Tell Me No Lies

by Nikki- Michelle

Genres: African American; African American Urban; African American Women's Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Chyanne Johnson has finally gotten her act together. She's found a man to call her own and is raising a son. After all of the drama that ensued behind finding out that Aric McHale, former boss, lover, and father to her son, was married, Chyanne finally has it made in the shade...or so she thinks. Stephanie, Aric's ex-wife, may have been found guilty of attempted murder, but she hasn't been sentenced yet and is still free to walk to streets. Gabriel, Aric's best friend, is trying to deal with the fall out behind Stephanie's conviction. He has to deal with issues surrounding his mother and father's secret relationship as well as keep a secret from Aric that could ruin their friendship. Aric thought he didn't want to be with Chyanne until she saw how happy she was with Jamie. Now, he's rethinking his decision to leave her alone and when it comes to Chyanne, what Aric wants Aric gets. Jamie has some skeletons of his own that are about to fall out of the closet. With all of the lies that are about to be exposed Jamie and Chyanne's seemingly perfect relationship is about to come unraveled.

Release date: October 1, 2013

Publisher: Recorded Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

“What do you mean, you’re not bringing him home tonight, Aric? I was expecting him.”

“You heard what I said. It’s late. I can drop him off at school in the morning. Makes no sense to bring him to you when I’m closer to my house, anyway.”

I sighed and shook my head. The day had taken a toll on me. I was tired and stressed, and my feet hurt from being on them most of the day at work. I was so exhausted that I kept yawning between every sentence and my eyes had started to water. Holding my cell to my ear with my shoulder, I pulled my black six-inch heels off and plopped down on my bed. Frankly, I was really too drained to argue, especially with Aric. When things didn’t go his way, he could still turn into a real jackass, even though he and I had been on a good track for a while.

“Okay, Aric, but next time would you give me a heads-up?” I asked him.

“Why do I have to give you a heads-up when I’m keeping my son for the night?” he asked.

I could hear the clear agitation in his voice as he asked the question.

“Because it’s just common courtesy, especially if I’m expecting him home.”

I could hear movement in my kitchen and smell the food being cooked downstairs. I stood and began to unbutton my shirt. My head was pounding as the events of the day began to replay in my head. I wasn’t expecting to turn on the TV and basically be labeled a glorified whore and a home wrecker. I was neither of those things, but because I had chosen to continue seeing a married man even after finding out he had a wife, it was my punishment. The media and the blogs were still talking about me, a woman they didn’t even know. There were harsh judgments about me, but it was one of the prices I’d had to pay. I didn’t understand how Stephanie became the victim given all the madness she’d caused.

“Look, aren’t we on the phone right now? I’m telling you right now that he’s staying with me. That’s all the courtesy you’re getting. Now, go to sleep,” Aric said to me.

I sighed. “You don’t have to be rude about it, Aric. I haven’t seen him since I dropped him off for school this morning.”

Taking my earrings off, I yawned again.

“Go to bed, Chyanne. AJ is fine, and he’s in his room, sleeping now. I’m about to go to bed myself, so good night.”

“Tell my baby I love him.”

He didn’t say anything else afterward. He hung up the phone, and I walked into my bathroom. I’d moved since the incident happened at my old place, when Aric’s now ex-wife had tried to kill me and my then unborn son. Jamie and I were still together. Despite the big circus-like spectacle that I’d made of my life, I’d picked up the pieces the best way I knew how. Now I was twenty-seven, and it had taken months of counseling and a lot of love and support from Jamie to get me to where I was. Sometimes I just couldn’t believe all the hell I’d been through with Aric. I sat on my bed in a daze, thinking about it. Let me give you a rundown of things that happened.

In September 2010 I met the man who I thought was the man of my dreams, Aric McHale. Our relationship was shaky from the start and became one that was complicated by a deep sexual attraction. While I didn’t know it in the beginning, I finally learned he was married, and that marriage cost me dearly, almost taking my life and that of my and Aric’s unborn child.

Aric’s secrets went beyond his having a wife to his having slept with my best friend, April. The people in my life all had their own ties to Aric, and they seemed to side against me. Even my friend Gabe, Aric’s best friend and another man I was strongly attracted to, turned out to be Aric’s wife’s brother. The only person I could depend on was a man who kept taking me back into his life no matter how many times I chose to return to Aric. Jamie was the one constant in the chaos that had become my life, and I had finally realized that he was the person I wanted to be with.

