by Emelia Blair
“Stop it,” a hoarse voice hisses making us both whip our heads to see Eve glaring at Elijah. “That’s enough, Elijah.”
“Eve,” I quickly move to her. “How’re you feeling?”
She is still glaring at my father. “Like someone beat me up.” She turns her head to me. “Can I have some water?”
Her voice is raspy, and I take out a cool water bottle from the mini fridge and, inserting a straw into it, I set it in front of her lips. She parts them and takes small sips.
Once she is done, she makes a small sound that sounds like a ‘thanks.’
“Everything hurts,” she moans when she tries to move, and I immediately stop her. “Don’t move.”
“You have three broken ribs and some internal bleeding,” Elijah informs her.
“Oh, is that all?” Eve says, sarcastically, weakness in her eyes.
He gives her a look that has her glancing away. “You would do well with some rest. Might I suggest a vacation? I have a villa up in—”
“I don’t want a damned vacation,” Eve hisses. “I want this whole thing to end. And stop ragging on Zayn to be more like you. The world can hardly handle one of you! And he’s fine the way he is!”
Her voice ends on a croak, and I put a hand on her shoulder. “Easy now. I can fight my own battles, darling.”
“No, you can’t,” she bites at me. “You were going to let him talk to you like that!”
If she had the strength to hit me, I could see it in her eyes that she would have.
She suddenly grips a fistful of my shirt and drags me to her with strength that she should not have had. Our faces just mere centimeters apart, she hisses, “I like you the way you are. Don’t listen to him.”
I put a hand gently on her fist. “Okay. Okay. I hear you. Will you let me call the nurse now?”
She releases me, and I see the strain the action has taken from her.
A nurse comes in a few moments later and Eve refuses to let me move from her side even as her vitals are taken. If I didn’t know any better, I would think she is trying to protect me from Elijah.
The idea is both amusing and sobering.
“Well, Miss Taylor.” The nurse looks cheerful. “A few more days under our care and you’ll be able to go back home.”
Eve’s eyes follow her, and I see the pain on her face. Then she looks at me. “Mila?”
“She’s safe,” I tell her. “She’s with Charlotte, Sarah, and Ian. They won’t let anyone near her.”
Her eyes flutter shut, and I see the relief in them before they do.
“What about—” A tremor takes her voice.
I know what she wants to ask.
“Mr. Richards is also in the hospital,” Elijah tells her. He cast a fond look at me—it makes sense that my violence would be pleasing to him, bastard—before saying, “Zayn dealt him some massive injuries.”
Eve’s eyes open and this time I see hesitance and shame in those pretty brown eyes that could bring me to my knees. “So…you know?”
The left side of her face is blooming with bruises, and I tenderly trace my thumb over them. “I know what he did to you. And he’s going to go away for a long time, unless I kill him first.”
Eve swallows. “As much as I like the idea of you killing him, I don’t want blood on your hands, not more than you already have.” Then, she gives a wry smile. “Besides, Agatha will kill you over the PR nightmare.”
I see the haziness in her eyes, and I can tell that the morphine is taking effect. She looks at Elijah and struggles with her words, a small frown on her forehead. “Don’t—don’t bully him.”
My father sighs and then reaches over to settle his hand on hers. “All right, Eve. I won’t.”
Am I imagining the softness in his face?
Mila wanted to see her mother, and so did Ron.
However, with Eve hovering in and out of consciousness, there was never a good moment. I didn’t want to frighten Mila, so I had Agatha bring her in one evening when Eve woke up.
Kisses and tears and solemn promises that she would bring her new favorite bear to heal Eve, convincing Mila to go home was a difficult task.
Ron wasn’t so lucky. Every time he came by, Eve would be asleep.
I watched him cry when he thought he was alone, soft sobs till Mark came to take him away.
I postponed the opening of the club.
I didn’t bother to read the articles, but Agatha kept me informed about the gist of them. Frank Donavon, who took an intense dislike to Eve, was writing non-stop, having managed to sneak into the newly decorated office and take pictures of the ‘crime scene.’ He also managed to pay someone to sneak pictures of Thomas, who was now awake but still in the hospital. He was going to be shifted tomorrow.
Most of his articles portrayed Eve as a seductress who finally ‘got her due,’ without using those exact words.
“I’ll bury that fool,” Agatha swore one evening as she dropped by with Charlotte to the hospital. While Charlotte chatted with Eve, Agatha took me aside to tell me what was happening.
“Everybody else is reporting what I told them happened but that little weasel is the only one who managed to get pictures of Thomas, so his word is gaining credibility.” She looks angry.
“Crush him,” I tell her, flatly. “And if you can’t do that, tell me. I’ll talk to Elijah. This man is starting to inflict too much damage on my family.”
Agatha goes pale. “You want to…?” She doesn’t finish her sentence, and I roll my eyes at her.
“I’m not going to kill him, Agatha. Jeez. Elijah can persuade him to stop writing about Eve.” I chance a look at the open door of the hospital room. “I’m not letting anything touch her again. She’s been fucked over too many times. Now, she’s mine. And nobody touches what’s mine.”
