“You didn’t.”
She sounded pained. And I thrilled at making her feel that way. That pain was mine. All mine.
“I couldn’t.” It was the truth. It was an excuse.
“Tell me,” she said, looking up at me. And I fell. Fell. Into coal black eyes and the hint of fire still flaming bright.
“I can’t.” More excuses. Tongue-tied lies strangling in my throat.
My eyes flittered around the room, landing again on the line of framed pictures on the windowsill.
I walked towards them, shielding my eyes from the glaring sun. Blinding me. I couldn’t see.
She still sat in her chair, watching me. Closely. Like an insect under glass. Examining. Careful.
I picked up the third framed picture. I had looked at the first two before.
A pretty dark-haired girl wearing glasses. A scar on her cheek and a crooked nose. A photograph taken outdoors by a picnic table. The girl was looking off towards something I couldn’t see. She didn’t look happy.
She looked…lost.
I held up the frame. “Who is this?”
“Family.” The same, vague answer. I looked closer at the girl in the picture, trying to see a resemblance.
There was none.
I put it back and looked again at the other two girls I had noticed last time I had visited. The redhead and the blonde.
They were her family too. But they looked nothing alike.
“Family is more than blood. It’s an unbreakable bond between people…sometimes complete strangers.” She sounded angry. Hateful. Bitter. She didn’t want to talk about the girls in the photographs. That was obvious.
But my curiosity was getting the better of me. I couldn’t help it. This complicated girl was an enigma. I didn’t understand her at all. A small yet powerful voice deep inside told me that I probably shouldn’t try.
“Are they strangers? Your family?” I asked her, repositioning the photograph I had picked up back in its spot on the ledge.
“Aren’t all families?”
“I suppose so,” I agreed, sitting down on the couch, facing her. Her apartment was so cold. The air conditioner was apparently turned on high. Goose bumps broke out along my skin and I rubbed my arms. Layna was unconcerned with the temperature. It seemed to suit her.
“I should have come to you last night.” I ran my hands through my hair, feeling like an idiot. I had lost my head. And over what? The voice from my past? A voice I shouldn’t hear at all?
“Tell me,” she repeated and this time I could only comply.
“I’m not who you think I am,” I began. I couldn’t look at her. I was afraid. I was giving her a small piece of who I was. Not enough, I was sure. But it was all I could give right now.
“Who are you, Elian Beyer?”
Elian Beyer.
That name.
I hated it.
But I couldn’t take it back. It’s who I had become. I couldn’t give her that. Not yet. I wasn’t ready.
“I’m a guy who has had to run far, far away.”
Layna uncurled her legs and leaned forward, her arms braced on her knees, her hands dangling between. She looked at me with an intensity that left me shaking.
Reeling.
“What are you running from?” she whispered. She sounded on edge. Excited even. Was that right?
I frowned, not understanding her reaction. But there was something in her easy acceptance of secrets I couldn’t voice that made me want to unravel everything. To lay it all out at her feet and leave it there for her to pick over like a vulture.
“My parents are dead. My dad, as I told you, died before I left home.” I gripped my hands together hard enough to break bone. I started to lose feeling in my fingers. It kept me grounded. It helped me speak of things that were almost too painful to be real.
“My mother…she passed just a few years ago. I didn’t go home. I couldn’t. I know that makes me a selfish ass, but I hadn’t been back since three years after my sister—” I choked up. I couldn’t finish the sentence.