by Abby Gale
She looked excited as she pulled me to the living room.
“Sit down and close your eyes,” she ordered.
I chuckle at her enthusiasm. “Why?”
“Zeke, please!”
“Okay, okay,” I said and sat on the couch, closing my eyes like she wanted me to.
I felt her get on my lap. It wasn’t unusual for us. She loved to sit on my lap whenever we were in the same place, so I smiled, waiting for her to stop moving so I could wrap my arms around her like I always did.
My whole body tensed when I felt her straddling my thighs. My smile froze on my face as her petite body wiggled on my lap to get comfortable. This was unusual. The way my body reacted to her. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat.
What the fuck was happening?
Calm down, Zeke. You’re just a twenty-two-year old guy who had a female on his lap. Your eyes are closed so your stupid brain can’t see it’s your niece, I said to myself, trying to make sense of the situation. Your fourteen-year-old niece, I added.
When Maya leaned down toward me, our chests brushed each other. I gritted my teeth.
“Maya? What are you doing, baby girl?” I say through my teeth, trying to sound as nonchalant as I could.
“Shh, I’m trying to find the clasp,” she said.
I tried to relax. Soon, I felt something around my neck.
“A necklace?” I asked without opening my eyes.
“Not just a necklace,” she said, kissing my cheek.
Was it a little too close to my lips?
I shook my head.
“You can open your eyes,” she said, and I opened my eyes with a sigh of relief.
When I grabbed the necklace to see it, I realized it was a locket. Slowly, I opened the locket, and there it was, her and my picture at each side. Caressing her picture, I closed the lid and kept rubbing the locket. It was nothing fancy, just a simple rectangular design black in color, but I loved it. The sharp edges on the corners, the worn out look, the color… It was perfect for us.
“Do you like it?” she asked softly.
“I love it, baby. I’ll never take it off. Thank you,” I said, hugging her close to me.
As I sat there with her in my lap, I ignored the way my body was still tense.
I stood and closed my eyes as the memory passed by. We had too many moments together it was so hard to untangle the innocent ones from the inappropriate ones. It was moments like this I couldn’t tell if I was in love with her all my life or if it was a love that grew from familiarity and the same fucked up darkness. But as I reminisced every memory, my need for her grew bigger each time.
As I walked through the aisles my sick head imagined her in every kind of item I saw, sexy lingerie included. I wanted to kick myself in the balls, but instead, I forced my gaze away from the seductive pieces, and I chose the most basic designs for her. After grabbing jeans, sweatpants, yoga pants, and a few t-shirts for her, I hurried back to the hospital.
I was worried about being late as I climbed the stairs two at a time, but the therapist was just closing the door to Maya’s room. She looked kind of shaken and unoccupied while she rubbed her neck. I walked toward the room slowly.
When she saw me, something changed in her face. Something I couldn’t really name. She looked down at the bags in my hands before studying my face. I didn’t know what she was looking for, but her shoulders sagged, and she sighed.
“Mr. Wyatt,” she finally acknowledged me.
“Miss Bailey,” I said with a nod.
“Maya will be discharged tomorrow,” she said.
“Is there anything I should do for her?”
“Yes. Take good care of her,” she said and sighed before continuing, “I know I said she should see someone, but don’t force her to do it.”
I nodded.
She sighed again. What was it with the sighs?
“Don’t force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. She needs to be happy,” she murmured. I could see she wanted to add more, but she shook her head and turned to leave. “I’m here if she’ll want to see me,” she said over her shoulder.
I frowned at her but refused to give my focus to anyone else but Maya as I entered her room.
CHAPTER 11
MAYA
Zeke stayed next to me during my stay in the hospital. In three days, he hadn’t left me alone except for the therapy sessions I had with the hospital therapist. During the days, we hadn’t talk if it’s wasn' necessary, we were two strangers in the same hospital room. At night, as I was in and out of sleep because of the exhaustion my body was dealing with, I felt his hand wrapped around mine or caressing my cheek from time to time. His touch was warm, comforting, familiar and trying to pull the emotions out of me, but I chose emptiness over the feelings.
The doctor came to check up on me once more before letting me out of the hospital. Zeke didn’t try to talk to me or make me talk, and I didn’t ask him where we were headed as he helped me into his car and took off down the road.
Looking out the window I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of my situation as we passed the million-dollar places in a blur. My kind of world was dead, monochrome, and suffering, but his world was alive, multi-colored, and vibrating with joy. I turned to look at Zeke’s profile, he was the epitome of tall, dark, and dangerous, but he always wore the dangerous bad boy look so well, people were always ready to eat from his hand. Only I knew his soft, caring side.
I let my eyes roam over his sharp features. He looked posh just like the mansions we passed by. He was dressed in a tailored suit, but there was the familiar roughness in the way he held himself, the raw power that only a tough upbringing could have given a person was radiating from him with every step he took. In my world, people looked weak with the stench the rough life left on us, but he embraced that stench, wore it like an armor between the world and himself; he used that weakness to his advantage and made himself rise above the others. As I looked at him, it was hard to imagine him somewhere different from all this wealth. No one would have believed he was the same guy, who slept hungry just because we didn’t have enough food for both of us, the same guy who did street fights to put something in our stomach, the same guy who worked in every kind of job even if it left him sleepless just to look after a girl.
