by Dahlia Lu
If you cared for him then you shouldn’t have wounded him the way you did.
But she also cared for other people.
So you sacrificed his feelings?
It was the lesser of two evils. Or at least she thought so.
Just because he was a broken man, you think that you couldn’t break him down any further?
No! Amara shook away the guilty conscience from her head. No! I don’t think that at all!
She couldn’t understand why he didn’t ask her the questions she knew he was dying to ask. He was making it easy for her to get away with her lie and he wasn’t supposed to! He should make her struggle with it. He should make her suffer for it.
“Here,” Raya handed her a clean piece of tissue. For a moment there, she had almost forgotten that she was in Raya’s company.
“Thank you.”
“You should tell him the truth,” Raya said after Amara took her into confidence.
“Are you kidding me? The first person he will go after is you.”
“It doesn’t seem right that you’ve chosen me over him or yourself.”
“I’m not choosing you over him,” Amara denied. “I just don’t want you to die.”
Raya heaved a sigh. “Haven’t I told you that a heart is a heavy burden? You can’t protect everyone, you know.”
“How could I turn my back on you and look the other way if I can do something about it?”
“So you turn your back on him?”
“You sound like my conscience.”
“Amara… sometimes I wish you didn’t give a damn. But I know that’s not you. I have been trying to figure you out. Why should it matter to you if I live or die? My existence or lack of it would not affect your life.”
“Is it wrong of me to want to hold on to the people I care about? It’s no mystery, Raya. I’m only human, and I have very basic human needs. I fear death and separation.”
“It’s even deeper than that. What is it about you, Amara?”
“Even deeper than basic human instincts? I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Maybe it’s because I want to preserve the relationships that I have instead of the ones I’m not allowed to have.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Amara whispered.
“You should tell him,” Raya revisited the topic. “You don’t want him to misunderstand you even when you’re in your grave.”
“But you—”
“Stop worrying about me, Amara. He would never be able to get to me. I have my husband to protect me, remember?”
“You clearly don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“You must tell him the truth,” Raya repeated again, this time her voice allowed no room for argument. “You cannot let a man walk around with this kind of doubt in his mind. If the doubt takes root, he could come to hate you. It is only a matter of time. Fix it before it becomes a bloody mess.”
“If I ‘fix’ it, it will become a bloody mess. I would rather he come to hate me. He seems to cope with that particular emotion pretty well.”
“He would leave you.”
Amara clutched the fabric of her skirt and nodded. It wouldn’t matter. My 24th birthday is approaching.
Raya shook her head in disapproval. “I still don’t get you. If you will not tell him, then I will. It would require that I face him personally, but—”
“It would hurt me even more if something happens to you, Raya.” At least one of us should have a happily ever after.
Raya hugged Amara and gently stroked Amara’s hair. “You silly, silly girl.”
Amara came home from Raya’s home five minutes past eleven. She fed the baby, burped her, bathed her, and placed the baby on the bed next to Lizzie. She then went to prepare a nourishing porridge and brought it up to Lizzie’s room on a breakfast tray. She put the baby back in the crib and then placed the breakfast tray on Lizzie’s lap. Lizzie looked so pale and fragile. Even sitting up was a chore for her.
It was difficult being a woman.
Her health had been declining since the pregnancy due to complications. She was persistent on having the baby even when the doctor advised her that the pregnancy could endanger her life. Lizzie went against all the doctor’s orders to have her baby. In all of her years of knowing Lizzie, Amara had never been so awed by Lizzie’s strength and character. She had nearly died giving birth to her daughter and had to be in intensive care for many weeks. After the intensive care, she became a resident at the hospital for over a year because of her weakened condition. She was recently released. In fact, it had only been a month since she had come home. If it weren’t for the money that Noctis had left for her, Amara wouldn’t know what to do with the massive hospital bills coming in every month.
Amara pushed the curtains to the sides to let light into the room, but the outside looked even more gloom and doom. Another storm was approaching. “The weather has been so strange lately,” Amara said. “Were you able to sleep through the night?”
Lizzie shook her head.
“I thought so.”
“The weatherman said we should continue to expect bad weather in the coming week since it was one of the biggest solar storms of the century.”
“Good thing that the loud thunder didn’t wake the baby last night.”
“She’s growing like a weed,” Lizzie said with a gentle smile as she was stirring her hot porridge.
“She’ll be growing even faster from now on. But that’s a good thing. Soon I won’t need to wake up in the middle of the night and lose sleep anymore.”
“She still wakes you up in the middle of the night?” Lizzie asked.
“Not as often as she used to. She could sleep through some nights now. The first few months were brutal, but now she’s a little angel.”
“I’m sorry, Amara.”
Amara blinked at her friend’s apology. “For what?”
“It was supposed to be my duty to take care of my daughter but I passed that responsibility on to you. I feel horrible.”
