ODDS OF LOVE - SEASON 14

Episode 23

Richie Jenkins   threw himself on his messily unmade bed in his room and closed his eyes. Damn it , his mind raged as the first image to invade his thoughts was the shy sweetly smiling face of Lewis Norland. Damn it. Damn it all to motherfucking hell ! 

Why did he have to feel the way he did for this one kid ? Lewis Fucking Norland. Some damn spoiled rich kid with everything really that the kids he had knew in Southeast DC would have picked on every time they saw his rounded face and downcast always embarrassed eyes. Except that Lewis was so much more than all of that especially when you got to know him and cracked the walls he had forged around himself. He was more , far more , and there was even more walls for Richie to keep knocking down. 

Why ? Why did he do it ? Try to kill himself ? That selfish piece of shit ! He hadn't thought of anyone else but himself. Just like that idiot girl Diamond Dennis who had shot Lewis and then her dumb ass self. 

He wondered what they had been thinking right before. Before she pulled the trigger on Lewis and then herself. Before Lewis took himself off to his room after they had ate and swallowed the pills instead of talking to someone..... his dumbass therapist...... his father ..... Nigel ..... Doc DuBuis...... Dr. HighTower...... someone..... him........What was he thinking ? Or was Lewis thinking anything ? Did he just want to escape them all that bad ? 

He sat up on his bed and began to cry. He cried for the first time really since his father had killed his mother in front of him in their small city project apartment. He cried and wailed and screamed like his soul was being torn from his thirteen year old body. 

Richard Norland stood outside the closed bedroom door , his hand on the doorknob , listening to the tormented sounds coming from within the room. He took a deep deep deep breath and exhaled it before opening the door.

Richie saw the older White man stepping inside his room in his perfectly pressed khakis and button down blue and white shirt. He glared at Richard , yelling through his tears of fury and grief and sadness ," Go away ! I don't need you ! I don't need anyone ! I fucking don't need him ! Fuck your son ! "

Richard ignored the heated words tossed his way as he came swiftly over to the boy , his foster son who he had never really wanted in his home , and sat beside him on the bed. 

" I said go away , " Richie cried out , " I don't need you ! "

Richard just reached out to pull the Black boy who tried so hard to act like a man but down deep was just a scared teenaged boy into his arms for a hard supportive fatherly hug. He expected the boy to fight back against the hug but Richie did not. Instead Richie's arms gripped him back just as tightly as he continued to cry in his arms. And , as Richard held his foster son he also allowed his own tears to flow down his face. 

Nigel stood in the doorway with six year old Tanisha in his arms and Rebecca by his side. 

Rebecca looked at her stepfather. She swallowed and asked faintly , " Are they going to be okay , Daddy Nigel ? Daddy ? Richie ? " She blinked her huge grey eyes that everyone had once believed were Norland eyes. " Lewis ? "

Nigel tightened his hold on a quiet Tanisha as he shifted his other arm around his stepdaughter's shoulders lovingly. " Sure , they will , Princess. In time. "