“What are you doing?” Zeke came to my room with a plate in his hand.
Pushing the Math textbook away, I huffed, “Trying to understand what all these numbers mean.”
He chuckled. “Any success?”
“No. I hate Math. I don’t understand why people try to mix letters with numbers. Basic operations were easy, but I lost all understanding when they’ve added x and y to the calculation.”
He placed my dinner on my table, before saying, “How about you take a break and eat your dinner first? We can study together later.”
Nodding, I pulled my bowl closer to me. It was cereal.
“I totally forgot I had to do some shopping today. We only have cereal. Do you want me to go and buy you something else?” he said apologetically.
I shook my head. “No, cereal is my favorite,” I tried to reassure him and started eating. When I saw he didn’t have his own bowl, I asked, “Why don’t you eat?”
“I’ve already eaten,” he said, laying in my bed.
Nodding, I kept eating. By the time I was done, he’d already fallen asleep. He looked so peaceful. I looked at my textbook but closed it. He’d been so tired lately, I didn’t want to wake him up. Instead, I finished my other assignments and let him sleep.
When I was finally done, I got into the bed next to him. His arms circled around me and pulled me closer even in his unconscious state.
I heard his stomach growl, and he moaned.
“Zeke? Are you hungry?” I whispered.
“Sleep, Maya,” he murmured sleepily, hugging me to his chest tightly.
“You didn’t eat, did you? You gave all of the cereal to me?” I whispered, pushing back the tears that burned my e
yes.
“I spared some for your breakfast.”
I moved to get out of the bed to prepare whatever was left for him, but he didn’t let me go. “I just want to sleep, Maya. Please. I’m tired. Sleep,” he said. His voice broke me, I settled back into his arms. Stifling my sobs, I turned to kiss his cheek.
He smiled softly and placed his head in the crook of my neck as he slept.
The car stopped outside of a high building, there was no filth, no moss, no flaw in this place. I looked at the marble floor that led us to the lobby of the building, even the floor was spotless. I didn’t like this building. Everything was leather, steel, glass, and marble in here, it was soulless, I preferred the aching soul of South Park. I knew it was ridiculous to even compare the two, but I felt like an intruder as Zeke led me to the elevator. Here, in this too perfect building, I was the moss people hated – foreign, wild, and unwanted.
The elevator moved to the top floor. I wanted to laugh as I looked at the P sign on the elevator panel. The elevator door opened to a foyer that was as flawless and sickly perfect as the rest of the place. My palms were sweaty with every step I took into the living room area. His loft was big enough to fit my house in South Park in it five times, if not more. I felt Zeke’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t look into his eyes; I felt like vomiting.
Zeke had never liked the big spaces, he used to think those places were soulless, alien. He always told me the familiarity and closeness would be found in the small places, but he was living in this place, cold and guarded. I was wrong when I first saw him. He must have changed after all. As I stayed in the middle of the loft he called home I felt like I didn’t know the guy I thought I knew with every fiber of my being. The floor to wall windows were haunting me with the view of everything under us. With all the flawless furniture around me, this place was a castle and a prison at the same time. Castle because in this place I felt above all the other human beings, powerful, but I also felt like a prisoner, so cheap and worthless in this luxury and uncomfortable like my existence was the only flaw in this cold perfection.
“Your room is this way,” Zeke said.
I turned to look at him. “Your place is… nice,” I said curtly. Nice wasn’t the word I would describe this place, not even close, but it seemed like the right one.
He snorted and extended his arm to the hallway that was probably leading us to my room. “I know you don’t like the place. No need to pretend,” he told me as we walked side by side.
His height and proximity would have overwhelmed my senses in another time, but the numbness inside me drew it into nothingness. He didn’t want me to pretend? Then I wouldn’t even bother. I shrugged.
My room as he called it was white. The walls, the wardrobe, the bed, the rug… everything in the room was white; a hole of nothingness in a fake white world. The only color in that room was the view from the window.
I would have hated the room, and that was why I loved it.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the white wall in front of me. There was no excitement, no comfort in me as I watched the blank space.
“We’ll decorate it the way you wanted to, Maya,” Zeke said.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to feel comfortable here. This room has shown me what I shouldn’t forget: I didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong with me. Maybe we were both black in this world, but he was the night sky while I was a self-built cage of darkness. And our resemblance ended with our roots. We could’ve never been together. He’d left me once and would leave me again.
CHAPTER 12
ZEKE
She was different.
When she first opened her eyes, I saw the girl I loved, the one who brought me to my knees every time she looked at me with longing. She’s the one who had power over me, whenever she touched me, even though I had to stop her each time. Her beautiful dark eyes were always full of passion although her life was a mess. Her smile was the brightest I’d ever seen on a person even though she didn’t have much to smile about. But when I got back into that hospital room after talking to her doctor, that girl was gone. Her eyes were dull, reminding me of the moment I saw her in that bathroom. The fire in her had left her. There was only emptiness, a shell in the place of the girl who haunted my every moment.