“Stop saying that. She’s a happy little burden. You quit your worrying and concentrate on getting better.”
“I’ll get better, I promise.”
“That’s good. Now eat your porridge before it gets cold and then take your medicine.”
“Hey, Amara?”
“What?”
“My husband told me that he’s back.”
A heavy feeling weighted her down at the mention of Noctis. “Yeah, he’s back.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you spend the night with him?”
“Eat your food,” Amara changed the subject.
“Did you?” Lizzie asked teasingly.
“No. He didn’t stay the night.”
“Why? Did he lose interest in you?”
“…Maybe.”
“Don’t let him get away. Win him back.”
“Why?”
“What if he becomes interested in another broad?”
“What if he does?” Amara asked downheartedly.
“You’re kidding me, right? Who is it that still keeps his clothes in the closet? Who is it that rejected a perfectly good man like Camden when he proposed marriage? Don’t tell me you don’t care because I’m not buying it.”
“Camden is a good man,” Amara admitted. “But we are not attracted to each other that way.”
“You were not attracted to him that way,” Lizzie corrected. “He was crazy about you. You pushed him away again and again and now he’s marrying his nurse.”
“She’s a lovely girl.”
“Who is it that hasn’t gotten a date in over a year?”
“In my defense, Lizzie, I was too busy raising a baby and running a household because no one would work here longer than a week. I’ve been busy.”
“And who was it that refused to move out of this house or the bedroom you two have shared together because of sentimental re
asons? Hmm?”
“…It would be troublesome. Oh, eat your food! If you keep on interrogating me, there will be no tapioca pudding.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll stop. I’m just making sure you know what you want.”
“Just wanting is not enough, Lizzie. Not when there are so many obstacles in the way.”
Gemma’s crying could be heard through the portable baby monitor Amara always carried with her around the house.
“I’ll go check on her,” Amara said.
Approaching the nursery, Amara noticed that the door was open wide. The baby had stopped crying. There was no sound coming from the room. Amara panicked. She lunged into the room as fast as she could and stopped breathing when she saw Noctis standing over the baby’s crib.
Oh god.
“Don’t you touch her!” she screamed at him.
Noctis turned away from the child when he heard the sharp warning from his bride. Her beautiful grey eyes were glaring at him with the highest degree of contempt. She lunged at the crib like a madwoman and thoroughly inspected the child. He watched her frantically scoop the child into her protective arms and back away from him. It was then that he understood the meaning of her glare.
She thought that he was going to harm the child.
Once again, he didn’t know how he should response to her behavior. There was certainly a dark humor about it, and it spoke loudly about her opinion of him.
“I am many things, Amara,” he said softly to the fierce protective tigress before him, “but I am not monstrous.”
He had no hope of being able to change her opinion of him, but he wanted her to at least understand that much.
She hadn’t put down her guard toward him. She reminded him of a cornered porcupine. There were sharp quills all around her, promising hell if he took another step toward her. He had always found her protective instincts admirable, but not this time around. There was something about the way that she was clinging on to another woman’s child that stirred him up inside. If only she had used that same strength to… If only she felt the same way about…
He took a step toward her and she responded by pressing her back against the wall as though she wanted to sink into it. He reached out and grasped her supple cheeks in his hand and forced their eyes to meet. Frightened yet stubborn grey eyes looked back at him. There was more to what was happening than he could put into words, but she hadn’t a single clue why he was angry.
“Do you think you have the strength to fight me off if I attack?”
She pressed her dark quivering lashes against her wet cheeks and whispered the word, “No.”
“Do you truly think that you can protect anything if I decide otherwise?”
The baby in her arms started to cry again.
“Please don’t do this…” she pleaded softly, shedding those condemning tears that were meant to soften him. But it didn’t work in her favor this time. There was a need to remind her that he could easily rip out each and every one of her quills so that she would think twice about using them against him again. He had showed her more patience than he ever had with another living soul, but why couldn’t she at least understand that much?
“Tell me, Amara Spelling. Use all of the courage that you have in your body and answer me. Why haven’t we made any progress? Why do you still hate me with the same fiery passion? Haven’t I given you all that you’ve asked? Haven’t I done all that you’ve demanded of me?” He gritted his teeth and asked the final question, “Is there truly no hope for us at all?”
Her watery grey eyes reflected his image the way she perceived him like two mirroring lakes. They seemed to make up for her lack of words. He released her when he got the answer he sought. He turned his back to her as he walked away. He could still hear her soft sobbing blended in with the child’s cry as he marched down the hall without a backward glance.
Amara washed her face before she headed down to the kitchen to prepare her dinner. The simple macaroni and cheese only took her six minutes or so to make. She placed the bowl on the dining room table and seated herself. She was having a meal alone again like she did the past year. She hadn’t seen nor heard from Noctis since their encounter in the nursery. He had even skipped his usual routine of joining her at the table for every meal.
