"TT, will you live with me now?" Eriah asked what had to be her one hundredth question since she'd been awake, putting a forkful of eggs in her mouth.

"No baby. I just spent the night." She chuckled, standing over the stove of breakfast she'd cooked. It wasn't much; just some eggs, turkey bacon, breakfast potatoes, smoked sausage and fluffy french toast.

It was kind of second nature to make breakfast now, and even though the pain in her body was on ten, she figured she would feed Eriah some real food to give her a break from all the fast food she ate on the daily.

She seemed to be appreciative too, given she was already finishing up her second plate.

"Oh, okay. Will you spend more nights? With my cousin, too?" Eriah asked another question, and it immediately dampened Siraj's mood. She missed her baby so bad and it had only been a couple of hours.

Exodus wasn't picking up her calls and her messages were green, which she assumed was payback for his own calls and messages failing to go through last night. It wasn't purposeful though, her phone had died and she wasn't thinking straight enough to put it on the charger.

When she'd fallen asleep last night, she hadn't even meant to. Sleep was just the quickest way to calm her down and it happened without her noticing. She didn't realize how late it had gotten either, so she didn't blame him for being upset with her, nor was she upset with him because of it.

She was definitely upset at the way he had pushed her though-whether he had meant to or not, he didn't even bother to check and see if she was okay. Then he took Essence after she had asked for her twice while she cried so hard that her tiny face turned red.

Remembering the look on her baby's face as she was carried out by Exodus made her want to cry all over again. She had done enough of that through the night though. Her puffy eyes and shedding lash extensions were enough proof of that.

"Maybe pooh. I'll be right back, okay?" Siraj kissed her cheek, and she nodded, too focused on her iPad to question where her auntie was going.

Siraj carried a plate full of food back to Emari, ignoring the sinking feeling of guilt in her stomach. She didn't know why it felt like she was cheating on Exodus, just by making him a plate of food; not that she cared too much about how Exodus felt about anything as of right now.

"I made breakfast. You hungry?" Her tone was soft but raspy due to the way she'd cried for hours, holding the plate out to him as he woke all the way up.

He had slept in longer than normal today because he'd spent all night consoling Siraj while she cried and cried and cried some more. There was just too much going on for her emotions to handle, and crying was the only way she could express that.

She wanted so badly to talk to her brother about everything but she didn't want to cause anymore drama between him and Exodus. They had just got back to how they used to be, and she didn't want to be the one to ruin that for the second time.

"'Preciate that. You aight?" He sat up in the bed as he took the plate from her, and all she did was lightly shrug her shoulders in a way to say that she didn't know.

"You want a hug?" He asked next, and she chuckled, leaning over to give him one. His arms wrapped securely around her, and she let out a low sigh. She was so sad.

"Was you able to fall asleep?" Emari then climbed out of the bed to go to the bathroom and wash his face. He was going to wait to brush his teeth because he hated eating right after. It made his stomach feel weird.

"Yeah, eventually. Only for a couple hours though. I'm sorry for keeping you up all night." She watched as he came back to the bed, wasting no time to start on the breakfast she'd made.

"Ain't shit. I was making sure you was good. It ain't bother me." He waved it off, and she didn't respond for a while, making him look up just to see her still looking at him.

"What?"

"You deserve somebody much better than me. You're so perfect." She told him, then turned to lay on her back despite how sore she was.

"Thank you for not letting me use you. I don't know what I would've done if our friendship ended because of my slutty ways." She chuckled, referring to their conversation from yesterday.

"Siraj I didn't mean it like th-,"

"I know, I'm not mad. It was the truth and I'm okay with that. I had my fun and it doesn't bothered me. I'm just glad you weren't apart of that. You deserved more than just sex-I mean, you still deserve more than that, and I hope you find someone sooner than later. You deserve everything." She played with the palm of her hand, sighing to herself.

"Why it sound like you tryna tell me goodbye or something?"

"I'm dramatic as fuck." She shrugged, smiling when he laughed in response. It was true. She was very dramatic but he didn't mind it.

"I'm serious though. I don't think I'll ever be the one for you. I'm not enough-and that's not on no insecure shit, it's just..I really, really, really think you deserve better." She put her hands on her stomach, turning her head to look over at him with a small smile still resting as her expression.

"I don't want better. And I don't wanna keep talking about it 'cause I'm not gon' change my mind no time soon. Just let me suffer for a lil' bit. I told you I'll get over it." He chuckled, picking up some of his eggs with his French toast.

"Whatever works best, I guess." She unintentionally rhymed, internally laughing at herself just as Eriah ran into the bedroom.

"TT, Baba called you." She held Siraj's iPhone up to her, and thankfully enough it wasn't sticky from syrup. As soon as she saw her notification screen, she was up and on her feet.

