The boy i left behind, p.1
The Boy I Left Behind, page 1
Also by Garnell Wallace
Curvy Chronicles
Curvy Distraction
Curvy M.D.
Curvy Siren
Destroy Me Trilogy
Save The Pretty
Destroy The Pretty
Destroy The Innocent
Destroy The Guilty
The Climax Chronicles
Shattered Hearts
Wild Surrender
Twisted Temptation
Sweet Submission
Dark Savior
Sinful Solace
Standalone
Body and Soul
My Soul to Take
The Demon's Touch
The Climax Chronicles
Kisses In The Sun
Lullaby Lake
Forever My Demon
The Boy I Left Behind
The Broken-Hearted Girl
Trapped With The Ex-Con
Addicted To Her
Table of Contents
Also By Garnell Wallace
The Boy I Left Behind
Chapter 1 | Zemi
Chapter 2 | Zemi
Chapter 3 | Kofi | One Year Later
Chapter 4 | Kofi
Chapter 5 | Zemi
Chapter 6 | Zemi
Chapter 7 | Kofi
Chapter 8 | Zemi
Chapter 9 | Kofi
Chapter 10 | Zemi
Chapter 11 | Kofi
Chapter 12 | Zemi
Chapter 13 | Zemi
Chapter 14 | Kofi
Chapter 15 | Zemi
Chapter 16 | Zemi
Chapter 17 | Kofi
Chapter 18 | Zemi
Chapter 19 | Zemi
Chapter 20 | Zemi
Four Months Later
Epilogue
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Further Reading: Destroy The Pretty
Also By Garnell Wallace
About the Author
The Boy I Left Behind
A Second Chance Romance
Chapter 1
Zemi
Chapter 2
Zemi
Chapter 3
Kofi
One Year Later
Chapter 4
Kofi
Chapter 5
Zemi
Chapter 6
Zemi
Chapter 7
Kofi
Chapter 8
Zemi
Chapter 9
Kofi
Chapter 10
Zemi
Chapter 11
Kofi
Chapter 12
Zemi
Chapter 13
Zemi
Chapter 14
Kofi
Chapter 15
Zemi
Chapter 16
Zemi
Chapter 17
Kofi
Chapter 18
Zemi
Chapter 19
Zemi
Chapter 20
Zemi
Four Months Later
Epilogue
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Destroy The Pretty
Kisses In The Sun
Chapter 1
Zemi
My alarm clock on the dawn of my thirtieth birthday was the ominous sound of thunder rumbling in the distance. I sat up, rubbed my tired eyes, and then focused on the view through the floor-to-ceiling windows that had been one of the deciding factors in buying my luxury condo in Coral Gables, Florida. The day I’d toured the condo with my mother three years earlier had also been around the time of my birthday, and that day, though it’d been cold even for the middle of January, the sparkle of the sun on the water had been spectacular.
There was no sun today and the gray waves tossed and turned outside my window just as I’d done the night before. My feelings of dread followed me when I got out of bed and walked closer to my dreary view. I had the day off from the hospital and had a full self-care day planned with my best friends and then dinner with my boyfriend at our favorite restaurant later in the evening. The day and my mood made me want to crawl back under the covers. By the time I’d made my bed in an attempt to stop myself from crawling back into it, moseyed to the bathroom and returned, the depressing view was obscured by a thick curtain of gray rain.
I walked over to the window and pressed my right hand against the cool glass. I felt the vibration of thunder as it roared across the sky after a flash of white light. I backed away from the window and sat on the edge of my bed which I still wanted to crawl back into. I was tired, and without my to-do list, I had nothing else to focus on except the weariness in my body and soul.
I hadn’t had a full day off in months. I was in the final six months of my residency at Baptist Health, Baptist Hospital in Miami and then my mother could proudly proclaim to the world that her only child was an obstetrician and midwife. She’d add that distinction to my long list of accolades which included being in a relationship with Adrian Albury, the handsome neurosurgeon with deep cultural roots and deep pockets, both of which were necessary for the perfect son-in-law.
I jumped out of my musings when a streak of lightning tore through the gray veil and quickly branched off into a tree of white light so spectacular it held me transfixed. The clap of ensuing thunder sounded like an explosion. I peeled back the last few hours and searched for news of a storm. I couldn’t find anything, but then, I’d been too busy to listen to any weather reports.
I screeched when my alarm went off and then jumped up and ran to my nightstand to turn off my phone. I was about to check my messages when my doorbell chimed. I walked through to my living room and checked my security camera mounted by the front door before opening it. The hallway was filled with white roses neatly lined up on five multi-level bell carts. Two young bellhops stood on either side of the carts smiling at me.
“Good morning, Ms. Darling,” they said in unison.
“Good morning indeed!” I stared at the flowers and then stood back so they could wheel them in and then made space around my living room for the thirty large white vases, each with a dozen white roses. I knew who they were from even before I plucked the note out of the first one.
To the most wonderful woman in the world from the luckiest man in the world. Happy birthday, Darling. All my love, Adrian.