The conversation with Agatha leaves me rattled, and a few hours after she leaves, I am getting coffee from the cafeteria when I bump into an older couple who looks frazzled. They brush past me, making their way to the nurse’s station.
I find them oddly familiar, and I watch them as I sip the nasty brown gunk from the paper cup.
“Eve Taylor.”
The man has a Southern twang, reminiscent of Eve’s, and I still, suddenly realizing who they are.
“Her parents.”
The nurse glances my way, uneasily. She was instructed only to let people on the list inside and Eve’s parents are nowhere on the list that I provided them with.
She coughs. “Ah, you’ll have to talk to Mr. Wolfe if you want to see her.”
When the man blusters, she purses her lips. “I’m sorry, sir. But we’re under strict orders from the police to keep anyone unauthorized away from Miss Taylor’s room.”
“But I’m her father!” the man growls.
“Some father,” I say, lightly.
The man whirls around. “Who the hell are you?”
Then, his eyes light with recognition. “You’re the man from the TV. The tycoon.”
“I’m also Mila’s father. And Eve’s partner.” I sip at the coffee, watching him from over the rim of the cup.
When the man’s face turns red, I simply raise a brow and ask, “Where have you been?”
“Excuse me?” he bites out.
I ignore the way the nurse is watching our interaction with wide eyes and continue. “Eve’s been on the news for more than a month. She’s been attacked, harassed, abused, and yet now you’re here. So, what I’m asking is, where were you when she needed you?”
The guilt in Harrison Taylor’s brown eyes doesn’t satisfy me. They remind me of the terrible sorrow in the eyes of the woman I love when she told me she was done with people discarding her.
I take a threatening step towards him. “When Thomas raped her, that’s on you. When he starved her while she was pregnant, that’s on you. When he beat her while she was pregnant, that’s on you as well!”
When the woman whom I presume is Eve’s mother pales at my words and her father ope
ns his mouth, I hiss, “Don’t bother covering for that bastard. I’ve seen the hospital reports with my own eyes: malnourished, unexplained bruises. My father rescued her while Thomas was beating her. So fuck your excuses!”
I try to temper the fury, and the sadistic part of me reveilles in the way Harrison reels from my words, all the blood having leeched from his face.
“I’m not letting you anywhere near her. You nearly destroyed her while you had her. You don’t get to see her while she’s vulnerable just so you can hurl accusations at her or hurt her in any way. And if I have my way, you will never see her again!”
Harrison’s hand clutches onto his wife’s arm at that point and I can see how he is trying to keep his voice steady. “We want to see our daughter. And we want to apologize.”
I still before baring my teeth. “Why should I believe you?”
His face is white as a sheet and his wife steps in front of him, a protective gesture, one that reminds me of Eve.
“Go ask Eve,” she says, quietly. “Go ask her if she would like to see us. And if she says no, we’ll leave. But that’s our child in there, Mr. Wolfe. We might have done wrong by her, but that’s still our child.”
I don’t want to let them past, but the steadiness in the woman’s eyes makes me grit my teeth.
I whirl around and make my way to Eve’s room.
20
Eve
I stare at the two people whom I have not seen in over five years.
My dad looks much older than I remember, and weary.
My mother looks tired, her eyes red-rimmed.
Zayn has a hand on my shoulder, and I could sense his obvious unhappiness.
“You can see them later,” he snarled at me when I told him to let them in, my heart pounding so hard that I thought it might jump out of my chest.
“No,” I fought back. “I want to see them now!”
The furious expression on his face melted when I quietly asked him to stand by me.
“But not alone.”
Does Zayn realize how much effort it took for me to ask him to stay? To trust him to protect me from my own parents?
His eyes tell me he does.
The way he tenderly brushed his lips against mine did.
I hadn’t protested when he pushed my hair back from where I had it covering the side of my face to hide the bruising. He wanted them to see the damage.
And I trust him.
“Eve,” my mother moves towards me, and I flinch, making her freeze.
“You never came to see me,” I mumble, my eyes shifting from one to the other.
My father doesn’t say anything, still standing in the doorway as if he doesn’t quite know how welcome he is.
“I sent you pictures of Mila,” I say, my voice soft, something burning in my eyes.
I didn’t know I had reached for Zayn’s hand until I felt it wrap around mine, warm, reassuring.
His touch gives me strength.
That is when my father speaks, his voice rough. “I—we never got them. I just got three of your messages. And—” His voice breaks and my lower lip trembles on seeing the strong unyielding man before me crumble.
“No,” I warn, my voice hitching, so much damn pain inside of me. “You don’t get to cry!”
A sob tears from my throat when I see my father rub at his eyes, his hands shaking. “You left me! You threw me out! You don’t get to cry, Daddy!”
And my arms are reaching out to him and he covers the distance between us, and my face is buried in the crook of his neck, that familiar aftershave making me sob harder. “I hate you. I hate you.”
He holds me as tightly as he dares and his shoulders shake wildly, and I feel the wetness on my bare skin.
“I hate you,” I sob again, not wanting to let go and wanting to get as far away from him as possible all at the same time.
“I’m sorry, Evie. I’m so sorry.”
He keeps repeating the same words over and over again, like a broken mantra.
