Darkly Divine: A Paranormal Enemies to Lovers Romance

by C L Walker

  Every time she did that it made me even more angry because I knew it wasn’t genuine and it was a taste of what our lives should have been, and it wasn’t fair to rub it in my face.

  It wasn’t fair that she walked around with a mask on whenever she felt like it, whenever she drank just a little less, just enough to control herself.

  I hated her happy mask.

  She didn’t even say anything about my makeup that I had decided there was no point in hiding any longer. Even though I saw her look at my lips in distaste, it was still a rare event for her to hold her comments back.

  I’d bet money that inside she was imagining all the ways she could mess up my face to an extent that make up would be rendered useless in trying to cover up her sins. But she would never do it, the face was too obvious, and we liked to hide the truth so well.

  Don’t we, Mommy?

  When her bedroom door swung open the facade was shattered.

  Jack walked down the hallway towards the kitchen as he zipped up his pants. The sight of his dingy whitey tighties made me want to hurl, he was a disgusting man.

  He walked up next to me and reached over the bar to grab the coffee cup she held out to him and he brushed the side of my body in the process.

  I bit my tongue to keep myself from lashing out at him.

  “Thanks, sugar. How about some pancakes?” he asked.

  At his request she turned around to fry up the rest of the pancakes which left me on guard because he always tried something when her back was turned.

  Not even five seconds later his hand found my thigh and he squeezed. I would have laughed at how predictable he was if he weren’t sexually harassing me.

  I jumped up in my seat and shoved his hand away as I stared at him and tried my best to impart my voiceless warning: I will kill you.

  He understood me well and his smile told me that he didn’t give a shit because I didn’t scare him.

  Oh, and how I wished so fiercely that I did scare him because I would have wielded that power against him without mercy.

  I stood there at the edge of the bar and ate my pancakes as fast as I could and washed them down with a glass of milk so I could do the only thing I could, and that was walk away. Then I grabbed a mug, filled it with coffee as I did my best to ignore them and their ‘loving’ conversation.

  They made me sick. If that was love I wanted no part of it.

  “Thanks for breakfast.” I grabbed my bag and slipped through the door as quickly as I could as I hoped that they wouldn’t notice.

  My mother called after me, but I didn’t stop, and I ran until there were a few blocks between me and her trailer.

  I didn’t know why, because comparatively it was a good morning, but I began to cry as I pulled out my phone and dialed Sai’s number.

  He didn’t answer since he usually woke up with barely enough time to get ready for school and it didn’t start for another forty-five minutes.

  I didn’t know why I had even bothered I couldn’t even tell him what had happened anyways.

  It was moments like those that I felt truly alone.

  It didn’t matter how many greeted me at school or smiled in my direction, because where it counted, I was alone. And in my moments of weakness when it all felt like too much to bear, I wanted nothing more than to be held by someone.

  As I walked to school my tears dried so I pulled out my compact and started to fix my make up.

  It was a nice day, sunny, but there was still a crispness to the air that I found comforting, it helped me to let the events of the morning go and find peace in being able to breathe once more.

  I heard a roar in the distance, and it sounded like it was coming from the road that wound its way up to the mountains.

  I liked it up there because it seemed so far away from town, and I loved sitting at the river and listening to it as it rushed by. But I had no way up unless I asked Sai to take me, and he wasn’t the chill at the river type.

  But I was only two more paychecks and one eighteenth birthday away from sitting in a used baby blue Volkswagen Beetle that was waiting for me at the lot just out of town.

  I looked beside me as the roar grew louder and a black Chevelle revealed itself as it rolled up behind me.

  I realized Micah was the driver when he turned and glanced at me as he drove by. He looked like a badass driving a classic with his leather jacket on. One earring was dangling from his right ear as his arm hung out the window and the breeze softly ruffled his hair.

  He obviously fancied himself a rebel, and hey, he had the look down at least.

  I looked back down at my mirror and frowned as I recalled that I had only fixed the makeup on one side of my face, so there were black streaks down the other side.

  So much for waterproof mascara, what an overpriced joke!

  I glanced up at his retreating vehicle and wondered if he had noticed.

  But then that was forgotten as soon as my latest dream creeped back into my mind.

  Give it to me… I had begged.

  “Nope! I am not doing this right now.” I picked up my pace and put him out of my mind. Not that it would last long but I had to keep trying.

  I probably looked insane since I was aggressively power walking to school, but I wasn’t worried about it, it was better than thinking about my dream.

  When I got to school, I saw his car in the parking lot so naturally I was nosey, and I tipped my head down to look inside because it was such a nice car that I had to. It had nothing to do with the fact that it was his.

  It had crisp black interior, leather seats, a little cartoon character figurine hanging from the mirror and there was a plaid blanket folded up in his backseat. I was surprised to find that it was so well taken care of and clean.

  “Are you looking for something else to try and steal?”

  I jumped away from his car and turned to find that he stood behind me.

  “I uhm...it’s just…” I said as I grew frustrated that there was someone else that I was having trouble standing up to aside from my mother.

