Thug Lovin' Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Wahida Clark

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First eBook Edition: August 2009

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55209-7

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  TASHA’S NOTE

  PART I

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PART II

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  THE COIN TOSS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  To all my readers, I would not

  be here without you.

  Karen Thomas, once again you showed me

  how awesome you are. Special thanks to you

  for having and using your editor’s eye.

  I really do appreciate you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Keisha Caldwell, Tobias Fox, Antoinette B. Barnes, Treena Wright, Nydia Benders, Tracy Bebe Johnson, and my Lil’ Wahida. You all are the best critics. To my typists, Roz, Kisha, Sherry Porter, Hadiyah and Zakiyyah Muhammad, and Hasana. Thank you again and again.

  Linda Duggins, thanks for getting me in wherever I could fit in. I’m ready to do it all over again.

  To all the booksellers and book clubs… THANKS!

  TASHA’S NOTE

  Listen up, everybody! My name is Rosalyn Tasha Macklin. But everyone calls me Tasha, my middle name. That’s right, I’m married to the one and only Trae Macklin. His ass is supposed to be officially retired from the game and enjoying life as a family man. But I’ve learned that you can take the thug out of the streets but you can’t take the thug out of the man.

  The ladies love Trae, thanks to his arrogant, cocky, by-any-means-necessary, I’ma-make-it-happen attitude. And you can’t discount the fact that the nigga is the real deal and I hear how all of y’all chicks be sweatin’ him telling Wahida that he is y’all’s man. But don’t even think about it. I know he’s fine as hell. It’s a fact that he’s a cross between Tyson Bedford and DMX, thugged out with a pinch of Tyrese. That bald head and Hershey chocolate skin, a little over six feet, 210 pounds, with the body of a god. He’s all the thug lovin’ I could handle.

  Shit, I’m known to turn a nigga’s head as well. After three kids, yes three! I still got it going on. As big as I got with both pregnancies, I didn’t even think I would get back down to 155 pounds. Trust and believe my body is bangin’ and them babies did something good in all the right places. I told Wahida when she gets my story on the big screen, she better represent and don’t do me dirty and have some B-list actress play me. She better have somebody like Megan Good, Gabrielle, Sanaa Lathan or somebody on that level play my character. Somebody cute.

  But anyways, there is no doubt in my mind that Trae is my soul mate. He is ecstatic that I gave him three sons. A set of twin boys, Kareem and Shaheem, and then I had my baby, Caliph. He undoubtedly loves the ground I walk on and vice versa.

  Everybody is all in our business and wants to know what happened after Trae got out the game and him and Kaylin beat that drug case by the skin of their teeth. Well, me and Trae hightailed it to the Islands and laid low for a minute. But now we livin’ Hollyhood large up in Cali. We live in O. J.’s old neighborhood. But now I’m not so sure that movin’ to Cali was the best move for us. Shit has gotten downright crazy. The transition from illegal to legal hasn’t been all peaches and cream. I thought I was going to catch a case at one point. And the club? I wanted to burn that bitch down to the ground. Let me stop before I tell it all. I’ll let Wahida, “The Official Queen of Thug Love Fiction,” put it down for y’all.

  Peace!

  Tasha

  PART I

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ocho Ríos, Jamaica

  Three years ago and before the twins were born…

  Boom! Boom! Boom! The sound of the first-floor door being kicked down woke Tasha, Trae’s wifey, out of her deep sleep. Trae jumped out of bed, going for his gun.

  “Baby,” Tasha said as she jumped up and peeked out from behind the curtain of her third-floor bedroom window and saw jackets with huge lettering—FBI, ATF, DEA—and unmarked squad cars stationed in front of the three-family house and in the middle of the street.

  She placed her hands on her pregnant belly as her knees hit the floor.

  “Baby, throw something on.” Trae Macklin was rushing to put on his boxers and some sweats. “You see they’re coming in. C’mon, baby, please get up. They’re coming, baby.” He hopped over to her, one leg in the sweats, one leg out.

  “I love you, Trae.” She looked up at him in disbelief. She was a hustler’s wife, undoubtedly. But she had been sure that this hustler would be out of the game before it was too late and before it came to this.

  “I know you do, Ma, but I need you to put something on.”

  “Then why are you doing this?” she screamed. “Why do you keep leaving me? The babies, Trae, our babies, they need you.” Tasha was expecting twins any day now.

  Trae’s adrenaline rushed through his veins and he fought to remain calm as the sounds of steel-toed boot-wearing police rushing up the stairs grew closer. “C’mon, baby, you gotta put something on.” Concern over Tasha’s frame of mind was evident in his voice.

  I know she is not going to fold on me, he thought.

