Deceptive Love

by Ashley B.

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

When you find yourself captivated by someone genuine, love can become a whirlwind.

Legacy is young, intelligent, and possesses a figure that drives men wild. Having faced many challenges in her life, she struggles with commitment—until she crosses paths with Skrilla. Loving a street guy isn’t simple, especially one who leads a risky lifestyle.

Join Legacy and Skrilla on their journey to discover what truly happens when you’re enamored with someone real.

Release date: November 25, 2025

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Legacy

I am Legacy Hayes. A star I was born, and a star I will always be. That is what my grandmother used to tell me. When I was little, I was always profiled as the good girl. Being the good girl had so much pressure to it. You can’t smoke, and you can’t drink. Staying out late is prohibited, and going to clubs is out of line. I couldn’t hold the weight of being a good girl because of my low self-esteem and my unhappiness that I carried deep inside.

At the age of 13, I was having sex, and by the age of 15, I was fighting and running the streets. I got pregnant with my first child at the age of 16. Little did I know, my deep love for my daughter wasn’t going to be enough to help keep her with me. Staying with other people can be hectic, and staying with your parents can sometimes be worse than staying with a stranger you barely know. Because of that, I lost my child to the system.

At first, when social services was called, I was given an African American social worker. She told me that she would do everything in her power to help me keep my baby, like job searching and getting me into a program that would take my daughter and me in, because living with my mother wasn’t suitable enough. You see, my mother argued a lot about everything, because she was either high or drunk. And when I had my daughter, our next-door neighbors knew I had a newborn child, so they called the police to our house, and they claimed my baby might have been in danger.

Maybe they were right. There was nothing in this world that was worse than picking up crack pipes lying around the house or beer bottles that were halfway empty with cigarette butts inside of them. I was dealing with a mother who was a drug addict, a drunk, and who spent her money on ridiculous shit. After I had my daughter, I craved change because there was nothing that I wanted to do more than be the kind of mother my daughter needed me to be. The kind of mother my own mother wasn’t.

I blamed my mother for that for so many years, and so did a lot of other people. I felt like she could have been a better mother and not fuss and fight with me all the time, knowing that I had a newborn child in her home. Other people blamed her because she was the type of person who didn’t allow other people to get in the middle of situations that were going on between her and her children. I simply thought that was wrong because there comes a time when other people need to interfere for the sake of the child when it comes to a certain kind of parent. She always got mad when I called her out on her shit, always got angry when I tried to help her get her shit together. By the time I had my daughter, it had been years of me seeing my mother like that. She thought I was stupid, but I knew what a crackhead looked like before I saw a damn pipe. We came from the hood, and crackheads were all over the projects. Her drugs were the reason I ran away at such a young age. Her drugs and behavior are the very reasons my life has been fucked up the way it has been.

Everything spiraled downhill within a blink of an eye, and although I was hurt beyond measure, I was focused on getting my daughter back. I was showing up to all my visitation dates to see my baby girl, London. I shed so many tears that, each time I left visitation, my eyes were damn near swollen. My baby cried for me every time I left her, and there was nothing I could do. That’s a hurtful feeling, you know, to have the only good thing in your life, the only person who depends on you and who you depend on for unconditional love, ripped right out of your arms and living with someone else. To see London cry like that, every time I had to hand her over to strangers when my few hours of visitation time was up. To walk out of that same building that I had to be at every Tuesday and Thursday and see her stare at me and cry as she was placed in the car seat of a social worker’s car.

I did a lot of job searching, catching the city bus every day, trying to find a job. I can’t even count how much money I spent doing applications for two-bedroom apartments so my baby girl would have a suitable place to come home to. The moment my social worker was changed from an African American woman to a Caucasian woman wasn’t nearly the problem. The problem was that the Caucasian social worker seemed pretty suspect, having me sign documentation that I was too young to understand. My daughter had been staying with my aunt, and the moment I signed that unfamiliar documentation, that social worker went over to my aunt’s home and took my daughter away from her as my aunt cried, begging her not to.

To make matters worse, there was a family, a Caucasian woman and an African American male, who were in court trying to adopt my daughter a week after that. I fought and cried on that stand to get custody of my daughter, and the last thing I remember the judge saying was, “Well, you stayed in trouble years ago and were in and out of juvenile. I think this is no different. Besides, you can always have more children.”

Those words made my heart stop because I was being judged by things I had done years prior, and when I walked out of the courtroom, I overheard the Caucasian social worker telling the parents who were trying to adopt my daughter that it would be over soon. I did everything I was told to do. I looked for a job, I completed counseling, I went to parenting classes, I was hired at the Waffle House and was working, and I moved out of my mother’s house and in with a friend, who had extra space, until I found my own place. I even stayed away from my aunt’s home because they told me that my daughter could be there as long as I didn’t go over there until the court process was over with.