"My baby need me. I'll call you when I can okay?" She leaned over to kiss Eriah's cheek while talking to Emari, grabbing her purse from behind the bed.

She gave neither of them a chance to response, but heard him tell her that he loved her on her way out. She said it back, then jogged out of his house and towards her car.

It took her less than an hour to make it back to their house, thankfully. She was truly struggling with being away from her baby, and her breasts had been leaking all morning as if her body knew that Essence needed her.

When she entered the house, she was kind of in shock at how tore up her living room was. It was in perfect condition when she left yesterday, so what the hell happened to it during the time she'd been gone?

She didn't ponder on it much, hearing the wails of her daughter that caused tears to form in her own eyes. The cries coming from her were so gruesomely loud and she knew for a fact Essence must've been crying for a while now.

She entered the kitchen where Exodus was currently trying to get her to eat from a bottle, knowing that she absolutely hated them. It looked as if Exodus hadn't got a lick of sleep last night.

"Aww, pumpkin don't cry. I'm right here." Siraj pulled her right boob from her shirt, which Essence immediately latched on to, silencing her cries.

She sniffed every few moments while groping on her mother's familiar skin, becoming calm in her grip. Her puffy eyes and beet red face were signs that she'd most likely been crying for hours. Her diaper was full, adding on to her reasoning for crying.

"Hi my baby. I missed you soooo much." She walked with her towards the nursery, moving her hair from her forehead. It seemed to stick on her skin from how she was sweating. Her poor baby.

Siraj continued to softly talk to her to soothe her cries completely, also stopping all the sniffing she was doing. Once she finished eating-which took at least half an hour, Siraj burped her and then removed her diaper for a cool bath in the sink.

She ran more cold water than hot because she wanted Essence's body temperature to go down. She wasn't running a fever or anything, she was just overwhelmed and hot-the way she sweated was clear proof of it. She seemed to enjoy the cool water too, basically falling asleep inside of it as Siraj bathed her and gently cleaned her face.

After moisturizing her skin and getting her dressed in a plain white onesie, Siraj laid her down in the crib of her nursery. She began to lowly whine, and Siraj realized she probably wouldn't be able to go all the way to sleep unless she was against her skin.

So she removed her shirt, and tied the silk wrap against her body to prevent her arms from getting sore due to carrying her. The way she had to tightly wrap it made the pain in her back worse, but it was worth making sure her baby was okay.

Essence still groped softly on her skin, a satisfied sigh leaving her small lips. That tiny little sound made Siraj feel all the way better. It let her know that she was doing something right, despite the crazy situation she was in.

When Siraj made it back to the front of their house, she saw Exodus still sitting at the dining room table where she left him over an hour ago. She paid him no mind, and went in the cleaning closet so that she could get the living room together.

There was broken glass everywhere, the remnants of the two tall vases that once held her fresh eucalyptus bunch plants. It kind of made her upset to see the the root damage from them. She'd been growing them for over four months, and now it meant nothing.

The flat screen TV that was once mounted against the wall was now on the floor, and she didn't even want to turn it on to see the damage. Exodus's anger was out of control. She hadn't even done anything for him to have gotten so upset.

She cleaned up everything that she could, and made a mental note to order what needed to be replaced. By the time she had finished cleaning, her living room looked almost as good as it did yesterday. Exodus never moved from his spot at the table either.

"Why didn't you call me earlier?" She asked him when she entered the kitchen area, seeing his eyes were already on her. Might as well talk first.

"You ain't even make the effort to come home so obviously you ain't care 'bout her that bad." He spoke in a monotone, and her eyebrows furrowed into a frown.

"Now I don't care about my daughter? Okay." She didn't bother to continue the conversation, putting the trash bag full of glass into the trash bin to keep on at her original task.

When she turned around he caught a glimpse of her back, and that made him pick his head up. The dark purple bruise wasn't there yesterday. Then he remembered pushing her. Had he done that to her? He didn't even realize how much force he must've used last night.

"Did I do that?" He asked, completely ignoring the anger he wanted so badly to still feel.

"Yep. Looks cool, doesn't it? Really brings out the color of my eyes." She grabbed the few dirty bottles that were on the counter, carrying them over to the sink.

"Siraj I didn't m-," He cut himself off when he watched her just barely flinch as he reached to grab her, and it felt like his heart crushed.

"Don't touch me please. I'm fine." Her voice lowered, but she didn't move from in front of him-almost as if she was too frightened to do so.

For the first time in their relationship, he was at a loss for words, unable to understand how it had come to her being afraid of him; how it had come to him putting his hands on her-whether intentional or not, he had still done it.

"You scared of me?" He asked; a question she honestly didn't have an answer for.

The way he'd done the living room out of pure anger without even allowing her to explain what had happened, along with being pushed into the wall with so much force that a bruise covered more than half the surface of her back, kind of made her lean towards the answer of yes, maybe she was afraid.