  Tasha had been through raids, search warrants and this same drill numerous times with her ex, Nikayah. It all came with the territory of being a hustler’s wife. But she had sworn she would never get involved with another hustler again. Not in this lifetime. Trae had managed to convince her and swore to her that he was getting out and it would be different with him. He was going legit. Now here they were. However, she would rather her door get kicked in by law enforcement than by some niggas trying to take their heads
off.

  Seeing that she wasn’t going to move, Trae snatched up his T-shirt, put it on her, then hurried to the dresser and grabbed a pair of panties for her. “C’mon, baby, they’re at the door. Get dressed.” He managed to get her to stand up. Just as Tasha pulled up her panties the front door damn near flew off its hinges and the law enforcement agents pushed their way into the bedroom, screaming.

  “On the floor! On the floor, now! Let me see your hands! Get down!” Trae knew the routine all too well. Most of his life he had heard these orders.

  “She’s pregnant, man!” he yelled as they threw a distraught Tasha to the floor and handcuffed her. “Why the fuck are y’all handcuffing her? Y’all came here for me!” he yelled as they put the ghetto bracelets on him.

  “That’s right,” the agent in charge said. “We don’t need her. Not yet.” He smirked. “And read Mr. Macklin his rights.”

  “It’ll be okay, baby,” Trae assured Tasha as they led him away with nothing on but sweatpants.

  “Okay? Okay? They are taking you away and I’m eight and a half months pregnant with twins.” She screamed, “Trae, you promised me. You promised me you wouldn’t leave us.” Tasha was trying to run toward Trae, but the white female DEA agent was holding on to her.

  The agents began searching—more like destroying—their one-bedroom apartment. They went from room to room ransacking the apartment and flipped over furniture, emptied out drawers, snatched clothes out of the closets, tossed papers around and dishes out of the cabinets. In a few short minutes it looked as if a tornado had struck. The agent in charge yelled, “Oh, he’s leaving you all right. He’s leaving you for a very long, long time, unless you tell us where he keeps his drug money. If not, by the time he has a chance of getting out of prison, that baby you’re carrying will be raising a family of its own!” Tasha spit on the agent and he lunged at her throat. The entire room burst out laughing.

  “Aaagh!” Tasha sat up, gasping for air as she awakened from this horrible nightmare. Her fingers clenched the bedsheets so tightly her knuckles were turning white. Her breathing was rapid; her body was pulsing from the thundering of her heart as it tried to beat through her chest. She tried hard to shake her head clear. As she wiped the sweat from her brow, Trae sat up and turned the lamp on.

  Since the day their drug case was overturned, and Tasha picked up Trae and his partner in crime, Kaylin Santos, from the courthouse, they had been at the bungalow in Ocho Ríos. They had the same bungalow where he had promised her that after he got out of the game they would come back and chill until they got tired of it. It was a gift from the dons. Their first couple of nights there, Tasha had begun having that awful nightmare, but after about a week it had stopped. Now, exactly three months later, it was starting again.

  “What’s up?” he asked as Tasha kept shaking her head from side to side and rubbing her eyes to make sure she was dreaming. As he reached over to comfort her he realized how badly her body was shaking and saw the tears rolling down her cheeks. He pulled the sheet off her to make sure she wasn’t bleeding. He wanted to be certain that the babies Tasha was carrying weren’t in any danger. She was expecting twin boys. He sighed in relief as he looked between her legs. “Baby, what’s the matter?”

  “That dream. It’s starting again. That same dream.”

  “It’s okay, baby. It’s over. I told you, I’m not going anywhere.” He used his thumbs to wipe her tears away. “Are you listening to me?” He grabbed her face.

  “It was so real, though. Oh, God, it was real,” she gasped. “It’s a sign, I know it.”

  “It’s not real, Tasha. Don’t say shit like that. You’re jinxing a nigga. It was only a dream. Trust me, Daddy ain’t going nowhere.” Shit, I’ll hold court in the streets first. “I’m free. Me, you and the babies are far away from Jersey and New York. Aren’t we?”

  She hugged him. “Sorry, baby.”

  “Don’t apologize. Everything’s fine. It was only a dream.” He could still feel her trembling. “I need to be the one apologizing. It was my lifestyle that got you so shook. I’ma make it right, baby. I promise.”

  “Just tell me you’ll never leave us.” Tasha felt as if she could never get enough of his reassurance as she held him tighter.

  He reached down and rubbed her stomach. “Baby, you should know by now that if I have my way, I’m never leaving my family. But you know I did so much shit in the past. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” She pushed his hand off her stomach, jumped up and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Trae followed her to the bathroom. They had decided to move to California and start fresh as soon as Trae stopped hustling. “Maybe it’s time for us to raise up outta here,” he suggested from the other side of the door.