Somehow, I can’t seem to get that out of my head. That day replays in my head before I go to bed at night and when I awake each morning. I was lied to by a social worker, and nothing was ever done about it. She went to the courts and tried to help the foster family instead of me. I later found out that the foster mother, who fought so hard to get my baby, couldn’t have children of her own. The foster father was a loan officer at a bank and made really good money. I started wondering if they paid the social worker off to help the case go in their favor. I was only 17 years old, and I lost my first child in the most fucked-up way.

After that, I stopped giving a fuck about everything. I wasn’t always that way. Coming from a broken home, having the kind of mother I had and a father in prison, was a lot for a teenager to endure. My grandmother passed away while I was young, and that had a major impact on my life. She was the only good thing in my life. She made me happy, and because I left home, I wasn’t even able to make it to her funeral. My mother not only did drugs, but she sold them for a living as well.

My father, Yankee, was a big-time drug dealer, and everyone knew him on the streets. People were often afraid to fuck with me when they found out who my father was. He was doing life in prison, and I just knew I would never see him again. You would think I would get a simple phone call from him, but that didn’t happen either. I guess that’s how I turned out to be who I am, doing the things I do. I didn’t know what love was or how to be loved by a man. I had no moral support system. When I was younger, my mother had a major effect on the people around me. Nobody wanted to take me in because they were too afraid that my mother would show up on their doorstep, trying to fight them.

It was no different when I had my daughter, so for that reason alone, I hated the fact that she was even my mother. My life had played out like a ripple effect. My mother was the main reason everything in my life had gone wrong, why people didn’t want to be around me, and why I had lost my child. She was why the judge judged me about my past because, if it weren’t for her, I would have never run away or been rebellious in the first place.

After I lost my daughter, I stayed in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was living pretty much from hotel to hotel by the age of 17. It was better than staying with my mother, and although I blamed her for the events that had occurred, she was still my mother, so I respected her, and I visited from time to time. I grew out of being insecure and having low self-esteem, and I started looking at myself in the mirror. I realized that I was beyond beautiful, so that began to get to my head a little.

I had a body that was shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle, with a caramel brown complexion and some catty eyes that were slanted. I stood at five seven and was able to get whatever I wanted with my looks, my shape, and a fake identification card. The men who checked me into hotels didn’t even look at the face on my identification card because they were too busy staring at my ass in the short-ass shorts that I wore with my ass cheeks sticking out.

“Yes, I need a room.” I handed the front desk associate the fake identification card. My beautiful C-cup breasts were always a distraction, so I made sure to wear the proper clothing that would show my breasts and the rest of my body.

I hung out with a few girls, but I was so conceited that I didn’t think any of them had shit on me. But these girls were my bitches, and I did everything with them. Well, I had a line of niggas I was fucking with, and none of them were anything I would get serious with. Everything that I was doing was to feel numb. I didn’t want to feel the pain anymore. I had lost all hope of getting my daughter back.

This day was different because I met the most handsome, butter pecan brown-skinned man a woman could view. I was a fool for men from Atlanta, Georgia, because I loved their slang that was often very impossible to imitate.

I knocked twice and stepped back, tugging at the hem of my shirt. The scent of Waffle House still clung to me—bacon grease and burnt coffee—so I popped the travel-sized perfume from my bag and sprayed my collar before he could answer the door.

It swung open. Vonne leaned against the frame, shirtless, cornrows fresh, a lazy grin spreading across his face.

“’Bout time,” he said, eyes dropping to the plastic bag in my hand.

“I brought clothes this time,” I said, brushing past him. “Not tryin’ to smell like hash browns all night.”

He laughed, low and soft, and followed me inside. The apartment always smelled like lemon cleaner and his cologne. My body relaxed before I could stop it.

“You work hard,” he said, watching me pull out my body oil and small makeup bag. “Still show up like this.”

I rolled my eyes, unscrewing the lid and smoothing oil over my arms. “Can’t have you seein’ me crusty. I got standards.”

“You always look good,” he muttered, then reached for his phone on the couch. “Look—she came up in my memories today.”

He tapped the screen, and London’s face lit up—chubby cheeks, her big brown eyes wide and curious.

I stopped mid-swipe, oil slick on my fingers. “That’s my favorite one.”

“I know,” he said, and tilted the phone toward me so we could stare together.

Silence settled, thick but gentle. I sank into the cushion beside him, pressing my cheek to his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around me, pulled me in without saying a word.

“She still looks like you,” he said.

“She is me,” I whispered. My throat tightened. “Every piece.”

Vonne kissed the top of my head. “We gon’ get her back. You know that, right?”

I nodded into his chest, tears slipping free without warning. His thumb brushed one away. I didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

“Me, you, and London,” he said softly. “That’s the goal. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Later, when I stood in the bathroom reapplying my lip gloss, I caught my own reflection and smiled—barely. Not because I was healed, but because for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t trying to feel numb.

I was trying to feel something.

I knocked three times.

I stood there, trying to look sexy, while waiting for someone to answer the door. I wore some tight blue jeans, with a half shirt, and some sandals to show off my pretty toes, which I kept done. My hair was cut short, and I had my belly and tongue pierced.