The Exodus she'd been with for the last year wouldn't have done that to her. He wouldn't have taken her baby away from her while she screamed in his grip. She couldn't fathom her future husband doing that to her every time he got angry.

Siraj turned around to face him, too nervous to look him in his eyes as she removed the engagement ring from her fourth finger. She hadn't taken it off since he'd put it on.

"I don't want to be with you right now. We need to make sure that this is what we want." She mumbled, placing the ring on the counter beside her.

The talk she had with Emari sent her emotions into a frenzy yesterday. Even with that, she had no plans of calling off their wedding-much less breaking up with him. But then she was shoved against a wall and had her baby taken away from her later that day, so now she wasn't so sure anymore.

She knew Exodus wasn't abusive. He would never intentionally hurt her, and she knew that. What she didn't know was, would he have more moments like last night where he wouldn't be able to control his anger? Where he would put his hands on her without meaning to?

Siraj needed to know the man she was marrying, and vice versa with Exodus. They had more learning, more understanding, and more listening to do before they went any further in this relationship.

She was also tired of getting into it with him about the same stuff, and knew that he had to be too. They both had things they needed to settle before this continued; she needed to learn to set boundaries and clear things up completely with Emari, and Exodus needed to decide if he even wanted to go on with her further.

"I didn't mean to do that to you.. I should've talked to you instead of jumping to conclusions and I don't have an excuse for what I did. I was wrong, aight? Don't do me like this Siraj." He grabbed her hand, and she bit her quivering lip in an attempt to hold back her tears.

Yes, he was mad about seeing her in the bed with his brother especially since she already knew how he felt about what they had going on-but he wasn't mad enough to break up with her. He figured they would just be mad at each other for a day, talk it out, and then everything would be fine again.

He hadn't even really noticed how he made her feel last night and he accepted the blame for that. He was wrong, she was wrong, they were wrong. Being wrong was normal in a relationship though. Everything wouldn't always be okay and that was apart of growing together.

"I don't want something like that to happen again Jacere." Her voice trembled, a signal that she was about to start crying.

"It won't. I'm so sorry fat ma. I'm sorry." He leaned his head down to kiss her cheek, and she grabbed his face before he could.

"I don't want you to say sorry Exodus. We were both wrong but you're only apologizing because you want to hurry and 'fix it'. I want us to do better. And until we learn how, we don't need to be together."

"How did something so small make y-,"

"It wasn't small Exodus you put your fucking hands on me! You took my baby from me even though you heard her screaming. I didn't do shit with Emari and he wasn't even next to me when I fell asleep but you didn't care enough to let me explain myself!" She yelled at him out of frustration, but quickly quieted herself when she remembered Essence was asleep.

"You hurt my feelings and however I choose to react doesn't need an explanation because you don't seem to like those anyway." She wiped her face, her other hand resting on her baby's bottom to hold her up.

"But why you taking yo' ring off? You not even gone let me talk it out with y-,"

"You ain't wanna let me talk last night. Why should I let you? See that's your problem. You want me to just be okay with what you did but now that I'm doing something I'm supposed to feel bad and talk to you about it?"

"I'm not fuc-I'm not asking you to be okay with it man, I'm not even saying you don't have a right to be mad because you do, but breaking up with me? This ain't how we supposed to fix shit Siraj." He tilted her head up so that she could finally look at him, and she didn't respond.

"Listen, I fucked up, aight? I know that. You have every reason to be mad at me and if you need some time to yourself, I'll give you that. But I knew what I was doing when I asked you to marry me Siraj. You knew what you was doing when you said yes. I fucked up, but you know that ain't me. I would never hurt you on purpose."

"I'm so sorry I did you like that. I'm sorry for taking Essence and I'm sorry for getting mad before talking to you. I know sorry don't fix shit but I can make it up to you. We can fix this the right way, we don't have to break up to fix it Siraj." He wiped the tears that streamed down her face, her signature pout resting as her expression.

"I'm not breaking up with you, I just need to figure out if this is the move we should be making. We still have so much time for marriage and now I'm not sure if I wanna do it so soon. We have shit to work on Exodus and you can't just rush to 'fix it'." She reiterated the last part, hesitantly pulling her face out of his grip.

"So that's what you want? No ring, you rethinking getting married, and you want me to leave? What happens after that?" He kept his eyes on her, waiting on her response.

"I don't know.." Her hand went over Essence's head when it turned against her chest, and his eyes lowered to look at his daughter. They'd had such a rough morning but Siraj came and made it all better for her.

That was the same affect she had on Exodus. He didn't know what he was supposed to do without her.

Bahahahahaha. I'm not even gone read the comments no more cause I'll delete the whole book and piss us all off 🤣🤣🤣