The whole way to the store Albert gushed over how proud he was of Jo for finally getting his ring on my finger. I smiled and nodded, but my mind was a hundred miles away. If I was pregnant, would Jo be so angry that he’ll change his mind about wanting to marry me?
If he did get that angry, would I still want to marry him? Children are beautiful and a blessing from the Most High. If he didn’t want this baby, then he didn’t want me. I buried my hands in my face.
I can’t believe how quickly my ultimate happiness shifted, not to say that if I’m pregnant I wouldn’t be happy. It’s the anxiety of worrying about what Jo will think that was eating me up.
Damn it, Journey, calm down, you don’t even know if you’re pregnant yet!
“Everything alright, little lady?” Albert asked looking back at me through the rearview mirror as he pulled into the drug store parking lot.
I nodded smiling at him, although I didn’t feel like it. “Yeah, just a little tired, we had a long night.”
He chuckled, “I bet you did.”
As he took Ayana’s car seat out the car and sat it in a cart, I bit my lip trying to think of the best way to tell him I needed to go into the store alone. But right then his phone rang.
“Did you tell your mom about the engagement?” He asked smiling down at his phone.
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“Okay, I won’t tell her, I’ll save it for you. Go ‘head in, I’ll talk to her out here.”
I exhaled with relief as I took the cart from his hand. “Okay, we’ll be right back out.” He nodded already lost in his conversation with my mom.
Perfect timing, Abby-Cat…
I made quick work in the store, putting unnecessary things in the cart to mask what I’d truly come to buy. I told the store clerk to double bag the pregnancy test. After she did, I still folded it up in the bags and stuffed it down the side of another to make sure it was good and hidden.
She lifted her eyebrow at me, but didn’t say anything about my strange behavior. I was so far gone in my worry I didn’t even care, I just took my receipt and thanked her. Instead of pushing the cart out the store I unclipped Ayana’s car seat and grabbed my two bags.
Albert looked up from where he was leaning against his car talking to my mom and began to approach me when he saw us coming out of the store. However, he hadn’t taken but a few steps towards us before a black Tahoe came to a screeching stop between us.
It was the look on Albert’s face that alerted me to the fact that something was terribly wrong. The next few seconds would feel like a life time.
My hearing magnified. I could hear my breath flowing threw my lungs, and the blinking of my eyes that too seemed to slow down.
This is the moment I learned that Albert was not who I thought he was. In the blink of an eye, he tossed his phone through his car window and in the same motion, pulled a gun from somewhere in back of him.
When I blinked again, the windows of the truck had let down and a scream froze in my throat when I saw the barrel of a gun pointed at me. I could remember thinking before the first shot was fired that the eyes of the man holding the gun did not match the way he was dressed.
He dressed like one of the brothas from the hood, but his eyes were missing the hunger. They were missing all evidence of coming from the gutta. It’s strange how observant one gets in the moment they are faced with death.
The blast from the gun brought my thoughts to a halt. I jerked when I felt the impact in my chest. Looking down, my eyes widened with shock as blood began to soak through my shirt just above my breast.
Ayana’s wails filled my ears.
I blinked and looked up just in time to see Albert slide across the hood of the truck and fire two shots, both shots finding their mark in the head of the driver and in the head of the man who had just shot me.
Damn! Albert is bad a**!
He reached me just as my knees gave out, picking me up in one arm and grabbing the car seat with the other.
“Hold on, little lady, I’m going to get you to the hospital. It’s okay, baby girl!” He told Ayana, who was now screaming her lungs out.
“Pa-pa Al is here and I’m going to keep you safe.”
I smiled. Was he actually trying to comfort the baby in the midst of all this?
As he quickly carried us to the car, I fought the blackness that tried to claim me. I had been shot in my chest, but I didn’t feel any pain. I wondered if this is one last mercy God grants the dying.
Painlessness…
Another Tahoe pulled into the lot just as Albert got Ayana and I in the backseat. I screamed when they began to shoot at us too. Albert fired back as he ran around the car and jumped in the driver seat. He threw the car in reverse and stepped on the gas, ramming the vehicle that was shooting at us.
“Stay down!” He yelled at me before slamming the car in drive flooring it out of the lot.
I covered Ayana’s car seat with my body just as the back window exploded in on us from the bullets that were coming through it.
“F*** this!” Pa-pa Al yelled slamming on the brakes.
I
