this to? I’m assuming you’re not handing it to him directly.”

  “I—” I paused, drawing a mental blank that made me freeze mid-sentence. Did I have an address for him? Had I ever seen his driver’s license or a piece of mail addressed to him? I know I’d never gone through with the background check but surely I’d—

  A strangled cry burst from my throat as I realized that even after asking him to be more open and him pledging to do so, I still knew so little about Jereth.

  “Oh, girl.” Danielle came around her desk and pulled me into a hug as she shoved tissues into my hand. I had no idea if it was common for her to comfort every woman who walked into her office but I was grateful for it all the same.

  “I don’t know shit about him, D! Nothing. I don’t even have an address for him.”

  To her credit, my cousin didn’t hit me with an “I told you so” although I surely deserved it. Instead, she nodded and returned to her computer, colorful acrylic nails plucking at the keys confidently. After a few minutes, she nodded.

  “Got it.”

  I stood to toss my used tissues into the wastepaper basket near the door.

  “You did a background check that fast?”

  She gave me a sympathetic look. “No, honey. I found his place of employment.”

  My mouth fell open. “Really? How did you find that? Did you do some kind of reverse search with his phone number or a location search or something? That was so fast.”

  Pursing her lips, she leveled me with a gaze that looked a lot like she was calling me a dumb bitch. “It’s on his social media. His page is private but his employment is public. I clicked on the company and the address was on their social media page.”

  Damn. I was a dumb bitch. I’d never even considered going to social media.

  “I—”

  She shook her head, holding up a hand. “You don’t need to say anything. It’s not my job to judge you.”

  “No,” I mumbled. “That’s your husband’s job.”

  She laughed lightly. “Well, if Mr.,” she peered at the screen, “Real Estate Investor for Hawkins Realty goes quietly, you won’t have to see my husband in his work setting.”

  Sighing, I shifted in my seat as something indescribable fluttered in the back of my brain. I was doing the right thing. Right?

  “And, what if he doesn’t? Go quietly, that is.”

  Danielle smirked. “You know the answer to that girl. Use your damn brain.”

  I frowned. “Damn cousin. Is this how you treat the women who come to you for help? That’s fucked up.”

  This time, it was Danielle who rolled her eyes. “No, actually. This is how I treat my cousin who I told to run a background check before her damn drive-through marriage was even filed with the state of Nevada.” She quirked a brow, waiting on my response.

  “Whatever, D. I was blinded by love or something.”
/>
  She cackled loudly and even I couldn’t contain a little giggle.

  “Girl, shut the fuck up. You had just met that man; ain’t no way you were in love with him.”

  With a shrug of my shoulders, I conceded to her point. “True, but by the time we climbed on that plane, I was definitely in love with his dick. And his fingers. And his tongue. Whew, child!” I rubbed at my neck as the warmth I’d felt traveled south.

  “That’s what’s wrong with you now. Got dickmatized and brought a whole scam artist into your home. I ought to fight you for endangering my baby Wisdom.”

  Shaking my head, I looked down at my fingers, at the ring that Jereth had given me just before he’d ruined my life with top tier penetration. “He’s not a scam artist, D, and it wasn’t just the sex, though. There was something about him that made me feel like I’d been operating on auto-pilot—like I wasn’t living even though I was alive. Being with him woke me up, and not just my sex drive. He made me realize that while I was taking care of everyone else, I was neglecting myself and that I deserved to be taken care of, too.”

  I looked up to find Danielle staring at me with a surprised look on her face.

  “What?”

  “Well…are you sure you want to file for divorce?”

  My face folded into a frown. “Why would you ask me something like that?”

  She gave me nothing but a quirked brow, and I sighed loudly, knowing that I was tripping. I’d hopped into my feelings in my defense of Jereth, and all it did was make me look like an even bigger fool.

  “Yes, D, I still want to file for divorce and before you ask, it’s because—as corny as it sounds—in my awakening, I realized I deserved more than a half-assed love from the man I’d pledged myself to. It’s not as simple to me as running a background check or screening social media. I shouldn’t have to do any of that. I shouldn’t have to do all this running around behind a man to find out basic fucking information about him. All of that is Dating 101!”

  She lifted her palms in surrender. “Okay.”

  I employed a few deep breaths until I felt relaxed then plucked a heavy, engraved pen from a mug on her desk.

  “Okay, where do I sign?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Everything Happens For a Reason

  She blocked me.

  I gave her the break she asked for, and she responded by blocking my number. Were my constant phone calls too much? Was she unable to think critically when I was whispering in her ear how much I missed her and the things I would do to her if I was beside her? Well, that was the fucking point. She didn’t need time to think about leaving me. She needed to be reminded of how well I fit into her life and how good we were as a wedded couple. She was supposed to miss me as much as I missed her and call me home. She was supposed to say she’d thought it out and that she was ready to move forward with me.

  But she didn’t do that. Instead, she blocked my number so that my calls kept going to voicemail. My text messages were being returned as undeliverable. Even my emails started bouncing back. I wanted to scream with rage every time the mail demon popped up in my inbox. After twelve hours of unsuccessfully reaching out, I realized the only way to fix the situation was to be in her face and force her to talk to me. I booked a flight to Houston and was sitting in Mexico City, waiting for my connecting flight when my mother called in a panic. She rocked my world when she told me that Lisa had left J and that my big brother was falling apart and needed to get out of Pine Bluff before he lost his mind.

