He rubbed his hand over his head. “I really didn’t know how bad I’d messed up until I lost you and realized I’d lost my heartbeat.”
He turned to look at me. “How can a man survive without his heartbeat?”
His gaze searched mine, looking for an answer to his question.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” My words were low.
“He can’t, J…he can’t.”
“What about now? What about your parents and Chloe?”
It took him a little while to answer that. “You know, I was raised to follow a certain pattern. It seems like my whole life has been about me trying to rebel against it. When I was a kid my parents couldn’t handle me, so they brought in Albert to do their dirty work for them. I didn’t feel free till I went to the military. There, I felt like I could be me, like I could release all the frustration and the anger that’s been building up in me.”
“What were you angry about?”
He shook his head. “I was angry because I was moving in a direction I didn’t want to go, and no matter how I bucked and protested against it on the inside, my body continued to go in that direction. But something happened when I met you. For the first time, I saw a different way and I wanted it…I wanted it so bad I could barely think about anything else. You became the light at the end of the tunnel.”
He paused for a moment. “I told my parents and Chloe the night of my party that I couldn’t marry her. I called it off. And it felt great. For the first time I strayed away from the path that had been set out before me and it felt great.”
I wanted to tell him about what his mother had done in the beginning when she found out I was pregnant and the afternoon of his party, but for some reason, I held my tongue. She was evil, but maybe she was just trying to do the best thing for her son. I mean, should Jo decide to run for office, I’m not really first lady material. I could be the reason America would never accept him.
Maybe that’s why his parents were so set on him marrying Chloe. She was definitely first lady material. It was clear she was mixed raced. She didn’t have natural hair like me; she had long processed hair, not a curl in sight. And she didn’t favor the loud bright colors I did. She was definitely a black and navy-blue suit kind of gal.
“Did they choose her because she would make a good first lady?”
He chuckled. “Hell no. They chose her because she’s Jeff’s daughter.”
“Who is Jeff?”
“The head of Macon Technologies. The man whose money put my father in office. Jeff is the puppet master, that’s who he is.” He paused for a moment.
“He’s also the man that’s going to try and put me in office. The man whose noose is around my father’s neck and soon will try and be around mine, if I allow it.”
As a woman in a man’s life, you must be careful what you say to him. Your words can impact him to be great or to be a failure. My mother said that no matter how angry she got at my father she never said words that degraded him, because life had degraded him enough. The job he’s forced to work to get paid less than he deserves.
When he walks out the front door he’s faced with the knowledge that depending on the whelm of the authority of this land, this could be his last day alive or able to support his family that depended on him to be the lead and the head.
She said the Heavenly Father has given her a super power. She had the power to build him up and the power to break him down.
So, here I sat while my man, the man that so many wanted to one day become president of these United States, spoke to me of the agony of his life. What was I to do? A simple word from me would encourage him to continue on the path that is causing him anger and rage. And a simple word from me could help him choose the path that leads to his freedom…
“If this path that has been chosen for you upsets you so, why do you continue to walk it? It seems to me that you have been chosen to help people. Maybe the way in which you always assumed this mission would be accomplished is not the way the Heavenly Father prepared for you.”
He turned to look at me then. He didn’t speak, he just studied me, taking in my words and digesting them. See what I mean?
“Sometimes we do a disservice to ourselves when we try and buck against his will.” I chuckled. “My mama calls it the vanity of man. She says it’s completely vain of us to assume we have our whole lives figured out when there is one that sits high and looks low.”
I took his hand that rested on the seat next to me.
“It’s okay Jo, you’re going to know soon enough which path you should choose. And I have all the confidence in the world that when you find your path, you’re going to make a difference in a lot of folks’ lives, including me and Ayana’s. But no matter what you choose, we got your back, bro.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sweet Surrender
“There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is
