Crossing the Barrier

by Martine Lewis

  It was Lily’s mother.

  “Oh, sorry about that,” he said with a sincere smile. “Hi, I’m Malakai,” he added, offering her his hand.

  “What are you doing here?” she hissed, ignoring his offered hand. “I see she didn’t get rid of you yet.”

  At her tone, Malakai lost his smile. He hadn’t expected such hostility, but with everything he had been told, he should have known. As he pulled his hand away, he remembered what David and Lily had said about the woman, and Malakai decided to keep things as polite as possible for Lily’s sake.

  “You should stay away. Your kind isn’t welcome here. You’re not good enough for her, and she certainly doesn’t need the likes of you.

  “Besides, how will you ever provide for her? You’re only a football player. I bet you’re not even good enough for the pros. So, what are you going to do? Football coach? Sure, that’s going to provide for her,” she said, her features distorted into something Malakai could only describe as ugly.

  Malakai frowned.

  He had never believed he would play pro. That’s why he wanted to study kinesiology. To think he wouldn’t be able to provide for Lily…He had never thought about how much a coach made. He had always thought he would do something he loved, not something to make money. But would that be enough to support Lily? Then Malakai’s mind went back to something else the woman had said, something he wasn’t sure he had understood right.

  “My kind?” he asked.

  “N…You know what I mean.”

  Malakai felt like he had been slapped. He had received his fair share of insults as a biracial kid, but the woman had been about to say something to him he had never been referred to in his life, at least not to his face. He knew then that whatever he did this woman would never, ever approve of him, and his resolve to be civilized evaporated in a heartbeat.

  He looked the blond woman up and down, then noticed her brown-orange artificial salon tan. It was darker than his complexion, even after he had spent so much time practicing in the sun.

  “Well, since my skin is actually paler than yours, what does it make you?” he asked quietly.

  “Get out of my house!”

  “Beatrice, it’s my house. And what are you doing up here?” Lily intervened.

  The woman turned around, contempt all over her face.

  “I heard noises. I came to investigate.”

  “It’s only us.”

  “I can see that,” she said, glancing at Malakai with a snarl. “Get this…person out of here.”

  “No,” Lily said in a voice so cold Malakai wouldn’t have recognized her if she hadn’t been standing right in front of him. “Malakai is in my house and he’s welcome to stay as long as he wants.”

  Lily sounded so strong Malakai’s heart swelled with pride.

  “I’m not leaving until he’s gone.”

  “Really? I wonder what Uncle Charlie would say about that if I texted him?”

  The woman stared at Lily for a long moment, then, without adding a word, she left.

  A few moments after she had disappeared down the stairs, they heard the front door open and close. The moment she was outside, Lily sagged against the doorframe.

  “Lily,” Malakai said, crossing the few steps that separated them. He dropped his folded clothes on the floor and took her in his arms. “Are you okay?”

  “I am now.”

  Then Malakai remembered something he had practically forgotten. Lily knew everything her mother felt toward her, and the thought broke his heart. He had just witnessed firsthand the woman’s hatred and could only imagine how Lily must feel. If he had to live with someone like that woman, he wouldn’t last, even though he wasn’t an empath.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” she answered. “You’re holding me, and I love the way you feel even if you’re worried out of your mind right now. But you’re blocking her.”

  Malakai kissed the top of her head. “I love the way you feel too…well, not the same way,” he added with a chuckle. “I mean when you’re like that, in my arms.”

  They remained like this a few moments more, then Lily sighed. She took a step away from him and walked into her bedroom. She was wearing a loose gray and pink tank top, which left a lot less to the imagination than her regular school attire. She was also wearing a pair of pajama shorts, and Malakai found her so sexy he hoped the lights were dimmed enough to hide his reaction to her. She went to her bed and jumped on it, waiting for him.

  He grabbed his clothes from the floor and followed her into the bedroom, blushing as he closed the door. He put his clothes on her dresser and walked to her bed where he sat by her legs.

  “I…” he began, but not knowing what to say next, he glanced at his hands.

  Then he looked up at her. She was waiting expectantly, giving him time to gather his thoughts. He liked that about her. She was never in a hurry when she was with him.

  “I need to know what’s okay and what’s not,” he finally said. “I need to know when to stop.” He blushed furiously, but if they didn’t have the conversation now, he didn’t know if he would be able to stop himself if he was taking things too far. “I love you. And I don’t want to take you down paths you’re not ready to travel.”

  “Oh, Malakai,” she said, a warm smile on her face.

  In the next moment, Lily was on his lap, her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly.

  “I’m scared,” she admitted. “I want to spend the night with you, but I’m not ready for all of it. I…” She pulled away and looked up at him, then looked down rapidly. “I’ve never been with a guy before.”

  “I’ve never been with a girl before,” Malakai said, smiling at her reassuringly. “I’m not in a hurry, you know.”

  His body was telling him loud and clear he wanted her, but he would respect her. She had a lot more to lose than he did, and he realized that.

