American Dream | NBANARDO

prolouge

Kentrell hated the color white.

He don't know if it was his trauma speaking for him or the utterly empty feeling it gave him whenever he stared at its absence of color but white disturbed something deep in his spirit.

Sitting in this waiting room alone, in a room filled with white wasn't helping his distaste for it.

The clock ticked on and his foot tapped against the tiled ground, his phone was on 5 percent there was literally nothing he could do but stare at the white walls and think.

'How the fuck I end up in this situation?'

It was an easy question to answer but he still couldn't wrap his mind around it.

Him, an unwilling father at 22?

Kentrell made plenty of dumb decisions.

If there was a list this would be tacked on at number 15, right after fumbling his last ex. 

His first suicide attempt kept getting knocked down the list after he continued to try.

For some reason God wanted him to stay on this earth and Kentrell couldn't figure out why.

There wasn't shit he was adding to the world to make it better, there was an argument to be made he was making it worse.

"Are you ready to see your newborn, Dad?"  A nurse spoke her hands clasped together, his thoughts being interrupted. Behind her mask he could tell she was grinning but there wasn't an ounce of a smile on his face.

This was supposed to be a happy occasion but he was the furthest from it.

Nevertheless Kentrell hopped up, his hands sweaty and his heart thumping. His anxiety on his sleeve as he walked with her into the delivery room.

"Would you like the gender to be a suprise or-"

"You can just tell me." He mumbled, eyes shifting in discomfort. Everything about this was uncomfortable and new to him.

"She's a girl." She spoke softly, and he tried to contain his surprise.

Girl?

First impressions, his energy all of that ran through his head and he worried what she would think of him.

The fact she was a she made things even more different.

Doubt and fear set back in again, why was he even even here?

All he knew was how to fuck things up.

Kentrell destroyed things, he made things worse there was nothing his hands could touch that wasn't left in ruin.

But-

As she was placed in his arms, so delicate and small, his hands stayed as still as they could to keep her from being rattled.

Everything around Kentrell grew quiet and there was nothing that could the break his attention from her.

The beeping of the heart monitor, the conversation between the doctors and the mother of his child all became tuned out. All there was, was him and his child.

Blinking he gazed into warm dark brown eyes. They were so big compared to everything else about her being tiny.

Her pretty brown skin stood out against the light pink blanket. She had color right when she was born, and she was so gorgeous.

Kentrell could barely smile without being intoxicated. He'd fallen into such a toxic cycle that his body could barely function without a substance.

The drugs, the alcohol they replicated emotions he had long cut off, the only thing he could naturally feel being anger.

He was so angry all the time and his anger would only boil into sadness, those emotions getting so exhausting after awhile.

But staring at love personified, she tugged at an emotion he didn't wanna allow himself to feel sober. Something he'd come to a conclusion he didn't deserve.

Happiness.

Staring down at something he created, something that wasn't a disaster, something that was objectively good.

All he could do was genuinely smile.

Maybe white wasn't so bad.

y'all ready to continue Horace and Kentrell's story?

I want to outdo myself from power trip and kind of deleve deeper into the relationship dynamics I built up.

We just scratched the surface last book.

But lemme not spoil anything. Glad to see you beauties back!!