  SPEAK!

  I tried to coax myself back into a place where I felt safe and in charge of my actions but being around him didn’t allow me to. He put me on edge.

  I was in fight mode, but I had never fought against anything or anyone in my life because people usually left me alone. I was unprepared.

  He rolled his eyes as he asked, “Just what?”

  “Uhm.”

  Wow! Would clear articulation be too much to ask for!

  He stepped over to his door, stuck the key in the lock and turned it while he stared at me and waited for my answer. Then he pulled open the door and looked away finally and I got a chance to relax as he pulled the seat up and bent over to feel around for something.

  I looked away when the band of his boxer briefs showed and a whole ass inch of his lower back. I could feel it, I was blushing again as if my body decided it wanted the whole world to know I was an inexperienced virgin.

  Oh my… a back and some underwear. Swoon. Aka: I’m a virgin.

  He straightened out and shut his door after he found what he was looking for and that was his cellphone.

  “Why is it that nearly every time we interact with one another you lose your ability to function?” he asked. “I’ve seen you talking to other people just fine.”

  So, he did notice me but not in a good way, not to say that I wanted him to notice me in a good way, of course.

  “I don’t know, you’re sort of scary,” I admitted, and regretted it immediately. “Not to say that I’m afraid of you.” I held both hands up as if I meant to stop him when clearly, I was the one who needed to be stopped. “I’d just rather not talk to you period, because you’re an ass.”

  He looked annoyed and done with me already as he looked away at a group of people that walked by. “The world's a scary place you can either face it or hide from it.” His gaze shot back to mine with such intensity it nearly left me speechless and gave me a strange fe
eling in the pit of my stomach.

  I suddenly felt like he was seeing all of me.

  “I’m not scared of anything,” I said, “and I’m not hiding. I’m surviving.”

  He nodded his head and took a step closer to me, but I didn’t back away. Then he tilted his head to the side as if the small movement would help him see me more clearly as his eyes looked my face over from top to bottom.

  “You just said that I’m scary.” I saw the question in his eyes that I didn’t want to answer. “But you’ve only known me for a few days. So, I must ask what it is about me that is so frightening to you?”

  “That’s not what I meant!” I felt backed into a corner. “Scary was not the right word.”

  It was a lie, and it made no sense, but I felt like I had no other options around him.

  What is this man doing to me?

  He was scary for many reasons. He was one of those people who didn’t have to do or say anything, his physical presence was enough to shake me, and the way he shifted the air around me into something heavy and seductive with such ease made it all worse.

  He chuckled in such a way that it grated on my nerves and made me stab my nails into my palms.

  “Back and forth she goes,” he said. “It’s like you don’t even know yourself.”

  I felt flustered over his accusation because he was the one who didn’t know the first thing about me. But I had no way to prove him wrong.

  “You’re a jerk!”

  He smiled. “And you’re pure entertainment, princess.”

  “I’m glad you are enjoying yourself at my expense.”

  He looked down at his phone before he put it in his back pocket and said, “You have no idea how much it pleases me.”

  The image of him chewing on my neck flashed in my mind and my eyes went wide. “Go away!” I clapped my hand across my mouth because I hadn’t meant to speak out loud.

  He looked shocked by my sudden outburst. “Uhm, I was just going to do that.” Something behind me caught his attention. “Your boyfriend is here anyways.” He waved to whoever was behind me and left.

  I didn’t have a boyfriend and the way he had said the word annoyed me to no end.

  I hated how he always looked as if he couldn’t be bothered with a thing in life, it made me want to be a bother to him as much as I wanted him to go away.

  A moment later an arm wrapped around my shoulders. “Hey. Were you and Micah talking or arguing? It looked a little uncomfortable honestly.”

  I glanced up at Sai as he stared at the back of Micah thoughtfully, and I wondered why Micah seemed to get along with him and everyone else aside from me.

  I sighed beside myself with frustration.

  “We were talking,” I said, and proceeded to ignore the look of disbelief that crossed his face. “It’s fine.”

  I decided then to let it all go because I had to remain focused. I didn’t need the extra drama in my life, I needed to survive and that was it. Micah was going to have to find someone else to get a rise out of.

  I held that attitude all day long and managed to enjoy my day regardless of his presence.

  After school I picked up my check from my boss which renewed my enthusiasm for the future because I had two hundred dollars to add to my stash once I gave some money to my mother for bills.

  I was almost there.

  When I arrived at the trailer, she was gone so I snuck into her bedroom and opened her nightstand to look for the only picture in the whole house of my dad and brother. I was planning on taking it with me the day I left even though I knew it would hurt her.

  Instead of finding the picture where it normally laid in an otherwise empty drawer there was a stack of letters from the bank. I looked through them and realized that my mom hadn’t been paying the rent despite the fact that it was only six hundred dollars a month and I had been giving her two hundred a month since I turned sixteen. So, she only had to pay four hundred dollars which wasn’t much.

  She cleaned houses and made a little over half of that in a week and none of it had to go to food since we were on government assistance, so she had no reason not to pay.

