Poison

by West, Jade

  So I didn’t.

  I decided I’d stomach the guilt and the self-hate and the serious fucking regret and wait for her to get home. And then I’d beg forgiveness. I’d get down on my knees and confess my stupid sins and beg her to give me another chance at our world.

  But I couldn’t.

  I couldn’t, because after two weeks of hating myself and struggling into work with ashen features and an ashen heart to go along with them, I got a call from an unknown number.

  Maya Brook’s number.

  I had no fucking idea how she’d got mine.

  She needed to see me, and her voice was strained.

  I told her I didn’t want to see her, but she cried and said I had to.

  I think I’d known right then. Known it could only mean one thing.

  I met her at the Crown Inn on the city outskirts and I sipped on mineral water while she sipped on the same, and then she pulled a white plastic wand thing from her bag and handed it over.

  And there were two blue stripes on it.

  I could’ve passed out from the shock.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said. “You’ve got me pregnant, Lucas. And I won’t get rid of the baby. I’ll never get rid of the baby.”

  My eyes must have been terrified ghosts with no soul as I stared at her across that table.

  “You’re sure it’s mine?” I asked and she rolled her eyes.

  “I’m definitely sure it’s yours.”

  I retched at her pause and she looked so hurt.

  “You’re going to be a daddy, Lucas,” she told me. “I hope you’ll live up to it. Please live up to it.”

  I didn’t want to live up to it.

  I didn’t want to live up to anything to do with Maya fucking Brooks now or forever, but I couldn’t not.

  I couldn’t not and I knew it.

  “I need to get my head straight,” I told her.

  “Sure, I get that.” Her eyes were so hard as she stared over, but there was a flash of fear in them too. It hurt to look at them.

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said.

  “Please don’t mess up twice, Lucas. Please be there for me. I need you.”

  I left her in the pub and was in the same daze I’d been in for weeks, and then I was sick all over again, only this time it wasn’t from drink. It was all from me.

  I had to face up to it, and I was scared. I was a scared excuse for a soul watching his world fall away, and I needed someone to tell me I could get through this.

  I called my mother and I struggled to speak, and she struggled to speak right back at me. I headed over to hers and she was waiting, as pale as I was, holding me tight as I walked through the door.

  My words were a jumbled mess, asking her to please help me work out how I was going to get through this with Anna, but she shook her head.

  “No,” she told me. “You won’t get through this with Anna. You’ve made a pit for yourself and now you have to climb on in.”

  I was shaking my head, but she was nodding hers.

  “You listen to me, Lucas. I was Maya once. I was the scared woman with a baby growing in her belly and no idea how she was going to exist in this world.”

  I’d heard this before. I’d felt this before.

  I’d hated the man who’d left her to bring me up without ever knowing my name.

  And I couldn’t be him.

  I couldn’t be that man.

  She carried on talking and I was listening. I couldn’t not.

  “You aren’t going to be your father,” she hissed. “I didn’t bring you up for that. You’re going to be the dad your father never was, and you’re going to make it work. You’re going to make it work, son.”

  I was shaking my head and the tears came.

  “I can’t,” I cried. “I can’t do it. I love Anna!”

  “And you’ll love the baby you’ve created with Maya. Believe me, Lucas. You’ll love that little soul more than you love your own. You just have to try your best now and leave your mistake behind and make a brand new start.”

  I was still shaking my head, but she didn’t stop.

  “You’ll make a new start with Maya,” she said. “Or you’re a worse man than your father was, Lucas. You’ll be a pitiful excuse of a man who isn’t worthy of either of those women.”

  I believed her.

  I believed her because it was true.

  I was a pitiful excuse of a man who wasn’t worthy of shit in that moment.

  I definitely wasn’t worthy of Anna.

  It was killing me inside as I opted to take the course that would rip my heart in two and Anna’s along with it. I called Maya up and met her the very next day, and I told her I’d try to be there and try to be the man she needed and the father I’d sealed the deal to be.

  She was so happy as I told her I’d give us a go that I was sick to the stomach all over again. She threw her arms around my neck and once again she smelled of black cherry and the sea, and that acorn kept on tumbling down the mountain and it was already so caked in snow that my fate was well and truly sealed.

  I was waiting for Anna when she walked through the front door after her trip away, and my stuff was already gone.

  I knew she was forgiving, and loving, and everything I didn’t deserve, and I knew I couldn’t give her a hint of how broken I was too.

  I needed her to hate me and carry on living her life, and curse my name whenever she thought of me.

  I needed her to run away from me and never even try to reach out and ask me why.

  So I choked it back. I choked it all back and pretended this was what I wanted. Pretended I’d been thinking it out and it was so much more than one stupid night and one stupid mistake.

  Even through her broken screams her eyes were full of love, and I had to hold it back so fucking tight and get out of there before I begged forgiveness so hard I’d never make it through the door.

  Never make it to Maya.

  Never live up to being the man my mother had made me into.

  I knew it needed to be bad, and unforgiveable.

