Love In the Red Zone (Connecticut Kings Book 1) by Love Belvin Page A

school, hated that I felt a commitment to this degree.
    “Not everybody in Montclair has a big crib. You know that, Lashawn.” My cousin was a snob—more appropriate, a chicken-head, always in search of her next sugar daddy.
    “That nigga said Upper Montclair, Jade; not just Montclair. Big difference,” she argued.
    I nodded in agreement. “That’s true, but it ain’t the end of the world.”
    “The hell it ain’t!” she charged. “I’m looking for my come up. Ain’t nothing more important in the world than that.”
    Rolling my eyes again, I tossed a glance out onto the football field to gauge how soon Kyree would be done with practice. I was tired from not having gotten any sleep the night before. I battled insomnia. It started when eviction notices began popping up on my door last month. Tonight was my rest night.
    “Your health and having a roof over your head is far more important than chasing men with potential paper,” I half-heartedly chided.
    “Yeah. I’m gonna let that slide, seeing you got your situation going on. How’s it going, though?”
    “Same ole. The lady across the hall said based on when the letters started, I may have another week; at least that’s what she’s observed from other people being evicted.” I shrugged with my lips in the dimness of the car.
    “Nosy ass,” she hissed.
    I laughed. “Shawnie!” Then I thought. “Hey, you think Ky and me can crash there for a few days if I can’t think of something else?” I held my breath for the inevitable.
    “Girl, you know if it was my place, you two would’ve been here already! But my mother rolls with whatever Aunt Chéri does, and she would side-eye the both of us if you stayed here.”
    She was right. My aunt Magness was my mother’s younger and unfairly impressionable sister. She was one that agreed with whatever my mother did and said. Aunt Magness also tried to mimic her older sister’s lifestyle, but always fell short in the finance department, seeing her husband was a high school principal earning well, but not as much as her brother-in-law, the corporate attorney for widespread restaurant chain, B-Way Burger .  Kyree often stayed over there to play with Lashawn’s son who was a year younger; however our staying there would alert Aunt Magness of something being amiss. That would, in turn, involve her calling my mother, and I couldn’t have that. My mother put me out and never looked back to make sure I was okay. I deserved much of her coldness, but wouldn’t subject myself to her taunting I told you so .
    “Yeah, you’re right,” I sighed, feeling that familiar pang of fear of impending trouble. I had no one else I could trust. Ryshon’s mother was not an option. That would open up a far more dreadful can of worms. “I’ll figure something out.”
    Lashawn started singing a familiar tune. I couldn’t hear all of it over her vocals. Then it clicked.
    “Hey, is that Brielle?”
    “Yeah, girl!” Lashawn hummed a high note from her latest single, Purple Hearts in Square Places . “You heard her new release?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That bitch been through some shit. She so damn private, but she got some good D and it fucked her up. But we’ll never know who because she and her camp keep it to the hip.”
    “Mmmmhmmm m… ” I agreed.
    Brielle was arguably the biggest pop star in her genre. At twenty-four, she had countless Grammys and even won a Golden Globe award for starring in a movie with Will Smith as his young love interest. She was an amazing talent and put on the best shows from what I’d been told; I’d yet to go. She started out as an R&B artist at sixteen before going pop on her second album. She’d just dropped her fifth album this past summer and just like the rest, it had gone platinum in no time.
    “I can’t wait for her to start her tour. When she comes to the Garden , I’m so in the building!” Lashawn decreed.
    My eyes absentmindedly rolled over to find a tall and solid figure