by S. Ann Cole
On his knees, he moved in even closer between my legs. “‘Sorry, son. But she’s the other guy’s’, was what he told me last night. Said there’s no hope. But now…” He laughed, almost deranged. “Looking at you, it’s here. See it. Hope. You love me, Chino. And that’s why you don’t know the answer to anything.”
A lone tear fell, and without even touching my cheek, it landed on my top lip. “I do.”
He started to smile, but then stopped, seemed to deliberate on something for a second, before dipping into his hoodie pocket and coming out with a little black box.
I panicked. More afraid than when I thought he was going to push me off the cliff, I began scooting backwards on my legs and arms, trying to get away, to get to my feet, to run. “Xavi, no. Don’t do this. Don’t—”
Lunging forward, he caught my crawling legs, and then I was on my back again and he was on top of me.
He was hard.
“Chino—”
“Don’t do this!’ I screamed, thrashing beneath him. “Don’t ask me!”
“Calm down, babe,” he whispered in my ear. “Not what you think.”
At that assurance, I calmed down.
Bringing the box in front of my face, he flicked it open for me to see. Inside, was a gorgeous X ring, the two skinny gold bands which crossed over each other winking with diamonds.
An X. Not an engagement ring. An X.
I inhaled and exhaled a few calming, relieving breaths.
“A Choose Me ring,” he explained. “My band has always been my life. Those assholes and no one but my famz have ever made me feel. Then came you. Making me feel shit. Different shit. Don’t know what it is—don’t know if it’s love. Never been in love before. But…do know I don’t wanna lose that feeling. Would give it all up, the band, the fame, in exchange for a lifetime of that feeling. You. For you. Doing something now that I’ve never done in my entire life: beg. Begging you to choose me, Chino.”
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I was too overwhelmed. Too full. And so empty at the same time. And I wished I could just run into my father’s arms and sob on his shoulder. “There now,” he would soothe. “My brave girl has tears. I was starting to wonder…”
“Xavi, I—”
Head shaking, he quickly pressed a finger to my lips. “No.”
My brows drew together, befuddled.
“Not yet.” Taking my left hand, he slid the ring onto my index finger. “Take some time. Think about it. Gimme your decision when I get back with the band this weekend. Meantime, hold on to that. Don’t take it off. Not even to shower. Not until you make a decision.
“Some things I haven’t told you, and some things I’ve lied about. But coming clean right now won’t help my case. You choose me, I’ll come clean, then spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
He stretched out on top of me like Christ on the cross, laying his head on my bosom. “Aware you aren’t mine right now, but I’m yours, Chino. One hundred percent yours. Do what you must when you get back. Won’t hold it against you. Just use that ring as a reminder. That I’m waiting. For you to choose me.”
“Turn the car around.”
Mel’s sharp eyes found mine in the rear-view mirror. “Miss O’Hara?”
“Turn the car around,” I repeated, returning my attention to the phone in my hand, the texts on the screen.
“To where?”
“Back to the airport.”
“Uh, Miss O’Hara, we’re practically still at the airport.”
“Mel,” I snapped, peeved, “turn the goddamn car around and dump me back at the airport.”
As Mel proceeded to do as I asked, I read and reread and reread the words on my phone screen.
I broke off the engagement.
I left her.
Pick up the damn phone!
It was just over five minutes ago that I walked out of the airport, settled into the back of Mel’s Range, and powered on my phone. I’d sifted through the inundation of emails and text messages from everyone who wanted to know where I was, why I wasn’t responding, and why I’d disappeared without giving anyone a heads-up.
Then I saw that message. Sent two nights ago.
He’d left her.
And all of sudden I felt full to point of bursting. Full with what? I didn’t know. Just full.
All of a sudden L.A. felt suffocating, and I wanted to be anywhere else but here.
All of sudden, the thought of seeing Davian again terrified me.
I moved to L.A. for him—I think—and now that he was mine for the taking, all I wanted to do was run.
From him. From Xavier. From love. From Los Angles.
The emotions whirling like a tornado inside me made no sense. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I was feeling. I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel. I didn’t know who I wanted or what I truly wanted. I was a different person now than before I came to L.A. I’d had one goal, one aim, one purpose. But now seeing I could have more, I wanted more. Now seeing I could be more, I wanted to be more.
There was a war going on in my head, chaos, explosions going off, a battlefield. It was noisy, jarring, aggravating, and there was only one place I wanted to disappear to. To hide.
So after Mel dumped me at the airport, I bought a ticket and flew back to San Francisco, rented a car when I landed, and drove to my parents’ house—well, my house now.
A palatial five-bedroom. Elaborate courtyard. Grand double-staircase foyer. Majestic Crystal chandeliers. Custom everything.
I was born in this mansion. Grew up in this mansion. Was loved, cherished, and cared for in this mansion.
But now, this mansion was haunted.
I paid monthly fees to a company that went there biweekly to keep the grounds manicured, trim the shrubs and prune the trees, dust the furniture, wipe the floors and keep the place spotless as if someone lived there. I supposed someone did—my parents’ souls still lived there. My memories still live there. My innocence still lived there.