  I knew I needed to be the biggest cunt who’d ever lived.

  So I laughed.

  I laughed at Anna’s pain as she broke in front of me, and I swore I’d hate myself as long as I lived.

  And then, when I was sure I’d destroyed our world beyond all repair, I walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Anna

  I listened to his words without interrupting.

  I felt his pain and regret and cried along with him and let it all sink in. It was a beautiful hurt, but it was tragic. It was so tragic, it broke my heart in a thousand new places.

  “I’m sorry,” he said and his forehead was pressed to mine all over again. “Please believe me, Anna. I’m so fucking sorry, you’ll never know.”

  I did believe him, and it didn’t make what he’d done hurt any less, or make it any more okay, but I felt it all as the truth.

  My mind was piling up the questions, letting them spin, and I hated Maya just as much as I’d always hated her, but I had forgiveness for her predicament.

  “What happened after that?” I asked. “I mean, Millie is only five… what happened to the baby?”

  He didn’t pull his forehead from mine.

  “She lost it. Miscarried.”

  I sobbed fresh and he wrapped me tight in his arms and rocked us both.

  “Then why did you stay with her?!” I begged to know. “Please, Lucas, you have to tell me why the hell you didn’t come back and tell me the truth.”

  He let out a sob as he eased away from me, and wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand.

  “Because she was broken, Anna. She was absolutely fucking broken.”

  And I screamed. I screamed in his face as the pain reached its peak.

  “AND SO WAS I! I WAS ABSOLUTELY FUCKING BROKEN!”

  I put my face in my hands and struggled with my own story, knowing it was time to lay it all out on the table, and trying. Just tr
ying to let it out.

  “I can’t make it better,” he said as I was still finding my voice. “I can only say I’m sorry. I thought you’d move on. I thought I’d be such a prick that you’d leave me behind and find someone better. And you did, right? You found Sebastian Maitland and I heard you were happy.”

  “I wasn’t happy! I was just trying to find what the hell happy was again!”

  We took a minute to get our breaths back to some semblance of steady, and then I cleared my throat.

  “When you left me that day, I couldn’t even begin to handle the pain. I loved you so much, and I wanted you so much, and I thought we had our whole world right there.”

  “We did,” he said. “We did, I just fucked it up.”

  “And fucked me up,” I continued. “I didn’t know where to even start with it. I was crying like a wreck and couldn’t speak, and I felt like you’d sliced me into pieces and stamped them into nothing. I tried to call Nicola and she was coming over, and I was trying to think, but I couldn’t.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know how broken you were. I saw it.”

  “BUT YOU DON’T!” I shouted, then struggled to calm my voice. “I was on the floor retching and sobbing with my brain fucking broken, and then it did break. It broke right there and then. I got a wave across my head that felt like I was falling out of myself, and I went so blank I didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t speak, or think, or understand what the hell was going on.” I paused to breathe. “I was so scared, Lucas. I was so scared and alone until Nicola came through the door and found me there. And that was the start of it. That was the start of the seizures, and they were so bad, and so cruel and I was terrified. I WAS TERRIFIED!”

  “Jesus Christ,” he choked, and his head dropped. “Jesus Christ, Anna, I didn’t know. I’d never have left you there like that if I’d have known.”

  “You wanted to know about the epilepsy,” I said, “You asked me to tell you about the seizures and I’ll tell you about them now.”

  I did tell him.

  I told him how they started with me going so blank at random points I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. How I got so scared of having them I wouldn’t go out on my own. How I became such a state before I was diagnosed that I lost my job and ended up back in my room at my parents’ house too afraid to look for another.

  I told him how the daytime ones turned into night time convulsions that had me chewing my tongue so bad I couldn’t speak in the morning, and how I’d wake up in my own soaked sheets from where I’d pissed myself.

  I told him how my temporal lobe got so asymmetrical that they picked it up on the EEG reading without me even having a seizure, and how, when I was waiting for them to give me a diagnosis, Sebastian first came into my life and said he loved me regardless.

  I told him how I lost so much of myself when my mind was that fucked that I forgot just who I used to be, and Sebastian helped me find myself again so slowly it was an uphill battle that lasted years to truly find my feet again.

  I carried on and told him how everyone was so worried about me there was a constant fear in their eyes every time I stopped speaking for five seconds straight.

  How that fear turned to sympathy.

  And that sympathy turned to pity.

  And I stopped being Anna and started becoming the invalid who needed to take care of herself and stop taking any risks or living any kind of life for herself.

  “But it wasn’t just that,” I said. “It wasn’t just the epilepsy that hurt so bad. It was more than that. The seizures had already started before you left me, they were in the sickness and those weird feelings of déjà vu and everything they told me was stress. It was more than my brain and the bullshit it sparks when it feels like it, it was the pain of losing you. And everyone knew that. Everyone knew what you did to me. Everyone knew how much I loved you and how much you’d broken me into the mess of who I was before.”

  “You’ve been having seizures that long?” he asked, and his voice was as broken as mine.