I rushed into the bedroom and called Adrian as soon as the bellhops left. “Thanks for the roses, they’re beautiful and my living room now smells amazing. This is what I needed on such a gray day.”
“Oh, it’s raining there?”
I stiffened. “Where are you?”
“I’m still in London.”
His words sank into my brain as my heart sank to my stomach. “Why are you still in London? Did you miss your flight?”
“No, I changed my flight to tomorrow.”
“But my birthday is today.”
“Darling, I know, and I feel bad about doing this to you, but a friend pulled some major strings and arranged for me to have dinner tonight with one of the best neurosurgeons in the world. I would love to work on his team one day so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet him. I’m sure you understand and I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
I envisioned Adrian in his hotel room laying out his clothes for the evening. He was meticulous and hyper-organized and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d purchased a new suit for the dinner. He’d have all of his toiletries laid out and could spend just as much time in the mirror as any woman making sure his appearance was perfect before he walked outside. With a man like Adrian, that wasn’t hard to do since he was the epitome of tall, dark and handsome. Well, he wasn’t too dark, just dark enough to establish that he was a very handsome and very successful black doctor and enough to pass my mother’s brown paper bag test with flying colors, pun fully intended. She loved that she could’ve passed for white and because of my slightly darker father, I looked biracial. I’d had two rules drilled into me as a child; don’t play too much in the sun and don’t bring a black boy home. Adrian ticked very box she’d had for me.
We’d been in a relationship for five years and had been friends for seven years before that. Well actually, he was a high school boyfriend, turned enemy, turned friend, and then-boyfriend. Our relationship was far more complicated than the second chance first love most people thought we shared. During the five years we were boyfriend and girlfriend, I’d come to realize that Adrian would always put work before me. The realization had hurt at first until I’d admitted that having someone who understood how important my career was to me made Adrian’s obsession with his career ideal.
I felt deflated but I admired his drive. The beauty of the white roses lifted my mood a little. The foul mood I’d woken up in had been a sign of how the day would turn out. I swallowed the ball of emotions clogging my throat and said as cheerfully as I could; “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“You’re mad at me,” Adrian stated.
I was crushed and yet what came out of my mouth was; “I’m not mad at you. I’m disappointed, of course, but I understand how important this is to you.”
“I’m trying to secure our future here in London. Once you’re done with your residency program, we can move anywhere and you know my dream has always been to move to England. I guess I have my proper Bahamian parents to thank for that.”
Adrian and I were American-born, Bahamian-raised children from the Albury and Darling families, two
well-established Bahamian families who could trace their roots from The Bahamas to Coral Gables up to South Carolina and all the way to England.
Well, according to my mother, we could also trace our roots back to the Native Indians who were the original settlers of the islands. She believed we were descendants of Arawak chiefs and had named me Zemi; a name given to their deities and Gods. My mother, despite her many faults, had been my hype-woman from birth. She had no proof our ancestry reached that far back but I loved my name.
Other parts of our history were well-documented, however. Bahamians had made such a significant contribution to the development of Miami and Coral Gables in the nineteenth century that an area of Coconut Groove was renamed Little Bahamas and joined Little Haiti and Little Havana to honor the immigrants who were the foundation of South Florida. Both of our parents’ were part of a committee that made it happen, although to hear my mother’s version of the story, one would believe it’d been a solo-woman effort. Our families were big on color, class, and creed, and for one of our own to excel in England, the land of our colonizers was the ultimate flex. My parents were very much pro-black, as long as you weren’t too black. I didn’t share Adrian’s dream to return to our motherland, but I would become a part of it because I loved him.
“I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you.” Adrian’s deep voice cut through the darkness.
“I love you too. See you tomorrow.” I hung up and flopped down onto the bed. “Fuck it!” I got up, pulled back my white comforter, and crawled back into bed and into the past to another rainy day.
EVEN AT SEVENTEEN, he had the voice of a thirty-five-year-old. It was that voice, raw and haunting and filled with more angst than he’d had years to experience that made me fall in love with Kofi Rollins. Kofi and I attended the most prestigious private school in Nassau, the capital city in The Bahamas, and yet we were from different sides of town and worlds apart. I was from the West and more affluent side of the island and Kofi was an East Fox Hill boy.
Fox Hill was one of the oldest towns in The Bahamas and was named after Samuel Fox, a freed slave who was granted 23.5 acres of land in 1801. Starting as a plantation, it eventually became a neighborhood complete with shops, a library, and a post office. It soon became the place for free people of color from the Yoruba, Congo, and Ebo tribes of Africa and became the place where enslaved Africans gathered after slavery was abolished in the country in eighteen-thirty-four. Fox Hill, more than any other neighborhood in the country, had held onto its rich African heritage and culture, which I was only allowed to experience when it suited my mother and it only suited her on special occasions when the press was involved and she could be praised for her selfless charity works with the less fortunate.