Chad wanted me to sell the house, as it was worth couple of millions. But selling it would mean accepting the truth. And I wasn’t ready to accept it as yet. Couldn’t live believing they were…gone.
My parents were the ones I ran to whenever life became onerous and it felt like no one was on my side. I ran to them because, no matter what, they were always on my side.
Keeping this house, their clothes in the closets, their fancy cars in the garage, Mom’s favorite blanket tossed over the sofa, Dad’s “currently reading” Dan Brown book on the lamp-stand next to his favorite recliner, meant keeping them alive. I liked believing they were here, so I could run to them whenever I became too feeble to make a decision on my own, to be an adult.
I was not as flat-out deluded as Mick Xander, but I had a hard time letting go of the past, too.
In the living room, I walked over to Dad’s recliner and curled up in it, imagining he was there, and I was in his lap telling him how conflicted I was between two guys. And then I listened, waiting for his ghostly whispers, waiting for him to tell me what he’d told me once when I was miserable and carping on his lap: “The sun shines because of your smile, Ally. You frown, it gets cloudy. You cry, it rains. You get angry, it thunders. Do the world a favor and be happy. Whatever makes you smile, do it. Your smile is our sun. We’re all depending on you.”
With those words, everything would be right with my world again. But as tight as I closed my eyes and squeezed myself into a ball on that recliner, his words never came.
I picked up his book from the lamp-stand and opened it to the bookmarked page 346. He was almost finished. Only a few more chapters. But the fat splatters of blood over the pages were a testament to the fact he’d never get to the end.
Right here, on this chair, his throat was slit from ear to ear.
Setting the book down, I powered back the recliner, closed my eyes again, and waited some more. I heard his laugh. I heard his
humming. Then, I heard his words...
As a smile slid onto my face and my heart filled with contentment, in a daze, I got up from the recliner and walked over to the coffee table. Flipping it on its side, I shifted it a little so half of it was positioned off the Persian rug. And then I laid down on the floor, on my back, twisted one arm above my head, and tossed the other over the foot of the overturned coffee table—the exact position Mom had been in, sprawled in her own blood.
The stains were still in the rug. She, too, had gotten her throat slit. Left lifeless. Mouth gaping, and wide, vacant eyes staring up at the ceiling.
I was seventeen. Bound and locked in a closet while they were slit open at the throats and left to choke on their own blood.
They were decent people. They believed in God. A God who let them die like animals. I didn’t know why they were murdered. Was sure Chad did, though. Was sure there was a lot more to the tragedy that I didn’t know and would probably never know. To be honest, if someone tried to offer the truth, I don’t think I would even want to hear it.
What I wanted was to have my Mom and Dad back, not closure. No amount of truth and explanation could ever give me that.
I laid there in six-year-old stains of my mother’s blood until it grew dark. Wearily, I got up and turned on the lights, took a bath, slipped into one of my mother’s expensive silk robes, then climbed into their bed, curled up in a ball, and thought of happy memories with them until I fell asleep.
I spent an entire week locked up in my childhood home, wearing my parent’s clothes, sleeping in their favorite places, ordering food in, watching old DVDs and raiding Dad’s library.
My son was a half-hour drive from there, and maybe that’s where I should have been, with the living, not the dead, especially since I hadn’t held him in a while. But I loved hearing the soft chuckles of my mother’s voice around the house, the baritone whispers of encouragement from my Dad, and I wanted to be nowhere else but right there in that house. Might make me a bad parent, but I wasn’t sure I was a good one to begin with, wasn’t sure how to be the perfect mother for Jacob, or if I ever would be. Not when half the time I felt like launching myself off the earth, right into outer space to escape the human race.
Sometimes I felt happiness, sometimes I loved, sometimes I made life work. But at other times I turned my face to the sky and waited, waited for the often spoken of God to rip through the blue curtains on his white horse, open his mouth, and belch out an all-consuming conflagration upon us and end this shitty place called earth.
The world was beautiful, yet so damn ugly.
Life was astounding, yet so damn hard.
Love was phenomenally precious, yet so damn painful.
I wanted it all to end.
On Sunday evening, after I finished my delivered dinner from Munchery, I lit up the fireplace, even though the climate was already so hot and humid I had to utilize the air-conditioner.
Relocating Dad’s favorite recliner to the front of the fire place, I picked up Mom’s favorite blanket from the back of the couch and curled up in the recliner under the blanket, watching the flames flicker for hours, mind in another world, while the air-conditioner hummed in the background.
“You’re the real A, aren’t you?” I asked without turning.
This man had the scary and uncanny ability to open and close doors, walk on tiles, breathe, threaten, and intimidate, without even a hint of a sound. But I’d gotten used to it, gotten used to him, which was how I sensed his presence the moment he entered.
If no one else knew where I had disappeared to, he would know and find me. He knew everything. Everyone. Every secret.
“No exactly,” his cool, quiet voice responded.