“Hey, you can come on in. Vonne is in the shower,” his roommate said as he stood in the doorway. I stood there, chewing some bubble gum so my breath wouldn’t reek of cigarette smoke. I had smoked as soon as I got off the bus, and Vonne didn’t smoke cigarettes.

“Okay. I will go in his room and surprise him when he gets out.” I walked right past his roommate, letting him know that I had accepted his invitation to come inside.

One of the things that I hated about the situation was that he had roommates. I was picky in so many ways, and I preferred my niggas with their own everything. But if they had a good heart and were about something, I was willing to make an exception. Besides the fact that he did share an apartment with two other men, he had a really good job working for Merita Bakery, and I was willing to work with that. I couldn’t knock a man for trying, regardless of his line of work and hustle.

I stepped foot into his small bedroom and took off all my clothes as I heard the water from the shower stop and saw the steam coming from the bathroom door. I lay there on his small bed with my matching blue panties and bra on. The bathroom door slowly opened, and he jumped because he wasn’t expecting me. He stood there with only a white towel wrapped around his wet body as I opened my legs, giving him a sexy invitation to come closer.

“Damn, baby, you scared me. I didn’t know you were coming. How did you get in?” Vonne asked as he looked at me while he took the towel off his waist to dry the rest of his body.

“Your roommate let me in, and plus, I wanted to surprise you,” I said while putting my legs high in the sky.

“Damn, baby. You look good, and you smell good as hell. What’s that fragrance you’re wearing?” He approached my sexy body, and he sniffed me and kissed me like he was ready to lick off every bit of the fragrance I was wearing.

“It’s body oil called Sex on the Beach.” That was one of my favorites. I always loved to buy those oils out of the beauty supply store, along with the lip gloss. The oils were $5 per bottle but always had me smelling like a million bucks.

He pulled out his dick, and although it was small, I worked with it as much as I could. The way he ate my pussy was something else though. He had my legs quivering, and he sucked every ounce of the Sex on the Beach body oil fragrance off my body as well. By the time we were finished, all he wanted to do was cuddle and hold me close. He loved to speak about his dreams for the future, and I loved that about him as well.

“One day, I want to move you back to Georgia and have some babies after we get London back.” He looked me directly in my eyes, indicating that he was very serious about a future with me.

“Damn, but what will we do there? I mean, it sounds like a good idea, just being able to start over somewhere else, period. It is a great idea.” I tried not to stare back into his eyes. I was still in the stage of trying to hold back a little. I really liked Vonne, but I wasn’t in love with him yet. The fact that I could tell him everything was definitely a plus, but I still wasn’t sure if he was the one for me.

“I guess I could transfer with my job or possibly take a manager’s position at KFC or something.” Vonne shared his dreams with me, and his dreams weren’t what I expected. I had hoped he wanted a little more out of life than what he did. I had never heard of anyone wanting to settle for a job at a fast-food restaurant, or any restaurant, period. Hell, I was tired of working for the Waffle House, but I had to make some kind of legitimate money.

“You don’t want much, and it can happen as long as I know you will love me and protect me always.” I hugged him and gave him a kiss. Although his dreams weren’t the dreams that made someone rich, I ultimately wanted someone who could make me feel secure and safe. I would never settle and have children with someone who wasn’t willing to put his life on the line for his family. Most of all, I needed the man I chose to spend forever with me and to always put me first.

We lay there for a little while longer, and then we got up and got dressed. We had to go our separate ways but not before he treated me to some Baskin-Robbins ice cream.

Our relationship was perfect for some time. We spent our time doing the usual things that couples engaged in, like going out to eat together, going to the movies, or simply just ordering movies from Netflix at home. He moved from that small apartment into a big house in a middle-class neighborhood—with his roommates, of course. After that, things turned left right before our eyes because his roommates always threw big-ass parties, and they acted as if they didn’t want me to come over that much anymore.

One day, I was lying in his bed because I had spent the night, and I was off work for a few days. I wanted to spend those days with him because it wasn’t often that we were given the same days off work. His roommate came bursting in the door, without knocking, and was blatantly disrespectful, having outbursts like a 5-year-old child having a tantrum.

“You’ve got to get the fuck out of here!” His roommate was obviously angry, but I didn’t know why, so I looked at him with a look of confusion at first.

“Yo, chill out. Who are you talking about?” Vonne stood up as if he was trying to calm down his so-called friend.

“I’m talking about your bitch. She’s got to go.” His roommate stared at me while pointing his fingers in my direction.

“Who the fuck are you calling a bitch?” I got up because it was nothing for me to swing on a man. I was gangsta, and I was about to show him what the fuck I was made of.

“I’m talking to your ass!” he stated. He stood in the doorway of the room and continued to be disrespectful.

“I’m calling my mom, and then I’m leaving.” I pulled out my phone to call my mother to come an. . .