  I nodded. “Yeah. They’ve been better and worse, but they’ve always been there. They helped loads with the lamotrigine, and Sebastian tried to help by controlling everything I did, but they never went away. Not completely.”

  We sat for another round of silence, both of us staring at the carpet between us and trying to find our thoughts. We were both lost and knew it. Both broken and knew it.

  I had no idea how the hell we would ever find the way up from that spot on the floor, both of us stuck in this pit of pain. Neither of us tried to attempt it, just sat and breathed.

  Sat and breathed and cried.

  Sat and breathed and remembered just how hard the whole sorry wreck of our life was in the aftermath.

  “Did you love him?” he asked me. “Did you love Sebastian? I thought you were happy. People said so.”

  “I was trying to love him,” I said. “I thought I did, and I wanted to, and I was so grateful for everything he was being to me.”

  “That’s what I was doing with Maya,” he said. “I was trying to love her, and wanted to love her to at least drag some scrap of good from the carnage. And she was trying so hard. Trying so hard to make me love her.”

  I nodded. “Sebastian was good to me. If I had any sense, I’d love him back and would still be there.”

  “That’s what my mother is telling me about Maya.”

  “But I can’t,” I choked. “I can’t love him, because he’s not you. I’ve never loved him like I loved you.”

  “And that’s what was happening with me,” he choked back. “I can’t love her, because she’s not you. I love Millie. I love Millie more than life, but I can’t love Maya, and she knows it. That’s why the trying so hard turned into so much spite. Because she knows I don’t love her, and she wants to punish me for it, and I don’t blame her, not really.”

  I gave up at that point and let myself fall to the floor. I lay on my back and stared up at the ceiling, cried out of tears. And he joined me there, at my side, staring up at the ceiling along with me.

  “What the hell do we do now?” he asked, but I didn’t have an answer.

  “I don’t know what we can do. Nobody will ever accept we’re together. My parents are still screaming for me to get back with Sebastian, and Nicola would slit your throat before she’d sit in your company.”

  He sighed. “I wouldn’t blame her.”

  Neither would I. She’d watched me through the very dregs and cried with me through every second of it.

  “What about you?” I asked him. “Is Maya still trying to make it work?”

  It took him a few seconds to answer. “She says not. She says she’s done and over and never wants another night with me, but my mother says that’s bullshit and I should be busting my gut to make it right again. Mother says she still bleats on about the destiny of souls having a higher purpose together every time she gets five minutes.”

  “Do you want to make it right again with her?”

  “No,” he said, without even a hint of a pause. “I hate how I’m away from Millie, and I hate she uses it as a weapon, but I don’t want another shot at it. I think it does Millie more harm than good to see us together like that. Unfortunately, my mother doesn’t agree with me.”

  “This is tough,” I said, stating the obvious.

  “Yeah, it’s fucking tough. It’s a fucking joke how fucking tough this is. I don’t even know where we go from here.”

  But I did.

  As bitter and painful and fucked up as it was, I knew where we went from here.

  My fingers reached out for his and squeezed, hands holding tight on the floor between us.

  “I love you,” I told him, and meant it. “You are a cunt and a monster and you destroyed my whole world, but I love you. I never stopped loving you.”

  “I love you, too,” he said. “I was a cunt and a monster and I destroyed your whole world for one stupid mistake that cost us both everything, and a whole host of st
upid decisions on top. But I never stopped loving you, Anna.”

  “So, what now?” I asked. “What the hell comes after this?”

  His sigh was all out of tears, just like I was.

  “Dinner,” he said. “Dinner comes after this.”

  I let him pull me to my feet right up after him. And I let him hug me tight before we went downstairs.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Lucas

  We stood in silence in the kitchen, the world so heavy between us that we were both out of words. I made lasagne and she was standing there, swamped in my shirt, looking so fucking beautiful and in so much pain it tore me apart all over again.

  There was no way out of this.

  There was no way Maya would let me out the other side of this with Anna in my arms. Not without holding Millie to ransom.

  There was no way my mother would ever hear me out and understand just how much I needed a fresh shot at my old life.

  There was definitely no way Jim and Terri would ever accept that their daughter was ditching Sebastian Maitland for the jackass who ripped her to shreds and gave her seizures and stole her soul.

  And I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Nicola Henshaw would handle me back on the scene. Probably by doing a lifetime in prison for decapitation.

  I felt split in two. On one hand, I was so insanely grateful for the chance to tell her the truth that the relief was burning bright. On the other hand, I was deeper than ever in the pit of self-hate, cursing my own piece of shit mistake all over again with a whole new understanding of just how much I’d fucked her up.

  Epilepsy.

  A decade of fear, and pity, and her brain hurting so bad she couldn’t live her life anymore.

  And I’d done that.

  I’d done that to her.

  I looked her in the eyes once I’d put the lasagne in to cook, and my self-loathing must have been so visible it didn’t need words.

  Her cheeks were still streaked from the tears, and her voice was still wobbly when she spoke, and she still had the ability to read my thoughts without asking questions, even after all this time.