Darkly Divine: A Paranormal Enemies to Lovers Romance

by C L Walker

  I shook my head as I looked down and noticed her ass was hanging out of her pjs that were slipping down. She was skin and bones since she ate like a bird and drank like a fish, and as such I was often subjected to her body parts I didn’t wish to see due to her loose-fitted clothing.

  I often wished that I could tell her that she was the slut because she was the one who had different boyfriends coming and going throughout my childhood. Most of them had brought in drugs and ill-gotten money because they were all losers. Not even one of them had resembled my dad in any capacity, he had been a kind hard working man that had pushed my mom to be a better person.

  Her current boyfriend liked to cop a feel on me when she wasn’t looking and when I had told her about it, she shoved me to the ground, kicked me repeatedly in my stomach, and called me a whore. She had said that even if he had touched me, I probably begged for it because I was desperate for attention.

  So, I dropped it.

  I slammed the door behind me and hoped it would get her attention before I pulled my tube of red lipstick out of my pocket. I lined my lips while I walked backwards away from the trailer hoping she would look out the window, but I was also afraid that she would.

  Don’t be stupid…

  I turned around quickly when I remembered for the millionth time that the small victory would not be worth facing her fury that was sure to follow. But I couldn’t deny the side of me that wanted to rebel.

  If I were going to do it, there was no better time because I only had about a month before I could leave. And I had to leave, because I couldn’t take it any longer, she was breaking me more and more every single day.

  I feared that if I stayed with her eventually there was going to be no chance of putting me back together, and I didn’t want my abuse to be the sum of my existence. I didn’t want to be forever broken.

  I walked at a quick pace down the gravel road that led to the main street and smiled at my neighbor who said hello as he got in his car.

  That was about as much as I got out of anyone in the trailer park, and it suited me fine. I was unnoticed by most people in town because I was shy or so they assumed, and I preferred it that way, because otherwise people would have had opportunities to question things I couldn’t answer.

  The whole town knew my mom was a drunk but that’s all they knew. Me, I was just the widow’s quiet daughter, who never got into any trouble, and who took care of her ‘poor’ grieving mother.

  I never bothered to correct their assumptions because I was sure not many of them cared to know the true story anyway. I was glad everyone left me alone and understood why I kept to myself, it worked out well for all involved.

  At school I tried to fade into the background as well, but it didn’t work out because for some reason people liked me. I wasn’t popular by any means, but I fit in better than I liked to.

  Life outside of my mother’s place was good enough all things considered, and I tried to keep it that way by keeping most others out of my life and by staying focused on my studies.

  But I didn’t know then that as I walked down the street to school and recounted the days until I was eighteen, that all of that was about to change. Because the dream that lingered in the back of my mind was a prelude to a beautiful disaster, and that disaster was a boy I had never wanted to see again.

  Two

  Skylar

  As soon as I stepped into the student parking lot, Sai jumped out of his car and swooped in next to me. He began talking animatedly before I even had a chance to say good morning.

  “Okay, so let’s say hypothetically speaking that aliens are real, if this book is correct then they look just like us. So, earthlings had no idea what aliens looked like, and it was their fear of the unknown that shaped the idea that aliens were frightening in appearance,” he said as he kept slapping the cover of a book titled, They Look Just Like You.

  I glanced around and tried to imagine that not everyone among us was human, and it made me laugh because even if it were possible, it was still hard to picture.

  I was never one to believe in that sort of thing, but Sai always challenged my beliefs and made me consider the world differently even if I wasn’t ready to commit to any of his wild ideas.

  He was my best friend, and the only person I trusted in the entire world even though admittedly my trust didn’t go that far.

  He was also in the running for the world’s biggest nerd, and it made our time together more interesting for it.

  “What you are saying is that if they look like humans, it means they could have already infiltrated and are walking among us as we speak?” I asked with an indulgent smile.

  He looked down his nose at me through black rimmed glasses, judged my sincerity and clearly found me lacking. “You’re always making jokes, but it will be I…” He put his hands on his hips, and his Gimli t-shirt pulled tightly against his chest as he adopted a superhero pose. “…who you will run to when you see their great lights in the sky.”

  “I’d rather place my bets on my own skills I’ve acquired from playing post-apocalyptic video games at your house and watching horror films.”

  His face fell. “A lot of the post-apocalyptic materials we consume are more like what not to do survival guides though.”

  I nodded my head as I thought about all the stupid things people in horror movies and television shows did that left you screaming out of frustration at your tv rather than out of fear.

  “True. But I have a plan, trust me,” I said even though we both knew that it wasn’t a very extensive one.

  “Yeah, a plan for zombies, my dear, not a plan to fight the aliens who gather in numbers among us.”

  He tapped my arm to get my attention and stopped me in the middle of the hallway before he pointed to Amanda Herts just down the way as she leaned against the bright red lockers.