  “I want to spend the night with you but sleeping…and kissing,” she said, looking at him again with a shy smile. “When you’re with me, it’s like I have a big fuzzy feeling inside and at the football field, it made me sleep so much better, even if we were outside, on the hard ground, with bugs and mosquitos. I really need ‘better’ right now.”

  As she said that, she looked so sad, so defeated, a flare of anger crossed his heart. Then his heart filled with something else he was dying to give: protection and support. Lily needed him to protect her mind and soul, and it filled his heart with a sense of purpose, the likes of which he had never felt before.

  He wanted to be up to par. Just like he had promised on homecoming night, he wanted to be the one to protect her from the ugliness around her. He wanted to be the one she would rely on. He wanted it with a fierceness he hadn’t known he possessed.

  Malakai brought his hand to her cheek and caressed it with his thumb. “I’m here,” he said.

  The insecurity all but left Lily’s beautiful gray eyes, and she smiled at him.

  A few moments later, they lay in bed and pulled the blankets over themselves. Malakai removed his T-shirt while Lily turned off the light. Then she snuggled next to his side, her hand across his chest. Malakai’s body responded to her proximity to the point of pain. He wanted her, badly, but she had set the limit, and he would respect that, at all costs.

  “I could have you next to me like this forever,” he said after a few moments of silence.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  Then Malakai did what he had wanted to do for so long. He flipped her on her back, and covered her body with his, pinning her between the bed and himself. With his arms on each side of her face, he slowly brought his lips to hers, and she welcomed him with a soft moan. This little moan all but set Malakai on fire.

  As the kissing intensified, becoming more urgent by the moment, Malakai imagined her naked under him, his hands touching her soft curves, him making love to her slowly, her moaning under him, him coming into her, millions of stars exploding behind his c
losed eyelids. He was about to lose control when two small hands grabbed his face and pulled him away from her sweet lips.

  “You want me,” Lily said, her eyes shiny from their kissing.

  “Of course I do!”

  Lily just stared at him, as if she didn’t comprehend what he was saying.

  “You’re beautiful, perfect, you smell of green tea, you’re soft,” he said, caressing her cheek. “And every time we walk in school, I’m afraid someone else will sweep you off your feet, and I’ll become a distant thought in your beautiful mind.”

  “Oh, Malakai, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you deserve what’s best.”

  “You’re what’s best. For me, you are.”

  “Lily, I love you,” he said, his eyes searching hers.

  Lily’s breath caught in her throat.

  Malakai kissed her one more time, then rolled onto his back, pulling her to him. He wanted to kiss her more, but if he did, he was afraid he would lose all control. Once she was snuggled against him again, he kissed the top of her head, then caressed her back.

  “Malakai, I love you, too,” she said, after a few moments of silence.

  He didn’t need to be an empath to know she meant it as much as he did. He loved that she loved him too and could say it. Slowly, he squeezed her against his side and kissed the top of her head again.

  It felt good not to be alone anymore.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  LILY

  When Lily woke up the next morning, Malakai was wrapped around her back and holding her with his hand on her belly, his other arm under her neck, right below the pillow. He was warm and at peace, but he was waking up too. His mind was still sluggish but was slowly becoming coherent.

  “Hi,” he mumbled, confirming Lily’s suspicion.

  He pulled her closer to him and Lily felt, against her back, that he was awakened in more ways than one.

  “It’s good to wake up with you in my arms. I could definitely get used to that.”

  His words made her heart swell to the point her ribcage hurt. If she were to believe Beatrice, she wasn’t worthy of a guy who loved her, a guy like Malakai.

  But Malakai thought she was worthy of him.

  And he loved her.

  “But I have to get ready,” he said, sadly. “I have practice with the guys in a little while, and I need to go.”

  “I know.”

  She turned around and kissed him. She knew he was self-conscious about morning breath, and so was she, but she found it in herself not to care. This boy, this man, loved her. Why should she care about something so minor?

  “Do you think we can do that, like, every day?” Lily asked. “You know, you and me, waking up in the same bed?”

  “Let me think…” Malakai said, glancing up. “Yes!” he said, looking back at her with a wide grin on his face.

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her again. When the kissing became too heated, he pulled away with a groan.

  “I really do have to go,” he said, putting his forehead against hers. “I don’t want to.”

  “But the others are counting on you.”

  “Yeah.”

  They both got up, and thirty minutes later, Lily was walking Malakai to the front door. Once there, he turned around to face her and gently put his hands on her cheeks. He lifted her face toward his and kissed her gently.

  “I don’t want to go,” he whispered against her lips.

  “You have too. I’ll see you later, okay?”

  He gave her one final kiss and walked out the door. From the open doorway, Lily watched him pull from the curb and drive away. She had just closed the door and was about to turn around when she suddenly felt it: intense and irrational anger. In the next instant, she received a blow behind the head and knocked her forehead on the closed door in front of her.

  “You little slut!” Beatrice screeched, as Lily turned around.

  Lily hadn’t felt her approach. She hadn’t felt the chaos she now perceived coming from her mother. Beatrice felt insane with rage. If feelings had colors, this would look like a mosaic of rapidly changing ones.

  Beatrice slapped her again, and as Lily brought her hands to protect her head, she continued hitting her.

