The October morning wind was cold as hell against her bare legs and sent her right on back inside to shut the door tight. "Shit," she swore.

Still, if her shoulder wasn't tender she would have dropped everything and hopped her half-naked ass on the bike and rode it around the block to make sure she was truly okay. Just like that.

The kitchen door swung open.

She smiled at Sarge standing there, his eyes still puffy with sleep. "I'm okay," she reassured him.

"It's over?" he asked, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening with concern and aggravation.

She loved his old angry self.

"It's over," she promised.

He looked over his shoulder. "It's over?"

She looked past him at Tank rolling up the sleeping bag.

"It's done," he said to Sarge, although his eyes were on her.

Her heart sped up.

"Ain't nothing wrong with normal," he snapped as he passed her.

"Nope . . . nothing at all, Sarge," she agreed.

"The same old same old," he said, his head rocking back and forth like he was preaching or playing a blues guitar.

Tank laughed. "Get on her, Sarge."

"I done did dat," Sarge hollered to Tank.

"Same old same old, Sarge," Naeema promised.

He paused. He turned around. He nodded at her. "You did what you had to," he said before he turned and headed through the door leading to the basement. "But you shouldn't have to do it no more. Right?"

"Right."

Of course he slammed the door shut.

WHAM.

Naeema set her weed and her bag on the counter before she walked back into the living room. Tank looked at her as he picked up the chair Sarge had been sitting in by the door to carry it back into the kitchen. She moved over to her bed to pull back the covers and smooth the bottom sheet before she pulled the top sheet and comforter back up tightly across the bed.

"You'll bust your stitches."

She stood up straight and turned to face him. "I'm okay."

He shook his head and turned his lips downward as he gave her a pensive stare filled with everything he was feeling. "No, you're not. You're stubborn. Vindictive. Dangerous. You think you're the baddest bitch born and . . . and . . . because of all that shit, yo, some morgue woulda been calling me to ID your dead body, Na," he said, as he held up his hands.

"I'm-"

"Shut the fuck up, Na," Tank yelled, his voice exasperated.

She couldn't even snap back.

"I don't know whether to . . . to . . . choke you or hug you," he said, his conflict written all over his handsome face as he wiped his hands over his cheeks while he paced.

She opened her mouth and he held up his hand to stop her.

"Just because we can't live together doesn't mean I want to risk having to live in this world without you," he admitted.

Naeema gasped as his eyes got bright. Tears? Tank's hardcore ass never cried. Like . . . NEVER.

I will always love him and he will always love me.

The chorus to that J. Cole song came to her.

"Nobody's perfect . . . but you're perfect for me . . ."

But they couldn't be together. They swung between real hot or real cold. Their asses could never find the comfort in the middle. Their love was all about fucking extremes.

"How you find me?" she asked.

"Ain't your ass glad I did?" he barked.

"Tank," she said softly, asking for a break from his anger.

"I figured you were up to something with that crew your son used to hang around and I had my fellas watching all of them. One of my boys hit me up and let me know they had just snatched you up from the house. I told him to go in and check on Sarge and hauled ass to get to you."

"Thank you, Tank," she said, coming over to touch his arm.

"That leaves Hammer and Nelson," he said.

"Hammer doesn't know about me being undercover," she said. "And Nelson is as dead as it gets."

Tank looked at her like No you didn't.

"He killed my son," she said with emphasis.

They shared a look filled with understanding.

"Why'd you go to that church alone?" he asked.

"I wanted to handle him myself," she said truthfully.

His eyes bored into her. "Why?"

Naeema's hand fell from his arm. "He looked me dead in the face and told his hit man to kill me," she said.

"And that's it?" he asked.

No more lies.

"If it isn't, you really don't have a right to ask, with your new boo and all," she reminded him gently.

He looked down at her even as the muscles in his jaw worked overtime.

"Nobody's perfect . . . but you're perfect for me."

Tank shook his head and turned away from her like he was trying to break an invisible hold she had on him. His jaw was tight and square as he pulled on his boots and grabbed his keys from the fireplace mantel. "I gotta get to work," he said and walked to the door.

"I wanted you to deny her that night at your house and you didn't, Tank," Naeema said from across the room, causing him to pause in the open doorway. "You wanted me to deny him just now . . . and I didn't either."

"Then I'm glad the motherfucker's dead," he said before he walked out of the house.