Jamie and I had moved to the Lake Spivey area in the Hidden Lakes community of Metro Atlanta. It was very different from where I’d once lived. First off, it was a posh neighborhood. We’d moved into a house so big, I initially got lost a couple of times looking for the bathroom. The house was beautiful. It sat on a lake and had a boat dock in the back. It was a gorgeous Mediterranean estate with a private backyard and landscaping that took your breath away. Jamie knew how he wanted the yard manicured. I’d found that he was a stickler for getting things done right the first time around, so as not to repeat them. The foyer and the front room played host to nine-foot vaulted ceilings, Italian marble flooring, and hanging chandeliers, which added to the elegance of the house. Tile roofing and the exterior’s stucco and brick finish set the house off and gave it that Mediterranean feel. The whole thing was courtesy of Jamie. Although my business with Shelley was off to great start, I had not reaped enough dividends yet to purchase a house in that price range.

But the thing I found most interesting was the fact that even though we lived in an upscale community, Jamie was still that same Afrocentric guy that I’d met before. He still burned incense. He still painted and played around with his camera from time to time. I guess what I was trying to say was it seemed that money hadn’t changed Jamie. The personality he had when I met him was the same personality he carried over into our relationship. He didn’t boast or brag about the money he had. Just as before, he was humble.

There was a lot about Jamie that I didn’t know before we became an item. I’d known he owned several bookstores, but I had had no idea his bank account could rival those of most top-playing athletes and businessmen. He said it’d come from being smart with his money, investing, and being frugal. I had had no idea he owned more than one home. That loft that he’d invited me to was just one of many. He had an MBA but never gloated about it. Over the course of us being together, we’d learned so much about one another. He was a great father to his twelve-year-old son, Ashton, just as he was a great father figure to AJ.

He’d told me the story of how his son’s mother had intentionally gotten pregnant by him. It was quite interesting. The way Jamie told it was that they had been together since his first year of college. He was a top football prospect, and several colleges were vying for him. He accepted a full-ride scholarship to the University of Georgia and was set to go to the NFL, until he abruptly changed his mind. He didn’t tell anyone of his decision not to join the NFL until he was certain about what he wanted to do.

The reason he changed his mind was that she had come to him weeks before and had told him she was pregnant. She was banking on him going to the NFL. She told him she’d been on birth control, and they were still using condoms. She lied about the birth control, and she had been poking holes in his stash of condoms, finally getting pregnant like she had wanted. Well, little did she know that her decision to get pregnant helped him turn down offers from several NFL teams. He chose in the end to stay home so he could be a major part of his child’s life. I respected him for that.

Funny thing about it all was that she came right out and told him what she had done after finding out that he had turned down the opportunity to be in the NFL draft. She was pissed. She had wanted all the glitz and glam that was sure to come with all the money Jamie would have earned in the NFL. He was the best wide receiver UGA had to offer, and his stats proved it. He and I laughed about it when he told me of her deceit. He broke up with her the same day, but they remained friends for the sake of his son. Now what I hadn’t expected was for her to be a white woman. Imagine my shock when she dropped Ashton off and in came a biracial child who was the spitting image of Jamie. I couldn’t hide my surprise and didn’t try to. I was sure the look on my face spoke volumes.

She was a blond-haired white girl with the body and attitude of a black woman. She and I remained cordial. I had no qualms about her, even after I heard her ask Jamie what he wanted with a woman like me when he could have his pick of any other woman. I would have come out and told her a thing or two about herself, except Jamie put her in her place rather nicely. He told her I was more of a woman than she could ever hope to be and that was why he loved me and needed me more than his next breath. I smiled. That was why I loved the man. I still remembered the day we agreed to give our relationship a go. I’d finally gotten over my Aric kick, and the rest was history, as the saying goes. Jamie had been there for me more than anyone had ever been.

Looking around the bathroom, I sighed and stretched, then smiled at the note Jamie had left for me. He’d always leave me little notes to remind me how much he loved me. As usual, his note was short and sweet.

I put the note down with that same smile plastered on my face and went to turn on the water in the whirlpool bath. The bathroom itself was a massive space, almost as big as the master bedroom itself. There were amber glass vessel sinks that sat atop a Chinese-inspired custom vanity and cork tile flooring. The oversize shower was big enough for me, Jamie, and four more adults to fit in comfortably, and it also functioned as a steam shower and had a sound system. Yes, when I showered, I could press a button on the wall, and the sweet, soft, and serene sounds of nature would pour through. A subtle waterfall wall was at the foot of a state-of-the-art tub, which included a chromatherapy option.