  “Stop! Stop!”

  But Beatrice didn’t stop.

  The chaos turned into anger, then to chaos again, and Beatrice kept on hitting her, scaring Lily to an inch of her wits.

  “How could you? His jeep was parked in front of the house all night. The neighbors are going to know the little slut you really are. You couldn’t even do something decent with your life. You had to humiliate me by sleeping with that half-breed.

  “And now, everybody will know you’re just a tramp, an ungrateful little bitch.”

  Lily finally found her way to the stairs and ran up, Beatrice close behind. At least, while she was smaller, Lily was quicker. Once she got to her room, she slammed the door and locked it. A second later, Beatrice began pounding on the door, shouting insults at her.

  Lily was too shocked to fully comprehend what had just happened. Slowly, her eyes fixed on the door, she backed away, taking steps after retreating steps, trying to put her head around what was going on. Never in her life had she thought something like this would happen to anyone.

  But it was happening.

  To her.

  She had to get out of here, fast.

  Lily frantically looked around for her phone, then she saw it.

  On the floor.

  Destroyed.

  She then turned to her computer.

  Also on the floor, broken.

  The implications of her broken modes of communication crashed into her, and tears came to her eyes.

  It was premeditated. Beatrice had planned this all along, which made things even more unrealistic.

  How could anyone believe something like that was happening to her?

  She had no way to reach the outside world now.

  She was trapped.

  Lily sat on the floor, putting her arms around her folded legs, at a loss for what to do.

  “I’ll be waiting for you,” Beatrice screeched on the other side of the door.

  Beatrice walked away, but Lily felt her in the house, waiting, anticipating, like a predator who had cornered her prey.

  Beatrice had really gone off the deep end.

  Lily had to find a way to reach out. She had to find a way to get help. She felt like she was in a bad horror movie, the type you would laugh at because it was so ridiculously unbelievable.

  As insane as it may sound, this was not a movie.

  It was real.

  For a moment there, Lily wondered if vampires really existed.

  Her mind racing, her heart still beating out of her chest from the fright, she looked around her room. Through her tears, she saw a pile of paper on her desk and an idea came to her.

  She stood up, grabbed a few sheets and a pen, then wrote a nine, then a one, then another one, one to a page, in black marker. She took the pages to her window and taped them there, hoping Sandra or someone at the Joneses’ would see them.

  And it worked.

  An hour later, an hour that felt like a year to Lily, Sandra made her way across the street, glancing at her window. A few seconds later, the doorbell rang, but Lily knew Beatrice would never let her friend in. Frantically, Lily grabbed a pen and another piece of paper and wrote Charlie on it. As Sandra made her way back across the street, she looked at her window and nodded.

  Lily had the impression another year had passed before Charlie finally showed up, even though it had been less than thirty minutes. When he got out of his car, Lily saw Sandra run to him and point to her window. Charlie then ran to the house, and he did not let Beatrice stop him.

  “Lily!” he screamed. “Lily!”

  Lily felt how furious he was and how worried.

  As soon as she heard him coming up the stairs, she unlocked the door a
nd threw it open. She then rushed to her uncle and collided with him, his arms encircling her.

  “What happened? What happened?” he asked her, putting a hand on her cheek and pulling her hair away from her face with the other.

  Lily’s eyes felt swollen, and her head hurt. She felt the lump forming on her forehead from hitting the door.

  “That little slut slept with that boy,” Beatrice screamed, coming up the stairs followed by Sandra.

  “Did she hit you?” Charlie asked, pulling her away from him and putting his hands on her shoulders. He leaned down to look into her eyes. “Did she?”

  Lily nodded, and Charlie became rigid.

  “She deserved it, that little tramp. She never listens to anything I say. She just follows her own program with no consideration to me, to what it would do to this family.”

  “Charlie, tell me it’s not real. Tell me I’m in a bad dream,” she said, tears running from her eyes again.

  Charlie turned toward Beatrice with eyes so cold they would have frozen hell over.

  “If you weren’t a woman, I would give you my fist in your face.”

  Lily felt Beatrice internally flinch at the menace, even though her face showed none of it.

  “Go downstairs, now, before I forget you are one,” he added.

  Beatrice crossed her arms in front of her chest and raised her chin.

  “Now, or I swear…” Charlie said.

  Beatrice unfolded her arms slowly, threw venom at Lily, and left.

  “Sandra, please go home and call your uncle Ben over.”

  “No, Charlie, no cops,” Lily said.

  “Yes, Lily, he has to come,” Charlie said, taking her face in his hands as Sandra left them. “It’s the only way to make her stop. We need to scare her enough that she will never ever touch you again. If the cops come, we will have a much easier way to get your house back. We will have a documented history of violence.”

  Lily didn’t know if it was true, but Charlie believed it to be. He wanted her safe, desperately.

  “But…I thought you already had something on her,” she said, puzzled.

  “Yes, I do but let’s get all the help we can get,” he said, putting a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Now go get dressed and prepare a bag. As soon as Sandra’s uncle is gone, I’m taking you to my place.