Naeema stood there, hoping he would come back, but soon the sound of his motorcycle tearing up the street echoed loudly.

"Nobody's perfect . . . but you're perfect for me."

She retrieved the plastic case holding all of her son's things and removed the police file before walking to the kitchen. She set it on the counter as she pulled a large pot from underneath the sink and then slid the file into it. From her bag she pulled out Red's and Bas's cell phones. When she'd called Tank to tell him where she was and that she had been shot, she had taken the phone from Bas's dead body before leaving the church to wait outside.

Bas's cell phone was locked. She tried his birthday but then gave up when it failed. She threw the cell phone into the large pot and set it back on the counter. She leaned against the counter as she went through Red's call log, a dozen missed calls from Vivica and a dozen more text messages begging him to call her and let her know he was okay.

Naeema felt a little bad for the woman because she had to be worried that her man never came home and never answered the phone. But there was not a damn thing she could do about it. In time it would sink in that he was dead and gone and she would just have to mourn him and move the fuck on.

Just like I am . . . finally.

Scrolling to his older messages with Bas, she could tell they kept it all coded as fuck. She paused her thumb over the touch screen when she spotted her alias, Queen.

"Damn you really love her?" she read out loud.

Bas's reply: HELL YEAH.

Naeema looked at the date. It was during the weeks she spent at the hotel with him.

"You really think I ever gave a fuck about you?"

He'd lied.

She didn't know how she felt about knowing Bas could have possibly cared for her but still ordered her dead.

"I killed my own mother."

Naeema shook her head. Bas was crazier than a motherfucker.

She tossed Red's phone into the pot as well before she carried the pot outside, being sure to avoid the step with the missing bricks, and grabbed the lighter fluid sitting by the base of the steps. Naeema dropped the pot on the ground and doused it with lighter fluid. She dashed back inside for her lighter and her weed, then came back to set everything in that pot ablaze. The warmth of the fire felt good in the midst of the chilly fall air circling her body.

She hoped flames similar to the one slowly claiming everything it touched burned a million times hotter in the hell where she'd sent Nelson's soul.

"I almost forgot," she said, crossing the yard to open the garage and reach into her saddlebag.

It was empty. She checked the other. Same thing. Nada.

Last night she'd told Tank about the gun for him to get rid of it for her. He must've taken the knife too. Fuck it.

Two less things for her to worry about on her road back to normalcy.

She looked down the length of her drive and frowned as Coko came staggering past on her way to her own house. She was obviously out of rehab and fucked up. Naeema didn't move from her spot. She'd done all the saving and revenge-making her ass could take. Coko gon' have to fight that battle on her own.

She glanced down at her little bonfire in the pot as she went back inside and away from the cold. In the kitchen she stood at the window inhaling her weed from the dick pipe and stroking her son's ring with her thumb as she watched everything she had connected to his murder go up in flames.

"Did you love him?"

Naeema turned in surprise to find Tank standing in the doorway with one strong arm holding the swinging door open as he leaned his sexy frame against the door frame. Releasing a thick stream of smoke through pursed lips, she locked eyes with him, her heart pounding, her pulses racing like crazy, as she shook her head no.

"Nobody's perfect . . . but you're perfect for me . . ."

He was hurt. Just as hurt as she was that night at his house so she understood completely. But he loved her. He couldn't deny her. And it was the same for her.

Neither one could really take that final step to leave the other alone. It was like the bond was stronger than them and all their issues.

He held out his hand.

Naeema licked her lips as she stepped up to slide hers into it.

As he picked her body up against his and pressed his lips to her mouth, she didn't give a fuck about anything else in the world.

Not the weed burning and wasting away on the counter.

Not even the fire burning in the backyard.

Work. Sarge. The pain in her shoulder. The carnage from the night before. The bitch that was at his house that night.

Not a damn thing.

Tank sucked her tongue into his mouth gently as he backed into the living room to lay Naeema down on the bed. Slowly, like revealing a gift, he undressed her with his eyes, shifting from her hot eyes to the parts of her body he uncovered.

Her bandaged gunshot wound.

Her round breasts and hard nipples.

The smooth skin over her flat belly.

Thick thighs.

The soft hairs covering her pussy.

Tank stepped back from her to pull off his own clothing. "Shave it," he said, with a subtle lift of his chin toward her plump vee as she writhed like a snake and spread her legs before him.