I thumped my head against the wall I was leaning on in my room. She was in the next room, but the distance between us was much more than the wall that separated us. I watched her as she was sitting on the bed like a breathing statue and tried to find a way to bring her back, but I knew her well enough to understand that nothing I would say could help her. I knew she was angry at me, I knew she was afraid that I would leave her again. I could read her better than I read myself. And it hurt. She and I were so much alike. Dark eyes, dark hair, fair skin, but our resembles were so much deeper than that. Our souls were the same, just like Catherine and Heathcliff. And I could feel hers was suffering as much as mine. I couldn’t stand seeing her like that even though seeing women struggling or in pain got me off, her pain was at another level, so I left her.
You left a girl who lost her soul because of you. She’s alone in an empty, soulless room just like its owner, my self-hatred snarled at me, and there was nothing I could say to defend myself.
She was sitting on the couch, drawing sketches in her notebook. Her face glowed whenever she let her pencil touch the paper. She became ethereal with her beauty, looking at her always left me breathless. My eyes roamed over her figure. The creamy skin of her legs was on full display with the denim shorts she was wearing. I knew the first button of her shorts was open, her body gained womanly curves this year her old denim shorts were tight on her. The flare of her hips filled the fabric so good, it made me dizzy.
What the…
Shaking my head, I focused on her face. It was her birthday today, yet she was in her own bubble, oblivious of the day she graced this world with her beauty. That pained me. She was just a fifteen-year-old girl who should’ve been thinking about partying and getting drunk, but here she was, looking like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. The melancholy mixed with her beauty was haunting, soul-shaking.
I walked toward her with determination in my steps. Her gaze left the sketch she was creating only when I stopped right in front of her. Her eyes smiled at me from their dark depths. The look so happy, carefree, and trusting. The look reserved only for me.
I peeked at her sketch, and something inside me shifted. It was me. I was smiling in her sketch, and I knew that was how I looked when I looked at her. I only smiled at her, for her.
“You flatter me. I don’t look this good,” I taunted her, only to see the blush cover her cheeks.
“You do, and you know it,” she fired back. My beautiful baby girl.
My heart grew in my chest as I looked at her.
“Get ready. I’m taking you out,” I blurted out.
“What?” she breathed out, and I swallowed when her breathy voice caused my dick to twitch.
“We’re going out tonight. Birthday girls shouldn’t stay at home.”
Her shock was such a delight as it was a pain. She had no expectations when it came to herself, even though she deserved the world.
“Go. I’m waiting right here,” I urged her.
With a smile and a bounce in her steps only happiness could give, she went to her room. Leaving me behind with a heart that hammered in my chest and a dick that had inappropriate ideas for someone who was forbidden.
It was the best date I’d ever been on. Pathetic for a guy like me, I know. It was fucked up, thinking that she was my niece. But it was what it was. At least, I didn’t try to sugarcoat it.
What kind of man would have thoughts like this for his own blood? What kind of man would like a girl he’d grown up with, he’d taken care of? What kind of man was I?
And I didn’t just have thoughts about her. I acted on them. I pulled her to sin.
Like this wasn’t enough, I then left her.
What kind of man w
ould fucking do that?
A monster. A devil. That was what I’d been.
A devil who should’ve been punished and locked up.
CHAPTER 13
MAYA
I couldn’t sleep.
Since Zeke left, I had insomnia, well more of it. I had a kind of panic attack when it came to sleeping. It’s hard for me to close my eyes and relax into slumber; there was suffocating anxiety surrounding me whenever I tried to sleep. That was the reason Zeke slept next to me all those years, only his arms were able to give me peace to fall asleep. And as I lay down on the bed, his arms were still close to me, just behind this wall, but there was a distance I wouldn’t be able to close between us.
I missed him.
I missed him too much, it was trying to make its way through the fake numbness I created so it could suffocate me, but what would change if I let myself feel? He was my blood, and I showed him my love, told him I loved him, but he still left me when I needed him most. I couldn’t get past the fact that being with me disgusted him too much he broke his own promise to not leave me alone. No matter how wrong or harsh the comparison would be, even Amanda or Carl didn’t really leave me. But Zeke did.
“I have to protect you, Maya. I have to protect you from myself because if I don’t leave, your life will be a bigger mess because of me.”
His words had been the only voice I heard for a long while after watching him leave me without a second glance. I didn’t need him to protect me, I needed him to be with me, next to me, and to tell me everything was going to be alright. But I was my own companion as I tried to keep the roof over our head and our stomach full enough to live. I held my own hand when things got rougher than it always was. I dealt with my fears alone, in the darkness and cursed him more and more each day even though my heart always beat for him. And that was why I didn’t go to him or ask for help even though I was exhausted and wanted to sleep so badly.