Nothing Lasts Forever

Chapter Twenty-Nine

K A S H M E R E

Ever since August put his foot down about sending us away for a while until things died down I knew that there was no way that I could talk him into letting me stay but that doesn't mean I didn't try. I tried to persuade him of how much of an asset I could be and how useful I was but he wouldn't hear none of that because the only thing he was concerned about was if I really was pregnant or not.

The next day he showed up at my place with a test and the results came back negative. I didn't know how to feel about the results but I knew that right now wasn't the time to be pregnant with all the drama we had going on around us. I think August was a bit disappointed but I knew it was because it would only confirm his point even more. If I was pregnant he would definitely have a reason to ship me off along with his mom and Kaliyah.

He thought that I should take a few days off of work because of what happened a few days ago but I told him I was fine and I really was. I didn't want to dwell on what happened but him talking about how his first kill still haunted him sometimes kind of freaked me out. I had to much on my plate right now and the last thing I needed was to be stressed out about a situation that I couldn't change.

What happened only made me worry about what would happen when he sent us away. I wouldn't be there to watch over him and have his back and anything could happen to him. I couldn't help but wonder if the guy in his crew really had his back like he thought they did. He said they went way back but that didn't mean anything, especially when it came to Mace. He made money and connections, I'm sure all he had to do was flash a check and at least one of them would flip.

But he didn't want to hear any of that though, he thought he had it all under control. He had set up another meeting for last night but when I asked him if I could come he shut me down and told me that I had no reason to be there, kissed me goodbye and left. wasn't needed, told me he would be back later and left.

I already told Braeden that I was going out of town and he was fine with it and was more than capable of running the place by himself and I trusted him. After a morning class I came home and decided to get a start on everything I needed to do because we left in less than a week.

While I was going through my closet to look for my suitcase I stumbled upon one of my many picture books and decided to take a trip down memory lane. I started off with pictures of me when I was little and pictures of my mom and dad and me when we were just one big happy family. Page after page and picture after picture I was reminded of the good times, the happy times. Soon there were no more pictures of my dad and it was just me and my mom and there weren't that many pictures of us.

As if I wasn't already emotional enough from going through that book when I flipped open the next book and saw a picture of me and D I broke down. But I kept on torturing myself by flipping through page after page. One of the last pictures of D in the book was one where me, August and D took a weekend trip up to New York to surprise her for her birthday.

I pulled the picture out of its slot and held it. We all looked so young and happy and it was heartbreaking how much things have changed since then. It was only about a month later when August got that call in the middle of the night that changed everything for the worse.

"Kash?"

I jumped at the sound of his voice and put a hand on my heart to calm myself down.

"You scared me," I looked at him like he was crazy while he did the same thing to me and took a seat next to me on my bed and looked down at the picture I was just holding and picked it up. I didn't say anything and neither did he because it was obvious we both missed him.