  “What you think?” he yelled as he turned the doorknob. Of course it was locked.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A jet-lagged and exhausted Trae hopped out of the limo before it had fully stopped, as it pulled up to the entrance of the Wilshire Grand Hotel. It used to be one of the best-kept secrets in LA, sitting on the corner of Wilshire and Figueroa. Trae watched as the bellman retrieved their luggage and the driver helped a sleepy Tasha out of the limo. He decided right then and there that this spot would suit their needs perfectly as relocation central. It was the beginning of September and the weather was sunny. A picture-perfect day.

  They were so exhausted that after they settled in they slept until almost noon the next day. They were chillin’ while waiting for Tasha’s cousin Stephon to come over. They had about six houses to look at and he had volunteered to be their official tour guide. They were sitting on the couch in front of the big screen, which was on mute, watching ESPN2. Tasha was devouring a bowl of fruit salad and had her legs thrown across Trae’s lap as she listened to him dish out demands to the Realtor.

  “Listen, I need somewhere to stay, like, yesterday. I’m expecting my first child.” Tasha popped him on the forehead. “I’m sorry, we’re expecting twins any day now so we need to get settled in as soon as possible.” Trae reached over and began rubbing Tasha’s belly. He was silent as he listened to the excuses the Realtor came up with. Tasha placed her hand over his as she guided it to where the movement was.

  “What’s up, twins?” Tasha whispered to her belly.

  “Call me within the next hour. If I don’t hear from you, I’m moving on to the next man.” He pushed the end button, then leaned over and began kissing Tasha on the belly. “Man, these LA clowns are crazy. They got so much money they don’t wanna make no more! They acting like my money ain’t green. I have no understanding of this bullshit. Couldn’t be me. I don’t give a fuck how much bread I got, I ain’t stopping until I see Bill Gates type of bread!”

  “Give the poor man a chance, baby.” Tasha laughed. “I mean, what you want the man to do? Throw the people out of their houses today?”

  “Hell yeah! Daddy needs a house.”

  “And Ma Ma needs for Daddy to chill out.”

  “I need to chill?” He tongued Tasha down.

  “Mmmmmmmm, mmmmmm,” she moaned as she came up for air. “Yes you do. That’s my job, to clock out on niggas.”

  “Aiight then. You got that,” Trae told her.

  There was a knock at the front door.

  “Thank you. Now go answer the door,” she ordered.

  “I love you more than anything. You know that, right?” Trae leaned over for another kiss.

  “Of course I know that. You show me that every day.” She kissed him back.

  “Aiight then. Just don’t forget that shit.”

  “Don’t you forget it. Don’t get out here and get caught up in this Hollyhood lifestyle and lose your mind,” Tasha warned him. “I’m not going to put up with no bullshit.”

  “What?” Trae laughed.

  “You heard me loud and clear. Now go open the door, nigga!”

  “We gotta talk,” Trae teased and winked at her as he walked across the room to open the front door.


  A feeling of nervousness came over Tasha as she overheard Stephon’s voice when he entered the suite. Even though they talked and kept in touch she hadn’t seen him since twelve years ago, when they were teenagers. He was the one to bring her the bad news about her brother getting shot to death. He was around when both of her parents were hauled off to prison. He was there when Social Services came and took her sister Trina and brother Kevin into state custody. She felt that seeing him was like reopening a door to her past, something she wasn’t ready to do. She didn’t like that feeling.

  He had spoken with Tasha and Trae over the phone on plenty of occasions, especially when they had confirmed that they were coming to LA, which Stephon called his playground. He promised them that he would do everything to make their transition from Jersey to Cali as smooth as possible.

  “What up, man?” Stephon greeted Trae. They gave each other dap followed by a brotherly embrace.

  “Good to finally meet you in person,” Trae told him.

  “Meet you? I feel like I already know you. My cousin talks about you all the time and she sounds like you’re keeping her very happy.”

  “Well, actually we do that for each other,” Trae said with sincerity. Then he turned to his wife and said, “Yo, Tasha, your cuz is here!”

  “Damn, look at this room. Y’all rollin’ like this?” Stephon was admiring the plush suite. He looked around at the marble floors with gold molding, eighteen-foot floor-to-ceiling windows, leather sectional couch and fully stocked bar, and that was only the living room.

  From talking to Trina and Kevin, Tasha’s siblings who were living in New York, he knew that Trae had stashed a shitload of drug money, but damn!

  “Ewwwww, ugly boy,” Tasha said playfully when she got up on her cousin, immediately forgetting those bad feelings she had just been having. “You look just like Uncle Bill.” Stephon could grace the cover of GQ any day and stood six foot tall, with broad shoulders, a clean bald head, coal-black goatee, light brown skin and a perfect set of pearly white teeth. He was fine. Absolutely a lady’s dream. Wet dream, that is. She gave him a big hug while Trae stood back and watched his wife interact with family. Stephon twirled her around before staring at her face.