If I Was Ya Man

Introduction

Hey y’all!

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve decided to make 2019 my last year writing urban. Since making that decision, I’ve found over 20 novels, completed, in my email! I’ve decided to release them all throughout this year. I wrote this book in 2015, right after Kailani and Bishop: A Case of the Exes. It was supposed to be a spinoff that featured the crew, but I changed my mind at the last minute and shelved this book. It’s finally seeing the light of day, lol.

For those of you who have never read Kailani and Bishop, it was my very first published urban romance series. Readers went crazy over crazy ass Bishop. With the growth I’ve experienced as a writer, I find it very hard to recommend that book. Even though it gave me my start, Bishop was such a tortured, toxic soul that I can’t promote it as much as I did back then. To put it mildly, he was a liar and cheater, and if you know me you know I loathe those.

Naturally, my style of writing and character development has changed drastically within the four years since I wrote this book. I’ve tweaked it a little during the editing process, but it’s still a very raw, very urban, very dramatic, very ratchet read. If that’s your type of book… read on and enjoy!!! If not, I’ll see you with my next release!

Until next time,

Love B.

Chapter 1

Peyton

I don’t know what I was thinking telling my sisters to meet me at Rashad’s house. They were just as violent and crazy as me. I had to get them out of his house before he arrived, or all hell was going to break loose.

My sisters and I were known as the Cannon sisters. Our father, James Cannon, kidnapped my mother when she was fifteen. For years he held her, raped, and impregnated her. Pia, Paisley, and I are the results of that.

I’m known on the streets by my rap name – Cannon. I’m the wildest. My temper is quick, and I have no filter. I’ll never know why I was cursed to think and be so reckless like my father, but I make the most out of it. I’m thirty. I stand 5’3. My skin is the color of walnut shells. My eyes are hazel. I’m the only one that got our mother’s eyes. I wear my hair in its natural state and color of black and it comes down to my bra strap when straightened; which is hardly ever because I don’t have time for that shit.

My body is toned. Rapping is my first passion but working out is my second. It helps me to release so much of the anger I have buried deep down inside. My body is kind of like Serena Williams, but I’m probably like a pants size smaller than her.

My middle sister is Paisley. She’s like the combination of me and Pia. She’s wild like me but she is very patient. It takes a lot to set her off but when she blows, she fucking blows. Paisley is twenty-eight. She’s 5’5 with a peanut butter skin tone. She has our mother’s deep dimples. Her eyes are so brown they look black, especially when she’s angry. Unlike me she expresses herself through singing. I hold my shit in, but she has no problem expressing herself. I guess that’s why it takes more to make her spazz.

She rocks her hair relaxed. Paisley changes the color of it every year. Now she’s got it in a brown and gold bob. She’s the pretty girl out of us sisters. Her body isn’t naturally thick or toned but manufactured. With her fat ass and small waist, she fits in perfectly with the trending look of models and R&B singers today.

And last but certainly not least, there’s baby sister Pia. That little one is my heart. When my mother told us that our father was not her husband and that he’d kidnapped her we all flipped. He tried to keep us from going to get help, but we jumped him. Caught our first body. Together. And it was our father. It didn’t matter, though, because our mother was so afraid to be free that she wrote a letter saying she’d killed him and then killed herself. We let her take the rap only because she was gone, and she made us promise not to ever tell the truth.

Guess I messed that up, huh? But anyway, when that happened, I was fifteen. Paisley was thirteen and Pia was eleven. We were forced to move in with our only known relative, our mother’s mother. That was short lived because she died a year later from cancer.

They tried to send us to a foster home and separate us, but I wasn’t going to have that. I didn’t mind me and Paisley being separated because we were older and could handle ourselves. Pia was so young, green, and naïve that I didn’t trust her with herself. She had to be with one of us. So I snatched them up and I started waitressing and stripping. At sixteen. I did that for two years to provide for us along with Paisley working at fast food places and doing hair on the side. When I turned eighteen, I ended up giving a private dance to one of the hottest rappers in our hometown of Memphis. We clicked instantly. I got in the studio, and I blew up with this music shit.

Now, fourteen years later, my sisters and I have our own record label and music management company called Cannon Entertainment. I rap. Paisley sings. Pia is the poet and writer, and she handles our business. I never went to college. Hell, I didn’t even get my GED.