  My flight wasn’t due to leave for two more hours, but I already knew that I wouldn’t be on it. My wife had severed communication with me, and my brother was drowning in depression. Despite the urgency I felt to get back to Houston, this was the universe telling me that rushing back to Tonya wasn’t what I needed to do at the moment, so I exchanged my ticket to Houston for a return flight back to Cabo, the same flight that J was booked on, and told my mother I’d wait in Mexico City for my brother’s arrival. After she assured me that she would have him on a plane before the sun sets in Arkansas, we hung up and I quickly dialed up my next call.

  “Hello?”

  “Natasha.”

  “Oh, hey, Jereth.”

  Her bright voice that always sounded like she was smiling brought me a small comfort. If she didn’t sound like she hated me then things couldn’t be too bad on the home front. She was the only one I could call who not only would hear me out but also had Tonya’s ear.

  “Hey. Listen, I’ve been trying to reach your sister since yesterday, but my calls keep going to voicemail. I’m pretty sure she blocked me, and I was on the way back to find out what’s going on—I’m actually at the airport now—but something had just come up with my brother, and my mother asked me to help him out.”

  “Okay…”

  “I know this is a tall order but can you just…keep an eye on her for me? I mean, just until I can get back?”

  She sighed softly but I still heard it. “Jereth.” She’d managed to infuse a large helping of scolding into the six letters of my name, and any hope I had fell into my feet. “I’m not going to do damage control for you. The two of you are adults; you can work this out without my interference.”

  “I’m not asking you to do damage control; I’m asking you to—to…” Shit. I was at a loss for words because what I wanted from her was damage control. I wanted her to watch her sister and make sure she didn’t do what she’d all but threatened to do.

  “Jereth. I know you are a big believer in fate, so I’ll leave you with this: if you and my sister are meant to be then you will be, no matter what conspires here or wherever you are. Good luck with your brother; I truly hope everything is okay with him.”

  Natasha was the only person I knew capable of slicing into you with the gentlest, kindest of words. Even the click of her phone as she ended the call was gentle. Pulling my phone away from my ear, I thought about what she’d said. I knew in my heart of hearts that Tonya and I were destined to be together, but I still felt like not going back to Houston right now was a mistake, and I couldn’t shake that feeling. Maybe I should have gone back sooner. Maybe when she continued to take my calls, it was a sign. Maybe I didn’t need to wait for her to ask me to come back. Maybe…

  Now, none of it mattered because the only thing I could do was wait for my brother’s arrival and hope that it was only a matter of days before I was able to board a plane and go see about my wife. Hiking the strap of my duffel bag over my shoulder, I headed out of the terminal and silently petitioned the cosmos that Tonya didn’t get any crazy ideas now that she’d blocked me from altogether communicating with her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When You Know Better But Say Less

  I was managing.

  I was.

  I swear.

  After I signed those papers, I made a point to go on with my life like nothing had happened. I hugged and kissed my son before he drove off with Evan in preparation for their two-week summer vacation in the Bahamas, took my mama shopping for her birthday, and cooked for my sisters. Most importantly, I stopped answering Jereth’s phone calls and responding to his texts. The constant communication was clouding my judgment and now that a couple of weeks had passed, I could think clearly.

  Everything was fine, normal even.

  Day after day, I went to work as usual and did my job as if I’d never married an imperfect stranger. The door to Black Coffee opened as I was restocking the condiments and switching out the stainless steel carafes of milk shortly after the huge rush of customers, and I called out a greeting without turning from my task. When I felt a presence behind me, I turned around, ready to knock somebody out for standing too close. To my surprise, it was Angelo, the resident flirt.

  “Good morning, gorgeous.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not in the mood for your shit today, Angelo.”

  His eyes widened. “Damn, I was just saying good morning; no need to bust a nigga’s balls at breakfast.”

&
nbsp; Rolling my eyes, I gathered the empty carafes and walked behind the counter, unscrewing the lids and rinsing them out before placing them in the first bin of the three-compartment sink. When I returned to the lobby, I had a broom and dustpan in my hands and began to sweep.

  “Oh, I know what’s wrong.” I looked up to see Angelo sitting at a nearby table, eying me.

  Leaning on the broomstick, I cocked my head to the side. “Please enlighten me.”

  He grinned, showing off perfectly straight, white teeth and two cavernous dimples that screamed “Danger! Sinkhole ahead!”

  “I haven’t asked you out in a while and you mad.”

  Despite myself, I laughed. “You are so full of yourself.”

  “Nah, I just know when I’m right. You can admit it; I won’t tell anybody.”

  “There’s nothing to admit except that you need help.”

  He shrugged. “And you need to stop playing like you don’t want me to suck the soul out ya pussy.”

  My eyes widened at his brashness. “Boy, you know good and well that I’m mar—” I caught myself mid declaration and swallowed those words down.

  “You’re what?” he asked, eyes narrowed before licking a very juicy bottom lip with a very fat tongue. And if I wasn’t mistaken, that shit was exaggerated as hell.

  “I’m…” I was at a loss for words. I’d been blowing Angelo off for years now and suddenly I didn’t have a snarky retort. Was this a sign? Was this my way of getting over the speed bump called divorce? Or was this simply a case of bad timing?

  “Hold that thought,” he instructed when his name was called along with his drink.

  I’d moved on to another area of the lobby when Angelo found me.

  “Go out with me tonight.”

  I sighed and glanced around the room, trying to think of a way to let him down. When comebacks used to come to me lightening quick, now, I was fumbling. “Angelo…”

  “What? It’s not like you have a man, right?”

  My eyes flew up to meet his and narrowed suspiciously. “What are you trying to say?”