Over the years, Fox Hill’s cultural beauty had been overshadowed by poverty and crime and it’d gone from a historical community to a ghetto. Being from that area immediately gave people a negative impression of you. We all knew that Kofi attended our school because his stepfather had moved him and his mother to a slightly better area while his father had remained in Fox Hill. Kofi’s address had changed, but he was still that Fox Hill boy, and I hadn’t taken much notice of him until our senior year one rainy day in November while a late-season hurricane brewed in the Atlantic.
During a sudden downpour as I’d headed to class, I bumped into Kofi who I hadn’t seen with my book bag over my bent head as I made a mad dash for the covered walkway across from the parking lot and school security office. I looked up in surprise which turned to shock when his dark hazel eyes bored into my light brown ones. Wasn’t he too brown for eyes like that? I wondered. The moment we looked at each other seemed to stretch into the next period though it couldn’t have been for more than a second. Then the rain stopped pelting me and I realized it was because Kofi had covered me with a big, black umbrella.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
His warm breath fanned my face and when I nodded and he stepped closer, his natural scent made my knees tremble. Still, I managed to walk briskly to the walkway. Again, time seemed to pause for me to enjoy the feel of his body pressed close to mine and the heat from where our naked arms brushed against each other as we moved. He pulled away as soon as we reached the walkway and I wiped the rain from my face and laughed.
“It seems as if Hurricane Manny wants to cancel our talent show on Friday,” I said.
Kofi smiled and my heart somersaulted. God, his teeth were perfect.
“Nah, it’s Monday and he’ll turn away from us by Wednesday.”
I flashed a skeptical look. “So you can predict the weather?”
His smile broadened. “You wanna bet?”
I didn’t, but I wanted another reason to talk to him again. “A hundred dollars.” I knew I had more money than him and I also knew the storm was heading right for us.”
“Okay,” Kofi had said.
My eyebrows arched in surprise. “Do you have a hundred dollars?”
He leaned in and I automatically took a step back. “I don’t need to.”
He walked away leaving his confidence and his scent in the air.
I FOUND MYSELF THINKING about Kofi throughout the day and when he walked into English class, I wondered how I’d never noticed how much his presence could fill up a room. We’d sat in most of the same classes for almost three years and I’d barely noticed him. I’d kept my eyes on my boyfriend who was the most popular boy in school while Kofi had stayed in the shadows hiding behind his Fox Hill skunk stank as we called it because no matter how much he cleaned up or how far he moved away, you could still tell where he was from. He’d smelled amazing when his body had pressed against mine, and whenever we caught each other’s eyes during class, his had twinkled and turned my stomach into knots.
On Wednesday morning, Hurricane Manny took a sharp turn to the right and headed out to die in the middle of the ocean. I stood at our kitchen island, a spoonful of cereal between my lips and my bowl, and stared at the TV in the living room in shock.
“Thank God, we don’t have to worry about that one,” Mom said. She sat on her white sofa, her legs elegantly crossed as she sipped tea from a fine-boned china tea cup.
Dad sat across from her reading the morning paper. “Hopefully it’s the last one of the season,” he said.
Mom dropped me off at school on her way to her private practice. Normally, I’d go looking for my best friend, Victoria, however, today, I wanted to find Kofi. I had his hundred dollars and I really wanted to see him. Of course, I couldn’t just go up and talk to him. I saw him at the back of the music room sitting under the big Sycamore tree with his friend Prescott Munnings. Prescott was also a Fox Hill original whose family had moved on up but he was so funny and likable that nobody cared where he was from. He was the clown in every class which made the students like him but he was also mannerly and serious about work which made the teachers love him. Looking at them now, I wondered what he and Kofi had in common besides where they came from. They seemed like an odd pairing, more so on Kofi’s side because Prescott could make friends with anyone. Maybe Kofi was only hanging with him because he didn’t have any other friends.
I walked over to them and said hi. Prescott eyed me curiously and Kofi’s just sat there with a twinkle in his eyes and the hint of an I-told-you-so-smile. I handed him the hundred dollars. “You win.”
He shook his head. “You keep it. Maybe you can buy yourself a very fancy umbrella.”
We both laughed while Prescott looked lost.
“A deal’s a deal,” I said.
“I don’t want your money, Zemi,” Kofi said.
“Then why did you make the bet?”
“I wanted to prove you wrong,” he admitted.
“You did, now take the money.”
“Proving you wrong was payment enough.”
“Why?”
“Because your kind always thinks they know everything.”
His words made me bristle. “What do you mean by my kind?”
He stood and I was reminded again of how tall he was.
“You have labels for me and I have labels for you.”
I lowered my eyes against the glare in his. I understood what he meant. Giving him a hundred dollars would be like nothing to me. My kind was used to giving money to his kind. For him to take the money would’ve meant he’d won a battle but lost the war, and Kofi was too self-aware for that. I was sixteen and I understood this unspoken truth because it’d been on display for as long as I could remember. Kofi was changing the narrative and I didn’t like that the boy from Fox Hill had all the power. I threw the one-hundred dollar bill at him, whirled around, and walked away.
