Hard Love, Soft Place

Nyari Givens has loved Khalon "Kino" Hargrove through enough to know that loving him has never been the hard part.

It's everything that comes with him.

For two years, she's learned how to love a man whose name carries weight on Chicago streets, whose loyalty runs deeper than common sense, and whose choices have a habit of putting concrete walls between them. Nyari has held him down before. Waited before. Worried before. This time, with Kino locked up again, she finally decides loving somebody doesn't mean she has to keep accepting the same life. So she does the one thing Kino never expected her to do.

She leaves.

At least, she calls it leaving.

Kino calls it bullshit.

Four months behind bars haven't changed who he is, what he represents, or who he believes Nyari belongs with. And the second he touches Chicago pavement again, he has every intention of reminding her that a breakup he never agreed to doesn't mean much to him. Especially when the love is still there. The chemistry is still there. And Nyari's boundaries start looking a whole lot less convincing once he's standing in front of her instead of calling from behind a jail wall.

But getting Kino back means getting all of him back.

The father. The lover. The loudmouth. The protector. The man who can make Nyari laugh until her stomach hurts and love her like there isn't another woman breathing. And the street nigga whose reputation, loyalties, enemies, and appetite for retaliation don't disappear just because he has something worth coming home to.

Nyari is Kino's soft place in a life that has taught him to be hard everywhere else.

The question is whether loving her will ever make him want to stay alive long enough to keep coming home.

Because some men love like forever is promised.
Kino loves Nyari knowing damn well it isn't.