She may have done it this time. He may have grown sick and tired of her always antagonizing him, grown sick and tired of her always siding with someone else, or maybe just plain sick and tired of her.
All of a sudden, the macaroni and cheese became too thick to swallow. In the past, he had been so determined to keep her with him despite her being willing or not, but now he probably wouldn’t even want to see her face. Why any man would want to be with a woman who always makes him feel his worse was beyond her comprehension.
She didn’t feel like finishing her dinner so she covered it up with saran and placed it in the refrigerator. While she was at the refrigerator, she picked up a bottle of cold medicine from the shelf and swallowed one full gulp. She had been using it as a sleep aid for the past several nights because she couldn’t fall asleep on her own. Her guilty conscience would not leave her in peace. She had gotten an average of three hours of sleep each night even with her temporary and probably not-the-best-idea sleep-aid.
When she closed the refrigerator door, the magnetic calendar was in front of her. Lizzie had drawn a heart shape on the date of her birthday. She did a little calculation in her head to figure out what the current date was. She hadn’t left the house often in the past year and she occasionally lost track of time.
Amara turned away from the refrigerator when she saw the moving shadows from the corner of her eyes. She let out a soft sigh. The emissaries from the Realm of The Dead were back for her again. They must have been annoyed after so many failed attempts, but it wasn’t like she was resisting them. She was letting things run its course. She hadn’t asked to be rescued. She had even fought her own survival instincts not to jump out of the way then the chandelier fell from the ceiling.
Amara left the kitchen and went upstairs to check up on the baby. Little Gemma was sleeping soundly like the angel she was. She then paid Lizzie a visit to say goodnight. Lizzie was already sleeping so Amara returned to her bedroom to run a nice warm bubble bath to soak in before she retired for the night. Soaking in the warm running tub, Amara’s thoughts wandered.
“How long are you going to sulk here, Summit?”
The goddess Gaila was observing him from her throne. She rested her cheek on the knuckle of her right hand in a gesture of boredom. Every so often, she frowned.
“I am not sulking,” Noctis denied as he massaged his left temple. “I have a headache.”
“You have been sitting here for quite a while. It should have gotten better by now.”
“Just let me be, Gaila. There is no need for you to keep me company.”
“I am not keeping you company. I am afraid of leaving my daughters alone with you,” Gaila corrected him.
“Put your fear to rest, goddess. Your daughters are the last thing on my mind.”
“You seem genuinely troubled.”
“I am troubled. This damn headache won’t go away.”
“From the look of it, it will not go away anytime soon. Your troubles run deeper than just a mere headache. What is truly on your mind?”
“Just let me sit here for a little longer.”
“You have been sitting at that very spot by yourself for days with little progress. Perhaps I shall lend you my wisdom and send you on your way.”
Noctis sighed. “Have I overstayed my welcome?”
“It appears that you are only sitting here because you do not want to return home. What are you trying to avoid, Summit?”
“I am not avoiding anything.”
“You cannot fool me, Summit. I cannot help you if I do not know how to help you.”
“I am living the consequences of relentlessly trying to keep something that was never meant to be mine. And now I am facing the reality of
what I must live without. I am beyond help. Just let me sit here a while longer.”
Chapter Three
Noctis cracked the door and peered into his bedroom. If his bride was still awake, he did not wish to be seen. The room was dark and his bed was empty. He heard running water so she must be taking a bath. As he was turning from the door, he noticed something wasn’t quite right. He peered into the room again and saw a large amount of water seeping into the bedroom floor from the bathroom door.
He panicked. His body responded quicker than this train of thought. He swept into his bedroom like a full pledge tornado and unintentionally broke the doorknob on the bathroom door as he entered. His bride was dosing in the overflowing bathtub with her head barely sticking out of the water. He spat out a vulgar curse in his native language as he turned off the faucets. He lifted her from the overflowing tub and carried her to the bed.
She was still breathing. He was tapping on her cheek to wake her up after many failed attempt at calling her name. Lifting her dark eyelashes, sleepy grey eyes looked back at him.
“Hmm?” She responded.
“What were you trying to do?” he exploded.
The intense volume of his voice shocked her awake. She blinked like a confused child who was being scolded and didn’t know the reason why.
He readjusted his voice to a reasonable indoor tone. “What were you thinking falling asleep in the bathtub?”
“Falling asleep…?” It took a moment to jot her memories. “Oh, it must be the cold medicine. It was so warm and comfortable that I didn’t realize that I’d fallen asleep. I haven’t had a goodnight sleep in a while. I’ll be more careful next time, I promise.”
He frowned at her promise, deepening the expression line between his brows. “There will be a next time?”
“I don’t mean…” she paused mid-sentence and shied away from his eyes. Her right arm extended to reach the edge of the comforter and swept it across her naked body. Her lean, tone legs were still exposed to him. She was trying to be subtle in her quest to cover her nudity, but it couldn’t be more obvious.