Chapter Two Aria
Chapter Two
Aria
It was strange to look at my family and suddenly view them in an entirely different light.
When everything changed in what felt like the passing of a single moment and nothing that any of us had known remained the same.
Sitting in the passenger seat of Pax’s car and peering at them through the windshield where they were gathered at the small neighborhood park, I felt as if I were watching them through a distorted, clouded mirror.
The car idled in the cold, the heater was working overtime, and I couldn’t seem to make myself move from the spot as I stared at the people I loved most.
People who had so misunderstood me.
Right then, it felt as if time and space were stretched between us. A million years passed. It seemed impossible that it’d barely been two weeks since the day I was placed in the mental care facility.
It felt as if, during that time, everything had been reconfigured.
As if I’d aged twenty years during that time. My eyes opened and my heart changed.
Theirs had, too.
I could feel it in my mother’s gaze when she looked up from where she was sitting on a bench. It gave her a good view of my brothers, who played in a field at the neighborhood park near my grandmother’s.
On the far side of the park, my younger sister, Brianna, sat on top of a picnic table under a ramada, her long brown hair whipping around her face, her downturned focus on her phone.
It was cold and dreary out, but when I’d texted my mother this morning after Pax and I had gone to the store to purchase a phone—since I refused to be cut off from my mother any longer—we decided this would be a safe place to meet. No walls surrounding us.
We were still on edge after Pax had broken me out of the institution, worried the local police might be looking for him, but after what had happened with my father last night, I needed to maintain contact with my mother.
She had stayed at my grandmother’s last night, but I didn’t want to deal with the pressure of others listening in on us. I wanted a place where we could talk.
Really talk.
Because for the first time in my life, I didn’t have to hide my truth.
God, how many years had I ached for her to know me? To truly see me?
“You sure this is something you want to do?” Pax’s voice was low and riddled with concern. He reached out a tattooed hand and threaded his fingers through mine.
Silent support.
I knew it would be a long, long time before he forgave them, if that was even possible.
Maybe longer before he trusted them.
I stared across at my mother, whose attention was fully trained on the car. I could feel her pain radiating out.
The regret.
The confusion.
More than any of it, her love.
“I can’t imagine what my mother was feeling last night.” My voice was wispy. “Can’t imagine the trauma she went through before I got there. She had to have been terrified.” My chest tightened with the thought of that type of trauma.
My father’s mind had been taken over by a Ghorl, the strongest of the Kruen. It had been a manipulation to draw me back to my home so the Ghorl could end me. My father had held my mother hostage through the middle of it, and she’d had to witness him trying to kill me.
But we’d destroyed the Ghorl. Prevailed over its power.
“To witness my father that way? To have him treat her that way? Then to see what she saw? To see you?”
My mother had always believed Pax was a figment of my deranged mind. That he’d told me to hurt myself when they believed my scars from Faydor had been personally inflicted.
Then to find out my nightmare world was real? It had to have been so much for her.
Shifting, I let my gaze travel over his face, and I reached out and scratched my fingernails through the stubble that coated his jaw.
My fingers drifted, tracing over the deep scar that slashed down the right side of his face and down to the tattoos that climbed his throat.
Ink that spoke of the terrors we faced each day and night of our lives.
The man was my Nol, my soulmate, even though our Laven family believed it was forbidden for us to be together this way.
He gathered my hand and pressed my knuckles to his soft, plush lips.
His words landed somewhere between an apology and a plea.
“Thought I was going to steal you away from here forever. Thought you’d never have to return and face the judgment and disbelief you were subject to for your whole life growing up. ”
My head shook. “What we are is unfathomable, Pax. I don’t blame them.”
Old wounds swam through those boundless eyes, and pain clutched my chest. I could see what he kept hidden there, beneath the hard layers that covered him whole. His own childhood traumas and scars.
“The only thing I want is to keep you safe. From everything,” he murmured.
I unwound my hand from his so I could cup his cheek. “You can’t do that, Pax—but you can stand by my side, and that’s the only thing I’m asking you to do.”