  Once my eyes were on the target, he lowered his voice and said, “She’s definitely one of them, it’s obvious her goal is to populate the planet and increase their numbers. That has to be why she sleeps around… she’s looking for the perfect specimen.”

  I considered her as she smiled up at our star quarterback Tommy Lowe, who had walked up to her and wrapped his arms around her waist as he smiled back before they started making out right there against the locker.

  Public displays of affection made me uncomfortable because I had never been touched or kissed like that even alone in the dark. I couldn’t imagine being so comfortable with someone that I would let them maul my face at school.

  “And there he is. The perfect specimen,” I said with feigned admiration, and Sai nodded his head beside me before both of our faces scrunched up in disgust.

  “I mean if you’re into that sort of thing. Either of them really.” He shook himself and rubbed his arms like he had gotten the chills.

  “I’m certainly not.”

  We continued down the hallway and out of the building into the courtyard and walked under the covered walkway. It was my favorite place in the whole school because it was dark, rarely occupied and served as a fantastic retreat when I needed a moment of quiet. It was in the center of four connecting buildings, and in the middle, there was a big tree that’s branches stretched over the roof in all directions. Around it was rich green grass, that had little wildflowers sprinkled throughout.

  The sun being mostly blocked out by the tree, could only reach you here and there with tiny rays that squeezed through the branches. With the limited light and the flowers, the way they grew wildly, it all came together in an almost magical way. It didn’t belong, yet it was lovely, and I could resonate with that.

  We went inside the next building and discussed our classes for the semester. We didn’t have any together because Sai was leagues ahead of me academically, but he was going to try to switch his third period to art with me if he could get away with it.

  As we slowly walked down the hallway, I spotted a stranger easily amongst the people whose faces all seemed to blur. His face was the on
ly new one, everyone else’s I had seen almost every day, so they came to me with varying amounts of familiarity depending on how well I knew them, or how often I noticed them.

  He was something else, something that made me dismiss every word I tried to think of that would describe his physical being with a modicum of accuracy.

  Once we were close enough that I could clearly make out his features, his eyes were all I had time to take in, they were dark, mysterious, and I felt as if they pierced right through my armor in an instant. With just a single look from him I was exposed and left at the mercy of his violent stare.

  There was something odd about the moment, it felt different than simply catching the eye of a stranger, as there had been something about it that had threatened to push the air from my lungs until I could no longer breathe.

  I couldn’t hear the shuffling of feet down the hall, or the laughs of my peers as they passed, and for a moment I forgot that Sai was beside me. All I was aware of was the eyes of a stranger and a sinking feeling in my gut.

  After we passed him, I lost my restraint and turned around to watch him.

  I got chills down my spine, and gooseflesh ran the length of my arms as I watched him walk away, because there was something about him that felt off.

  It was in the way he walked or sauntered rather, he sliced through the hallway and everyone moved out of his path while he paid them no mind. He moved like he was the only somebody in a crowd of no one else and it made me feel insignificant.

  He had the presence of someone you didn’t want to get involved with, yet you couldn’t help being drawn to them all the same. Those kinds of people made me the most uncomfortable.

  I thought he might look back at me, I thought maybe the intensity of the moment was shared between us, but of course he didn’t.

  “Hey, wasn’t that the kid that used to live in my neighborhood back in elementary school?” Sai asked from where he had stopped beside me to watch as well.

  His tone told me that he was completely oblivious to my inner turmoil, so I was thankful that he didn’t notice how weird I was being about a random guy.

  “What kid? He doesn’t look familiar to me.”

  He slapped his hands together when he figured it out a moment later. “Micah, yeah, I think that was his name.”

  “No way.” I felt like a hand had wrapped around my heart and squeezed.

  There’s no way he is back…

  “It definitely is. Just imagine him with that long hair but braided down his back instead of loose and you can sort of see it.” His words rushed out and with each one my anxiety grew.

  “Hmm.” Was all I could manage to get out.

  “It has to be him,” he said after a few quiet moments had passed. “I never forget a face, especially a unique one.”

  Unique? I think you mean a devilishly gorgeous one.

  I tried to picture young Micah, but the truth was I didn’t remember what his face had looked like. Even though he was never far from my mind because for some reason that night clung to me despite my efforts to will it away. But his face had gotten blurrier as time went on.

  I remembered how that night felt, the words that were spoken, but I didn’t remember much about his physical being, only his shiny hair.

  My dreams were vivid but that didn’t mean they translated well to real life, so I couldn’t see the similarities between the man in the hallway and the little boy from my dreams.

  Or maybe I just didn’t want to.

  Besides, it would be too wild to have him show up right after I started dreaming about that night again. My life wasn’t a novel, things like that didn’t happen.

  “I didn’t know him, so I’ll take your word for it.” I reached for the door to my classroom. “I’ll see you at lunch, have a good day, nerd.”

  “You too, dork.” He waved goodbye.

  Once he turned around, I took one last look behind me at the door the mysterious boy had went through and made a silent plea: Please don’t be him!