  Sure, she drank a lot but not over a thousand dollars’ worth of alcohol in a month, especially with Jack splitting the bill. She was a cheap drunk and she bought the cheapest whiskey out there, and the occasional vodka, so I had to wonder where all her money was possibly going. She never went anywhere but the tavern and she never left town…something wasn’t right.

  Jack had a job in a sense selling weed and I heard him talking about how much he brought in so I couldn’t wrap my mind around why they weren’t paying the rent. He left for weeks at a time, but he always came back, and I knew my mother made him pay her, so she had to be letting the trailer go on purpose.

  I didn’t even know what to think or feel, as I was seeing red when I got to the last letter and it was an eviction notice.

  We were being kicked out and she hadn’t even told me because she didn’t care about me. And right around my birthday? It all seemed suspicious, because in all those years we had never once received an eviction notice.

  She acted like I was going to stay with her and suffer the life of a nobody, but the truth was that she was going to get out and leave me behind. She had probably been as anxious for my eighteenth birthday for as long as I had been.

  I was an idiot.

  I slammed the drawer shut and looked around the rest of her room, but I didn’t find anything of interest, and I couldn’t find the picture.

  When I heard the key in the front door, I took off running out of her room and stopped in the kitchen just as it opened.

  She had been working so she brought in her box of cleaning supplies and she dropped them without a care for how they spilt all over by the door.

  “Get me a drink,” she demanded, and she flung her shoes off before she unbuckled her jeans and sunk into the couch.

  I rushed to the cabinet above the sink and rummaged through her collection. “What do you want?”

  “Whiskey.” Her tone was rude, suggesting that I should have known what she wanted to drink which was unfair for obvious reasons.

  I poured her a glass and put three ice cubes in it before I handed it to her.

  She was about to take a sip when she stopped the cup just shy of her mouth and peered over the rim at me. “Did you get paid today?” She had my pay days memorized so it was a pointless question to ask.

  I nodded my head and pulled a hundred out of my pocket and handed it to her. I gave her a hundred out of every paycheck and sometimes she asked for extra for things that I shouldn’t have had to pay for.

  She finally took a sip of her drink as she shoved the money in her pocket. “How much did you make?”

  This is where I always lied to her because I never wanted her to know how much I made, so I lied about my hours and my pay as often as I could get away with it.

  “Two hundred,” I said, “and I already spent most of it on shampoo and other such necessities though.”

  She nodded her head and turned on the tv, it was her way of dismissing me.

  Since I recognized my cue to leave, I went into my room even though I had wanted to ask her about the trailer, but she’d know I went through her things and that wouldn’t go over well.

  It didn’t matter anyway because if I was lucky, she’d lose the trailer and move to another town and I could graduate in peace. I could stay in town and work until I saved enough money to leave and go somewhere far away.

  Jokes on you, Mother, because I’ll be glad to see you leave.

  Six

  Skylar

  I woke up thankful after a dreamless sleep, but upon waking I still thought of Micah as there was no getting that boy out of my mind.

  But aside from my brains preoccupation with him I had a peaceful morning because I managed to get ready without waking up my mother.

  All was well.

  Then I navigated through the day without running into Micah, and every t
ime I saw him, I pretended I didn’t, even if in truth I was hyper aware of his being.

  Again, all was well, until fifth period because it was the one place, I couldn’t avoid him.

  But it was made even worse by what had happened before I arrived.

  “What?” I asked Mr. Burks loudly, and without a care for the whole class that was bearing witness to my breakdown over something so silly.

  “You heard me,” he said.

  I had been ten minutes late to class and with a valid excuse because I had been asking around for tampons since I had started my period, and in the meantime, everything went to hell.

  “Can’t I do it by myself?” I asked. “I don’t work well with others.”

  Which was a lie that no one who knew me would believe. Micah was the first peer I had ever had any conflict with since elementary school and people didn’t even know that we weren’t getting along.

  I was the nice girl, everyone got along with me because I never caused any trouble.

  Mr. Burks looked at me like I was the most ridiculous person on the planet because he was one of those people who knew me well. It wasn’t the first time I had been a student in his class. In fact, he had been my teacher for all four history classes I had taken throughout high school.

  “Skylar, I’m not sure why you are behaving like it’s the end of the world but surely you will survive being his partner. Now go sit down.”

  He handed me the assignment sheet and I slowly walked down the aisle as I dragged my bag on the floor behind me.

  When I sat down Micah smirked and said, “It’s your fault for being late so don’t act like such a princess.”

  I rolled my eyes at his new nickname for me and otherwise ignored it. “You could have picked a partner, so I didn’t get stuck with you.” I sat down, sunk low in my seat, and rested my head on the back of my chair. “You created unnecessary discomfort for both of us.”

  “I don’t approach people they approach me.”

  I thought maybe he was joking but he said nothing else and there was no following chuckle or wink. I couldn’t fathom his arrogance.

  “Except for the fact that they don’t. Obviously. Because no one came to you today.”