I feel my mother’s hand on my hair, stroking it in that way she used to and I cry harder because I know that things will never be the same now. I could never have the same relationship I used to have with them. I could never trust them the way a child should trust their parents.
I cry for the girl I was.
I cry for what I lost.
And I cry for regaining part of what I lost.
They didn’t leave, no matter how hostile Zayn was to them.
They don’t want to talk about Thomas. I sense that they are done with him.
Instead, they ask to see pictures of Mila. They ask questions about her, so many questions that by the end of it, I am half dozing on Zayn’s shoulder where he sits next to me on the bed.
As they are leaving, I say, quietly, “I can’t forgive you. At least not yet.”
My parents just look weary, and my mother says, “We don’t expect you to, Eve. Not yet.”
I bite my tongue trying not to cry. “I have questions, but I’m not ready to ask them yet. I can’t.”
My father meets my eyes, and I see the acceptance. “We’re not going anywhere this time.” He hesitates. “Can we come and see you tomorrow?”
Zayn has his hand on my shoulder, and I feel the light squeeze, and I swallow. “Yeah—uh—I’d be okay with that.”
They look relieved, and when they leave, I lean back against Zayn, staring at the door, dry-eyed.
“Are you mad at me?” I ask him.
“Why would I be mad at you?” I feel his lips on my temple.
“Because a part of me is so happy that I have my parents back, that I want to forgive them.”
“They’re your parents, Eve. Family bonds are complicated that way.” His voice is rumble near my ear, a comforting sound.
“A part of me wants them to suffer,” I confess. “Like I did.”
Zayn takes my hands in his. “But you’re not going to make them suffer.”
It is a statement, as if he already knows my mind.
My laugh is sad. “No. I’ll have a different relationship with them now. But I won’t hurt them.”
I felt his lips in my hair which hadn’t been washed for days on end.
How long have I been in this hospital? More than a week.
“You have too big of a heart, Eve,” Zayn chastises, no harshness in his tone, just wonder, and awe.
“Does that make me weak?” I muse, lightly.
“No,” he says after some thought. “It makes me want to hoard you.”
“I’m not a CD-collection,” I mutter crossly. “You can’t hoard people.”
Delighted laughter ruffled my hair, “Can’t I? I could lock you up in my tower and keep watch over you.”
“I’d get bored,” I inform him succinctly.
“I can provide ample entertainment,” he insists, his lips ghosting over my neck now.
How can he make me feel so desirable when I am sure I stink?
“No, thanks,” I say, dryly. “Cosmopolitan isn’t my idea of entertainment. You’re the one who likes to read it in the bathroom, you weirdo.”
He laughed again. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”
“I don’t need to know which shoe my personality is, Wolfe.”
“Mine’s a stiletto,” Zayn informs me with a grin, and I roll my eyes.
And just like that, he drove away my demons, distracting me with himself.
“Stop sniffing me,” I protest. “I smell really bad.”
“Yes, you do,” he tells me as he buries his nose in my neck. “I’d still do you, though.”
Torn between laughter and insult, I try to scowl. “You have such a way with words.”
“I know,” he smirks at me.
Two weeks later.
My parents were coming to the hospital every day, for several hours.
They met Mila.
However, Zayn was always hovering nearby when they were talking to Mila. I didn’t mind it.
Not yet, at
least.
He has every right to be protective over his daughter.
My father seems wary around Zayn, and Zayn doesn’t seem overly fond of him either. However, he is respectful to both my parents, although his interactions are short and to the point.
Mila is simply delighted to have a set of whole new grandparents and since her friend Molly’ s grandma ‘baked her cookies,’ she wants to know if hers would do so, too. And if she could ride a horse. Or if her grandfather could buy her a horse.
My parents are so helplessly enchanted by their granddaughter that I am half afraid that on their next visit, my father will bring her a horse.
“That’s enough, you brat,” I warn her, and my baby girl just turns around with innocent wide eyes.
“But Mama, Grandpa wants to.”
I give her a smile. “Oh, really? Then, I guess you’ll need to give up your doll collection to make space for a horse.”
That makes her reconsider immediately, because nothing is more important than her dolls.
“Mama has a swear jar!” she announced to her grandparents in revenge.
“Guess we won’t be having Mac ‘N Cheese for next week,” I say morosely, not to be outdone.
Then kisses are offered in apology and offers of letting me play with her dolls are made.
My parents observe me with my small family and the one time my mother catches me alone, she asks hesitantly if Zayn and I plan to get married, almost as if she has no right to ask that question.
“I haven’t thought about it,” I tell her honestly.
“Would you like to marry him?” my mother asks softly, fluffing my pillows behind me to make me comfortable.
I stare at my hands, at where Zayn’s ring would be.
“I… maybe. I love him. But he hasn’t said anything, and I don’t want to—”
Push him? Lose him?
“Whatever he’s willing to offer, I’ll take it. But I won’t ask for more,” I finally say, my tone heavy.
“Why not? You have a child together. He clearly loves you.”
Had anybody else said that, I would have snapped at them. But for the past five years, I have yearned for the safety and guidance of my mother, the vulnerability I could show only her.