I sighed at the flames, the heat fighting against the AC blast. “No one else could’ve known my every move. You anonymously fed Tex the private info to use against me.”
“You will always think the worst of me.” An everlasting pause. “But it was Saskia.”
This had me kicking off the blanket and leaping from the recliner, spinning to face him. “What?”
My cousin, Chadrick Niiveux, was devastating. Both literally and figuratively. His looks, style, and suaveness would make a woman cry, just looking at him would make her feel like she’s committing the greatest sin. She’ll want to strip naked, stretch out on the floor, and weep he was so destructively hot.
I was his blood and that was something I couldn’t pretend not to notice. Put simply, I’m pissed we’re related.
Dressed in dark close-fitted jeans, black dress shirt and a black blazer, dirty blond hair with sunburned highlights unkempt atop his head, midnight black eyes trained on me with his hands in his pockets, he gave me a slight shrug. “She’s pregnant, hormonal, bored, angry at you and—”
“Team Xavi.”
Chad made a face. “Don’t drag me into that bullshit.”
“You never knew that before you—”
“Saskia asked me for info. I gave her nothing. You sent her voice notes of everything, did you not?” The question was rhetorical. “She fed it to Tex. He did with it as he saw fit. And I don’t care. In fact, I applaud them both. Because you were being plain reckless.”
“I wasn’t being reck—”
“You’re sleeping with two different men, Alina.” His pitch hadn’t changed not even a little bit since he had begun speaking. He only spoke on one level: calm, collected, unperturbed. This was Chad. “One’s engaged, and the other’s a capricious alcoholic.”
“Davi’s not engaged anymore, and Xavi’s recovered.”
“Well, congratulations.” Unbuttoning his blazer jacket, he sauntered over to an armchair, sat down, and crossed his legs. “Now what?”
I rubbed my palms down my cotton-clad thighs. “What do you mean?”
“Now that you’ve got Davi to leave his fiancée, and Xavi to fall so foolishly in love with you that he ran all the way to France to lick his wounds, what’s your next step? Whose heart are you going to break?”
Chad had this manner of tipping his head forward and staring at you from under his lashes, in a way that made it feel like he could see right through you, every thought churning in your head, every hesitation, every decision. Like he knew what your answer would be before he even asked the question.
It freaked me out, so I broke eye contact with him and plopped my ass down on the coffee table. “I don’t know.”
“Clearly,” he said. “Or else you wouldn’t be here.”
I said nothing.
His head rotated on his shoulders as he looked around, his jaw tightening, a pained expression on his face. “You need to sell this place, Alina.”
“Piss off.”
“I can’t even sit in here for five minutes without feeling like going on a killing spree, and you’ve been cooped up in here all week.”
“Then leave. No one invited you.”
“Your pseudo-parents are worried about you.”
Notice how he didn’t say “I” was worried about you? That’s because, for every second of every minute of every hour of every day, he knew where I was.
“You mean the same pseudo-parents who tried to sabotage my relationships?”
“The fact that you pluralized the word ‘relationship’ proves that a sabotaging was warranted.”
“Of course, you would support shit like that. It’s what you do, right? Screw people’s lives up!”
As if he hadn’t heard me, he went on, “She didn’t do it because she hates you. She wanted you to see that what you’re doing is wrong, and to end it before things got out of hand.”
“She’s not in any position to judge me, Chad!”
“Judging someone is completely different than loving them,” he said, standing up and re-buttoning his blazer. “Lion has been hounding me. What do you want me to tell him?”
“Wow. You’re actually asking me?”
Expressionless, he stared me down for a long moment
. “I wish I could love you the way your parents did, or the way Saskia and JK does. But I can only love you the way I know how, and that’s keeping you safe and comfortable. Sorry if I’m a disappointment to you.”
I stood and walked back over to the recliner, sat down and resumed staring into the fire.
“You can’t stay locked up in here forever, Alina,” he said. “You have a son, a job, people who love and care about you, and two men who are waiting for you to make a decision.”
“The sun is shining,” I told the fire. “The world is doing quite fine without me.”
After a long stretch of silence, he asked, “How are you not pissed at me for what went down with Davian?”
As I closed my eyes, a tear squeezed out. “Because if you hadn’t interfered, I never would’ve experienced Xavier Xander.”
I didn’t hear him leave, but I knew he was gone.
It wasn’t another two days before I switched on my cell and sent a general message to everyone, letting them know I was alive and well and would contact them once I was in L.A.
Then after hiding for another couple of days, I let the sun kiss my skin as I drove home to my new, living family.
JK’s sports bike was absent and his Jeep was present which meant he was—hallelujah!—not around to give me crap. Once inside the house, I hugged Sylvie, the housemaid, who was baking in the kitchen, telling her how much I missed her cooking. I really did.
Amanda, Saskia’s BFF, the same one JK called in to replace me, was painting her toenails in the living room, an eyebrow arching up when she saw me. “Hey, heart-breaker.”
I rolled my eyes, smiling even though my facial muscles groaned at the gesture—seeing as they hadn’t had much exercise over the past couple of weeks.