After taking the rest of my clothes off and tossing them aside, I poured bath beads into my water along with honeysuckle bubble bath, then stepped inside to let the jets massage my tense muscles. As I lay there, I thought about my and Jamie’s relationship. When he and I first got together, I was still in love with Aric. There was no need to sugarcoat it. I’d never let Jamie know that, because I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him. The man loved me and had taught me so much about myself over the course of our relationship. Most importantly, he had taught me how to love me, both mentally and physically.

At the beginning of our relationship so much guilt consumed me that oftentimes I couldn’t even look Aric straight in the face. I’d felt to do so would betray Jamie in another way, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. After that few months of Jamie and me being together, I’d grown enough to let my love for Aric filter away, and I began to love Jamie the way he deserved to be loved. And, I must say, our relationship gave me all I needed and then some. I couldn’t complain about a thing. Not to say that it was perfect, because we’d had our arguments and fights. There were some things that I’d noticed that sometimes gave me pause, like his abrupt change in mood and the way he would sometimes get easily agitated. But Jamie knew how to talk to me to make me calm down enough so we could work through our differences and move on. We never went to bed mad, and our sex life was the stuff that I could only read about.

I wasn’t sure what made me let go of the fantasy of Aric and me getting back together. Well, being together at all, since technically we were never together to begin with. I had to always remind myself that Aric had never given us a title. But, yeah, I let go of that whole fantasy of him coming back for me. It could have been the fact that he’d stuck to his guns and left me alone, or it could have been the fact that I went to pick up AJ once and another woman was sitting in his home.

Yes, it shocked the devil out of me, because I was not expecting it. There had not been any other women until he found out Jamie and I were serious. I felt like he’d done that only to get under my skin. He didn’t seem to care one way or the other. He allowed me to come in and introduced me to her as the mother of his son. I remember standing there, looking and feeling so foolish that I simply rolled my eyes and walked upstairs to get my son. Aric just stood in the doorway of AJ’s room, watching. There I was, still holding on to him, when it was clear he wasn’t holding on to me. He leaned against the doorpost with his legs crossed at the ankles while I picked AJ up and walked back past him. I’d never forget his look. It was something akin to a smirk, a sneer, and an outright scowl, and I had no idea why.

I jumped away from my thoughts when I heard Jamie knock on the bathroom door. Another thing I loved about him was he always respected my privacy.

“Come in,” I said as I sat up and looked toward the door.

To say my smile didn’t instantly brighten when he casually strolled in, looking like a black God, would mean I was lying. The drawstring linen pants hung low on his waist, showing off the perfect V cut, which I loved to kiss around just before performing oral sex on him. His abs sat perfectly and matched the cut and ripples of his chest. His mocha-hued skin had a natural glow and called out to be kissed. Jamie’s locks had grown and now hung below his shoulder blades, and he’d gotten thicker muscle-wise. Those perfect white teeth shone at me when he smiled. In his hands were glasses of wine. He sat down on the side of the tub, then leaned in to kiss me.

“Hello, beautiful,” he greeted afterward.

“Hey, baby.” My smile was a megawatt one.

I took the glass of wine when he held it out to me, and sipped a little before handing it back to him.

“How’d your day go?” he asked after placing both glasses beside the tub.

I frowned and shook my head. “Awful. Got a big client today, and he was a handful. Then I had to sit there and watch Stephanie with this smirk on her face the whole time she was doing the interview on CNN.”

“I thought we agreed you would stop watching the news until after she was sentenced?”

I shook my head with a frown. “I know, but it was like she got some kind of sick, twisted pleasure from seeing her attorney assault me verbally.”

He rubbed some wet hair from my face and looked at me. “That’s what he is paid to do, baby. He’s trying to get his client no jail time by any means necessary.”

“You could be right, but it was just something I wasn’t prepared to endure today.”

“Baby, we talked about this, remember?” he asked me while his hands caressed the back of my head.

Jamie’s voice was so smooth and calming. His baritone was dulcet. Sometimes just hearing it made me putty in his hands, and his attentiveness was a drug.

I nodded. “I know. I know.” I sighed. “It’s just frustrating, is all.”

“I know, but remember we said we would take it one day at a time. And you have me right here in your corner every step of the way. You don’t have to suffer through this alone.”

