He was in the shower. Naked.
And she’d just walked into the bathroom.
It told me all I needed to know.
I clicked the end button on the phone, my breath emerging in staggered exhales as I tried not to cry, a losing battle I was not strong enough to fight.
Outside the raucous sounds of horns and cheering rang out into the night. Others were celebrating while I slowly died inside.
**********
“Karys, wake up,” Braxton slurred. I blinked, disoriented with sleep, the room coming into focus as I sat up. I’d fallen asleep on the couch. My eyes felt gritty and tight with the tears I’d shed as the world outside celebrated.
Braxton sighed, sitting down on the couch and boxing me in. I scooted over as far as I could. “Did you have fun?” I asked.
Braxton let out a laugh that ended in a hiccup. “Too much.”
“Oh.” I managed to sit up a little bit, propping my back against the throw pillows behind me. “Where’s Claire?”
Braxton massaged his forehead and then grimaced. “She went home. She’s mad at me.”
“Why is she mad?” I shook my head, attempting to cast off the exhaustion making me feel heavy and out of sorts. I just wanted to crawl into my bed and go back to sleep. I wanted to shut off the world, the visions that were again beginning to filter in at the edges of my brain of Zakai naked in Giselle’s shower and the knowledge that their relationship was such that she felt no hesitation in entering the room. Even hours later, the vision felt like a dagger to my heart.
“Claire is mad because she expected a ring and a New Year’s Eve proposal.”
I bit my lip, confused for a moment. Proposal. “Of marriage, you mean?”
Braxton laughed shortly. “Yes, Karys, of marriage.” His gaze cleared slightly and he tilted his head as he looked at me with seemingly sudden sobriety. “God, I forget that in some ways you’re so naïve. So . . . childlike.” His gaze clouded over again and he reached forward. And though my head stayed still, my eyes tracked his hand as he brushed a lock of hair off my cheek, his finger dragging slowly over my skin as he pulled it away.
Karys is naïve.
The words that Zakai had once uttered to Haziq echoed in my mind, causing my stomach to clench and my heart to constrict painfully.
But I was distracted by the way Braxton was looking at me, wary of what I saw in his eyes.
Does he admit to you he wants to get between those sweet little thighs?
No, no, it isn’t true. He’s my uncle. He’s meant to care for me. If not him, who?
“So innocent and yet so jaded and so goddamned beautiful,” he whispered, his eyes half closed. My breath caught and anxiety raced through my system, a zap of tension that caused my muscles to clench in preparedness for flight. “I don’t want to marry her, Karys. Half the time I don’t even want to fuck her.” His head fell to his hand and he massaged his temples for a moment. His body tilted but he caught himself with a jerk. “Half the time I wish it was you under me. Jesus, that’s wrong I guess.” He raised his head and looked at me blearily as I remained frozen, unable to move. “Is it though? Does it matter if two people are related if they only just met?”
“Uncle Braxton, I—”
“No, shh.” He raised his hand, telling me to cease talking. “Don’t call me uncle. Jesus. It is wrong. I know.” He looked at me again and I saw something shift in his eyes, a decision clicking into place. He leaned forward and planted his mouth on mine, tilting his head and probing my lips with his tongue. I let out a muffled cry of distress, so taken off guard no words emerged. I attempted to scoot backward, but I had nowhere to go. I turned my head, his wet mouth sliding across my cheek as I finally got the leverage to push him away from me, scrabbling backward onto the arm of the couch and falling off the edge.
I hit the carpeted floor with a thud, pulling myself up quickly and wiping the wetness of his saliva from my face. Braxton stood too, reeling, but catching himself and stepping forward, reaching out as if to help steady me. “God, are you okay?”
I stepped back, holding my hand up in a gesture of stop, my chest rising and falling in panicked exhales. He did, his expression somehow both stunned and slack. “Oh my God, Karys. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I let out a choked sob, wrapping my arms around myself as my body began to shake. Devastation felt like a dense fog settling inside my mind. “You told me you were going to help me identify the lies I’d been told,” I said, my breath emerging on a shaky exhale. “You told me you’d help me discover truth. But you’re nothing but a lie!”
I moved around him, creating as wide a berth as possible in the midst of the furniture. I scurried into my room and closed and locked the door.
His knock was instantaneous. “Please, Karys. I’m so sorry. I’m drunk and stupid. Please forgive me.”
My breath came out in stilted bursts of air as I attempted not to cry, to calm my ravaged heart. “Go away,” I pleaded.
I heard him breathing on the other side of the door and then a soft thud as if his head had hit the wood. I stood as a sigh emerged. “We’ll talk in the morning,” he muttered and then I heard his footsteps moving clumsily away, and finally the soft click of his bedroom door closing.
I sagged back against the wall, flattening my palms against the surface, and squeezing my eyes shut as I gathered myself. After what I hoped was long enough that Braxton had fallen to sleep, I pushed off the wall and hurried to my closet, retrieving my small suitcase.
I changed and then packed only my books and the clothes I’d arrived with, the ones Cody Rutland had brought to us at the hotel room we’d stayed in after being rescued from Sundara—what seemed like a lifetime ago. They fit poorly and lacked in style, I knew that now, but I gripped them to me as one would grip a life raft in a storm. They’d belonged to the girl I’d once been and I needed her now. Then I threw them in my suitcase along with a bag of toiletries and zipped it shut.
I exited my room as quietly as I could, but in the still silence of the apartment, I heard the rattly sounds of Braxton’s snores from behind his closed bedroom door.
I slipped on my boots and my coat and grabbed my school backpack from the hook near the door and then left the apartment. I had nowhere to go. But I couldn’t stay there. I could not live being leered at again.
The main door of the building opened and Claire breezed through, a flurry of light snow following her inside. I halted as she spotted me, her eyes growing wide.
“Karys! My goodness, where are you going?” She rushed toward me. “Honey, you look absolutely pallid. What’s wrong?”
The tears burst from me like a water source suddenly being tapped in a patch of cracked, dehydrated ground.
Claire wrapped her arms around me and I dropped the handle of my suitcase, letting my backpack slide off my arm, clutching at her, needing the soft arms of a motherly touch so desperately. “Tell me, honey,” she cooed. “Tell me what’s wrong? Is it Zakai again? You can’t go to him, lovely girl. He’s no good for you.”
I shook my head against the fur of her coat, the soft fibers tickling my sodden cheeks. “No,” I said, my voice drowned in tears. I looked up at her, imploring her with my eyes. “Braxton kissed me,” I whispered, my cheeks flooding with heat, though it had been him who’d betrayed me. So why did I feel such shame?