Always Wrong - Xyla Turner Page 0,5

her without any say so. Whether she’d wanted it or not, there’d been no choice in the matter.

I rose from the bed, grabbed a washcloth, and ran warm water over it so I could clean myself and repeated the same action for her. When I returned, she was still lying the way I’d left her, but I put her on her back, opened her legs, and began to take my time as I cleaned her lower region.

Then without any thoughts or prompting of my own, I began to kiss her stomach, breasts, neck, and eventually her lips. Not to lead to sex, but as a peace offering.

Against her lips, I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“Shhh.” She tried to hush me, but that wasn’t the time for this.

“No.” I stopped and looked into those brown eyes of hers.

They were watery, and something told me this was not easy to come by. Sheryl South could not afford to be vulnerable. Fuck, I knew, because neither could I. With our jobs and lives, any sort of vulnerability was a weakness. The woman did not get to where she was by showing emotions. We’d probably both lived our lives with few attachments because of the cost. Not financially, but emotionally.

“Tonight, Sheryl, we are who we are. You had a miscarriage. We lost a baby. Not willingly, so we can be sorry tonight. It’s you and me, and tonight, we can be sorry, okay?”

A lone tear slid out the side of her eye and quickly ran down to her ear. Then another and another.

“Okay.” She nodded. “Tonight.”

More tears escaped, but I simply kissed her face until she had her arms wrapped around my neck, and her body began to jerk as the cries escaped. It was as if they were trapped inside, and I had no idea when or if they would stop, but I held on to her like my life or hers depended on it.

Shit, it might have.

Sheryl cried herself to sleep in my arms, and eventually I joined her. In the middle of the night, I felt a stirring, but she was still sleeping with her face on my chest.

The next morning, when I woke up, she was gone. I had not expected anything different, because we’d agreed that last night was for us. For the baby.

My flight to London was filled with the night of Ms. South. Oddly enough, it wasn’t about the sex. It was about watching the larger-than-life woman come apart in my arms. She called to another place within me, one that I did not always have the luxury to explore.

Yet with this was the notion that I was about to have a baby. We were about to have a baby. I did not want to let that go.

No, I wouldn’t.

Chapter Three

Sheryl South

With my feet propped up on the expansive patio, I watched the waves from my thirtieth-floor condominium. My body ached in certain places from having sex only some hours ago. Jacquez was good in bed. Good with that mouth and his dick. Even I couldn’t deny him that.

Sex is supposed to be intimate, but it had stopped being that for me a long time ago. It seemed the higher up the ladder, the harder it was to find people that wanted me for me and not for what I could do for them. It became apparent that finding a man for love probably wouldn’t happen, so I just focused on getting off, like they did. When I got the itch, of course.

However, I hadn’t had the itch for weeks now. Not after the miscarriage. Well, not after Jacquez, if I had to be completely honest.

When I felt the warm liquid running down my leg two weeks prior to the wedding, I immediately thought I was dying or peeing on myself, which meant I was dying. Rushing to the bathroom in my office, I saw that it wasn’t pee but blood, and that just sent a gut-wrenching panic to my entire being. Tears and an involuntary sob came from me as I tried to take off my clothes and sit on the toilet.

Literally, I had no idea what to do or who to call. I’d never been so scared in my whole life. My assistant came knocking on my door in a panic, which sent me in my freak-out.

“Ms. South, are you okay?” Tammy called out to me.

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Grab the gym bag in my closet and um”—I swallowed my saliva that had gathered—“place it at