I smiled up at him and laid my head on his lap. He’d always known just the right things to say to lift my spirits. After a few more minutes of idle talk, I let the water out of the tub before we both moved to the shower together. I was up around his waist as the water washed over us. Jamie made me feel like I was a size two when I was twelve. I had lost a few pounds over the last year, had gone from a size sixteen to a size twelve over a period of months. With Jamie’s help in the gym, and a lot of stress, it hadn’t been that hard. The whole thing with Stephanie had taken its toll on me, mind, body, and spirit. I swear, if I hadn’t had Jamie in my corner, I probably would have ended up in the nuthouse. He was against me losing weight. If it had been left up to him, I’d still be a healthy size sixteen. I had no complaints about my old size, but I couldn’t say I didn’t like the way my clothes had started to fit and look on me.

I found my back against the wall, with his head between my thick thighs. It had become clear that Jamie had a fetish for performing oral sex on the female persuasion, and I got to enjoy it almost every night. I never got tired of it. There was something about the way he took the time to part my yoni lips with his tongue and lick between the folds that got to me. The way he would then use his tongue to penetrate me always sent me right over the edge, not to mention the way he French-kissed my pearl. I called him a pussy connoisseur, because that was what he was.

“How’re you feeling about the stuff you’re seeing on the news, Pop?” I asked my father as we sat outside on his patio.

My father reminded me of an old-school gangster at times. He was always dressed to the nines, casket sharp, as he’d once joked. His feet were never adorned in anything less than Italian leather or something niftier. Everything he wore was tailor made to fit his lofty, muscled physique. His look was an illustrious one, and if it wasn’t the best, he didn’t want it. That included women. He’d been flying back and forth to Atlanta from Nassau since Stephanie’s trial had started. I had to hand it to him; he was going to be there for her no matter what. I guess as her father, he was supposed to. He’d gone through a lot since that incident with Stephanie as well. Being that he was an ex-chief of police, his reputation had been called into question, which put a strain on him.

My relationship with my pops was a pretty cool one. We had had our fights, especially since the mess with Stephanie. My pops had a way with words, just like his children did, but I loved the man plain and simple, although I’d never quite understood the relationship between him, my mother, and Stephanie’s mom. I knew the story behind it, yes. Did I understand the method to their madness? No. My father was a man who believed he should be able to have whatever he wanted. He’d struck out with my mother in the beginning.

They’d met when my mom was seventeen. He’d been the new cat in town. Being that his family came from old-world money—the slave masters had left money to my father’s great-grandparents—it was easy to see why he’d caught a lot of women’s eyes. Not to mention, my pops wasn’t a bad-looking dude. He was twenty-two at the time, so my mom said that the age difference was one thing that made her kind of stay away from him. She’d liked him from the moment he stepped out of his 1974 Charger and walked into her father’s store. My dad and his family had moved to Jonesboro, Georgia, for political reasons: my grandfather had been running for Congress.

Pops said he was taken with my mom as soon as he saw her behind the counter, but my mom said she quickly lost interest in my father after her best friend started to like him. My mom and Stephanie’s mom, Cecilia, were best friends until my dad stepped into the picture. According to my mother, Cecilia had known she had a crush on my father, because my mom had told her. That didn’t stop Cecilia from going after him, anyway, and that was when the drama ensued. The thing that confused me the most out of all of this was the fact that my father claimed he was taken with my mother as well.

So how did he end up married to Cecilia? Since my mother was no longer paying him any attention, he went with what was right in his face. And that was how it pretty much went, until a year later, when my mom lost both her parents all in one month. She had nobody after that. She was eighteen and was in her first year of college when they both died within weeks of each other. First, my grandmother died silently in her sleep. My mom had always told me that she believe her father died of a broken heart, because a couple of weeks later he too passed on while he slept.

My mom’s parents were never really close to their families, since neither family approved of one dating the other. My grandmother was a black woman with Choctaw blood, and my grandfather was white mixed with Cherokee. My grandparents had caused all kinds of fuss within their families when they started dating, but according to my mom, they loved each other regardless. After their passing, my mom was left all alone. That was when my father found his opening. Cecilia and my mom were still friends up until that point. Then, on the day of my grandfather’s funeral, when no one else was there for my mom, my father was. One thing led to another, as they say, and I was created. The story just goes downhill from there, depending on how you look at it.

“I’m feeling like I wish they would find something else to talk about, but you know how this goes, son. This shit won’t be over till it’s over.”

I slid him another glass of liquor as the grill smoked and put the smell of barbecue in the air. I’d driven to his house out in Duluth. We’d been sitting out on his patio, enjoying the view and small talk. His yard was a massive landscape and went on for miles. There was even a nature trail, which he sometimes jogged along just to keep in shape. Just beyond the wrought-iron gates was a golf course, which most of the men in the neighborhood frequented. The backdrop was a perfect picture of fall, with brown, red, and orange leaves billowing in the wind. It was pretty warm for February. The weather had been crazy. It seemed as if it had gone from fall right into spring, skipping winter altogether.