Music came naturally to us, and it was a definite money maker, but that wasn’t the only things we wanted to do with our days or our lives. Paisley got her cosmetology license and Pia is working on getting her Master’s in Business with a double major of International Investing and Music. Yes, my baby is not only beautiful but she’s intelligent too. I ain’t gon’ lie, sometimes I look at the life I lived and the fact that I had to grow up so soon and I resent my sisters, but then I go to Paisley’s beauty shop and spa or hit up her beauty supply store or look at the fact that Pia doesn’t even have her degree yet and she’s already investing in businesses all over the world and I figure that that shit was worth it.

Anyway, back to Pia. Pia is twenty-five, but she has a birthday that’s literally right around the corner. She’s about 5’1 and one hundred twenty pounds soaking wet with her clothes on. She’s the smallest out of all of us, but she has a curve in her hips and a small but round ass. It’s enough for a nigga to hold on to if me and Paisley gave him the chance to.

Her skin is the color of nutmeg. She has these pretty chocolate eyes. I remember when she was a baby, I used to kiss all on her eyelids, and I called them round pieces of chocolate. Her cheek bones are high like our mother’s. And she has ma’s full pink and brown lips. Me and Paisley got dad’s thin pink lips. She has the cutest little gap between her two front teeth. I’ve seen niggas pine over her and that gap.

Pia wears her hair in dreads that hang just a little past her shoulders. She has them dyed in this violet ombre color at the ends. That and all her tattoos gives her this earthy vibe that complements her personality well. Me and Paisley stay messing with her calling her a modern-day hippie.

She’s all about love and peace and happiness. Sometimes I don’t even see how she’s related to us. She’s so calm and peaceful, so open and trusting, but when me or Paisley have beef or somebody takes her kindness for weakness and she gets in that ass I see that she’s definitely related to us. Pia took boxing lessons in high school and Jiu Jitsu in college so she ain’t nothing to be played with. I remember one time she literally ran home to avoid fighting. She hated it that much, but when she made it to the mailbox one of the bitches fucked around and swung on Paisley who was checking the mail. Pia turned around and handled all three of them at the same time. Me and Paisley just stood back and watched.

I don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I told them to meet me here. Just one of us alone was nothing to play with.

Rashad and I met six months ago. Officially met I should say. I knew of Rashad and his reputation in the streets. Rashad had retired, but he once was the King of south and north Memphis. He had the streets on lock. If you wanted any type of drug, nine times out of ten, you got it from one of his men. Things started getting so crazy on the north side of town that Rashad started losing more men than he made money, so he pulled out.

I guess all of the death that surrounded him made him want to go legit. Even with him being legit, you didn’t fuck with Rashad. Period. Well, most people didn’t fuck with Rashad; but I wasn’t most people. When your heart was hurting, it gave you a fuck the world attitude. He may have been able to beat my ass, but I was going to get my revenge and make sure he never had the chance to.

Anyway, Rashad came to one of Paisley’s sets and approached me, which was weird because most guys from around the way are scared of me. It takes a certain kind of man to handle me. I figured with him being who he was that he felt like he could handle me, so I gave him a chance.

We had been kicking it tough. Every day we were together. I travel for a show, he’s there. He gotta go take care of some business, I’m there. We just… clung to each other, and a week ago, after waiting thirty years I gave him my virginity. Now obviously that wasn’t something I took lightly since I waited for so long.

See, all three of us handle our issues with our parents differently.

I have never been able to trust and love men. I didn’t even trust and love my dad. There was always something about him that threw me off, but I respected him and the half of me that was him. So because of that I’ve never been in a genuine relationship with a man – until Rashad. Well, we weren’t in a committed relationship, but he was mine and I was his. Or at least that’s what I thought. Until he started ignoring me and I had one of my people to run a search on him. Found out he was married.

Married.

Paisley was desperate for the love and affection of a man so much so that she fell for the first man to show her the slightest bit of attention. She started seeking him for her validation. When the guy saw that she craved him and his love he started taking advantage of her. Ever since then she’s wanted love, but she’s been too afraid to accept it. From anyone. She doesn’t want to be hurt again, so she dates younger men or married men. Younger men because they aren’t afraid to express how they feel. Married men because they can’t commit.

And Pia, oh Pia.

Pia surprised us all and fell for a street nigga in high school. Gave him her virginity and everything. But when he got locked up, she decided to never date a guy from the streets again. She’s not attracted to the average good man, though. She needs a man that can handle her just like we all do. We ain’t built for no square. She still converses with Najee to this day. He’s got five more years left.

I hope she don’t call herself waiting for him.

I was the oldest and the last to give it up; and when I did it was to a lying fraud with a wife. I was pissed, but worse than pissed, I was hurt, and I didn’t know how to react. That’s why I called my sisters, and they were only making it worse. Pia was leaning out of his front door in a maxi dress with a side split and some Timbs and