  After much consideration over the first three periods of the day, I had decided that Sai was totally wrong. I reminded myself of this once again when I tipped my head down as I walked through the cafeteria. I was convinced that I didn’t need to look out for the stranger any longer because he was nobody to me.

  I was already seated when Sai walked up with a proud smile on his face. “I successfully switched classes and I will be joining you in art tomorrow!”

  “Awesome, it will be so much better with you there and I saved a seat at my table just in case.”

  “Nice! Okay, now on to the juicy stuff. I was right, it’s Micah,” he exclaimed as he sat down next to me at the lunch table. “I have second period with him, so, I sat next to him and simply asked. He just moved back, but this time into his late grandfather's cabin a few miles up the mountain loop by the river.”

  “Why would his family move back to this God forsaken town?”

  It was everyone’s dream to get out so it confused me that anyone would come back after escaping. Granted it was a nice town located in a beautiful forest area at the base of a mountain, but it was still in the middle of nowhere.

  “They didn’t. It’s just him. His late grandfather left the cabin to him and he came here as soon as he turned eighteen to fix it up while he finishes school.”

  I nodded my head when I didn’t know what else to say as I was still in shock over the realization that it was Micah. I hadn’t expected to see him again and I certainly hadn’t imagined that he would have such an intimidating, yet alluring appearance if I did happen to see him.

  What I did imagine on occasion is what he might be like as a person, and I also imagined what it would have been like if I had confided in him that night. Because he was the only person who had ever seen a glimpse of what my mother did to me.

  After that night by the creek, I had spent weeks searching for him in the hallways and at recess, but I never saw him. I finally worked up the courage to ask another student about him and it turned out that he had moved, and my stress over what he might have said about me and my mother was all for naught.

  About eight years later there I was doing it all over again. I had spent the entire half hour of lunch looking around the cafeteria for him right after I told myself I didn’t need to, and like before, I came up empty handed.

  I hoped that at the very least knowing who he was would change the way his presence made me feel. In a way I was desperate to see him, so I could prove to myself that he didn’t move me in such an earth-shattering way.

  “Dude, you have maybe two minutes to finish that.” Sai pointed to my bean burrito that I had only taken a few bites of because I was distracted with wanting to see Micah’s face again.

  The bell rang as I started to take as big of bites as I could manage to fit in my mouth and chewed them rapidly.

  “You should have said something sooner!” I playfully slapped Sai’s arm and he flinched away from me as if he was scared, even though he was way bigger than me and at no risk of being harmed by my meager strength.

  As I said, he was a nerd, but he was built like an athlete. He was large with broad shoulders, strong arms, and lean legs. The funny thing was that he never worked out unless he did so in secret. But I didn’t see how he had time what with his homework from his AP classes and his extensive plotting to combat alien invasions.

  “You were in a daze… you weren’t even listening to me.” He ruffled my hair and pushed me on my way. “But I forgive you, kid.”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Uh huh, bye!”

  After I said goodbye, I proceeded to stuff the entire end of my burrito into my mouth. Which despite my estimations proved to be a serious error in judgement, because it was so big it was hard to find room to chew.

  I approached the garbage can that sat right by the doors leading out of the cafeteria and dumped my tray. When I looked up as I had already begun to walk forward with the intention of leaving, I noticed too late that someone
was standing in my way.

  That someone was Micah.

  I was about to run into him just as he casually turned around and looked down at me in warning. His eyes told me that there was going to be trouble if my body accidentally made contact with his.

  So, I did this awkward suck my stomach in thing and arched away from him while I corrected my footing and stilled my momentum. I sighed a sigh of great relief when I barely stopped myself short of bumping into him but then I recalled that my mouth was full of food and I shut it promptly.

  I desperately wished I could swallow the offending burrito, but it was nowhere near small enough and I wasn’t trying to die. As it was, my cheeks were inflated to chipmunk proportions and to add insult to injury, I felt warmth as a blush crept across them.

  I tried to smile the best I could and keep my mouth closed before I tried to apologize by way of an awkward bow. But all I succeeded in doing was looking like an idiot and smacking his folded arms with my hair on the way down.

  When I straightened out, he quirked one dark eyebrow at me before he looked away and dismissed me after all my effort.

  After the cut I received I felt it necessary to get the hell out of there, so I sped by him and finally swallowed my food.

  I kept walking swiftly even when I was out of his sight. I felt as if the further away from him I was the safer I was. But what I really wanted to do was keep that pace and charge right off campus and never look back because I felt humiliated.

  I was normally calm, cool, and collected. I was the last person you’d find showing too much emotion or making a fool of myself. I preferred to fade into the background where no one knew the real me, so anytime I accidentally achieved the opposite I felt the need to sink into a dark hole until everyone forgot what I had done.

  My dorky, messy, and emotional side was rarely seen, and not even Sai was privy to all that was me. I shared a lot with him, but he knew nothing of my mother’s violence and the extent of her verbal abuse, and as a result the saddest part of me.