“How’s Cecilia handling it?”

“Do you see her out here? She’s staying as far away as possible. She’s even blaming me, saying I should have forced Aric to make Chyanne have an abortion.”

My father sighed and took a sip of the rum and Coke he had been nursing. I watched the way his graying locks swayed as he shook his head. The stress of it all was getting to him.

“Pop, you couldn’t have made Aric do anything. You already know that, and who knows what would have happened if you had tried to force him?”

“I know, son. I know, but she’s been going at me hard these last few months. I don’t know what’s gotten into her.”

I had to chuckle and take a swallow of my Corona before looking back at my father. “Pop, Cecilia has always been that way. What do you mean, you don’t know what’s gotten into her?” I chuckled again, shaking my head.

His eyes locked on mine, and I couldn’t read his face. “I know my wife, Gabe. What y’all see sometimes isn’t what I see.”

I wanted to say something to counter what he’d said, but I didn’t want to be disrespectful to my father. “Okay.”

We were both quiet after that. He and I had had plenty of disagreements when it came to him, my sister, and her mother.

“How’s Dixie?” he asked after a while.

“I don’t know, Dad. Why don’t you call her and find out?”

He cut his eyes at me and asked again, “How’s your mom, son?”

I got up and walked to the grill. “She’s fine. She sprained her ankle while she was training for this marathon she wants to run. Other than that, she’s okay,” I said, flipping the chicken and ribs.

“She still over there in Fayetteville?”

I gave an amused chuckle and turned to my father. “Pops, I know you know that she’s still living in the same place she’s been for the last five years.”

All he did was grunt and look away. My mom had finally moved back to Georgia five years ago, because she’d missed home. My father would never come right out and say he still loved my mother, but I knew he did. He would put on a front for me, like I didn’t know about the nights he’d gone to see my mother after I’d gone off to college. Even when he’d moved us to New York, he’d still fly out to be with her. I’d known because she told me. My mom had always been honest with me about everything. Not to mention the nights when I was a teenager and I would wake up to the sound of his voice as he sweet-talked my mother right out of her clothes. I wouldn’t mention those mornings when I would wake up and we would all eat breakfast together and pretend we were a family, if only for that short period of time. Then he would have to get back to the real world.

“She still seeing that pastor?” he asked.

“No, she isn’t. She was technically never seeing him in the first place. They were friends.”

“A man isn’t just friends with a woman that looks like your mother, son. Don’t fall for that.”

“Pop, Mom isn’t and wasn’t into Pastor Robinson like that.”

“She may not have been, but he sure as hell was into her.”

“How do you know?”

He finally looked back over at me before he stood and polished off his drink. “I may have had a talk or two with the man.”

“Really?” I asked, tickled, because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Shut up, boy. Don’t make fun of your father.”

“Why don’t you just—”

“Have you spoken with Aric about the case lately?” he asked, cutting me off. “How’s he taking it?”

I shook my head and decided to let it go for the moment. “He’s holding on to the little sanity he had pretty well. He’s just trying to shelter his son and keep it from breaking Chyanne.”

I tried not to mention Aric’s name in front of my father unless he did first. He and Aric had been on bad terms, as expected. My father had even been pissed at me for remaining friends with Aric, but Pops had been on the outside, looking in. I knew the whole story since I’d been there from the beginning. Aric and I had been down the road of fighting about him putting his hands on Stephanie. The first time he found out that she’d cheated on him, Stephanie had come running to me. As a man, with her being my sister, best friend or not, he had to be handled. That was the first time Aric and I had fought. I was no punk, and neither was Aric, so it ended only when we were pulled apart.

I’d been trying to defend my sister’s honor regardless of all the shit she’d put me through, but what she did afterward fucked me up. She attacked me, came at me, screaming and yelling about fighting with Aric. I didn’t understand that shit. There I was, bruised and bleeding because she’d had me believe that she was in danger from a man I considered my friend. I’d been the one who was almost arrested, and were it not for Aric stepping in, I would have been. From that moment on, I never stepped into their relationship again. I’d say a few words to Aric now and again just to make sure he kept his head on straight, but that was as far as I’d go.

My father nodded and moved over to the smoker, which was built like a fireplace chimney, to check on his homemade barbecue sauce.

“Is he still messing with that girl?”

“Nah. She’s moved on. She’s in another relationship and all.”

He grunted and shook his head after closing the lid to the pot and turned to me. “So all that shit and they aren’t even together? Was it worth it. . .