When we were running, he’d promised so many times that he would have to leave me once I was safe. He’d told me it could only be temporary. But we’d come to accept that we were destined for so much more than that.
Purposed.
Placed here in this perfect time.
He gave a slight nod, and the faintest smile pulled at the edge of his mouth. “Guess that’s good, because beside you is the only place I want to be.”
He set his palm on my face and brushed the pad of his thumb over my cheek.
Softly.
Tenderly.
Just staring across at me.
“Through it all, Aria. We’re going to get through it. Whatever is coming our way.”
“I know,” I promised.
He gave a slight nod, and I inhaled a steeling breath as I turned back to look out toward my mother, who waited. My hand flexed on the door handle, and I forced myself to open it and step out into the winter chill of Albany, New York.
My home for all my life.
Februarys here were always freezing. It was a different kind of cold from Faydor’s, though. Warm rays of sunlight rained down and caressed my face.
A promise that even though it might feel that way to me, this world wasn’t so desolate.
The soles of my shoes crunched on the long, dead grass as I made my way toward my mother.
She sat on the bench, her hair twisted in the same messy knot she so often wore, the grays interwoven in the browns now more profound.
I could feel the anxiety rolling off her.
Confounded waves that battered against me like an apology.
I stopped three feet away from her. My throat, still sore from the attack last night, grew so thick it was difficult to breathe.
I felt overwhelmed, looking at her like this.
The lines that had been carved so deep on her face, written in the horrors and the grief she’d found. Her entire world in shambles.
“Hi, Mom.” I could barely force it out.
The tears she’d clearly been trying to hold back slipped free. Long tracks that streaked down her face and dripped from her chin.
“Aria. You came.”
Nervously, I fiddled with my fingers. “I promised you that I would.”
Her attention darted toward Pax’s car, then slowly returned to me, her voice hoarse when she whispered, “No one could blame you for leaving this place and never coming back. No one could blame you for cutting us off and pretending like we never existed.”
A lump of grief pulsed in my chest. “I never wanted that.”
Sorrow billowed from her. “You only wanted to be believed.”
The nod I returned was weary. “It was the only thing I ever wanted. To be believed. To be seen. For you to understand me.”
She stared at me for the longest while, as if that was what she was doing—seeing me for the very first time.
Her gaze softened as her eyes traced over the exposed scars on my face.
Then she suddenly breathed out and lifted a blanket she had folded on her lap. “Here, I brought this for you. It’s freezing out.”
“Thank you,” I told her as I accepted it. I unfurled the heavy wool and wrapped it around my shoulders before I sat down on the bench beside her.
Taking a beat of respite from the heaviness, I gestured at my little brothers playing in the distance. “Those two would never know it’s even cold, though, would they?”
Mitch and Keaton were chasing each other, laughter rolling off them as they tagged each other back and forth.
“You’re it!”
“No, you’re it!”
Their sweet little voices carried on the breeze.
My heart fisted.
God, I’d missed them so much. Had worried so much, unsure if I’d ever get to see them again.
Mom let go of a mild chuckle. “They seem to be completely immune to anything but the other’s antics. I asked your brothers and sister to give us a little time to talk. Asked them to keep themselves entertained, and of course, your brothers are out there bickering.”
My laugh was quiet. “They might argue, but there’s nothing truly malicious about it.”
I could feel the weight of her cautious curiosity burn into my cheek. “And you know that? You can feel it?”
I dropped my head and fiddled with a piece of fringe on the blanket as I murmured, “I can.”
Tension strained between us before she begged, “I don’t understand, Aria. I don’t understand how any of this is possible. I thought for years . . .” She trailed off, unable to say it.
That I was crazy.
Insane.
Hurting myself.
“You could only see what you could see. What you could understand. Every choice you made was because you cared about me. I know that.”
Sadness bleared her eyes. “But it still hurt you.”
Head downturned, I grabbed her hand, squeezing it so tightly that my knuckles blanched as I whispered, “You did. But I get it. All of this is . . . terrifying.”
“I spent so many years being afraid for you, Aria. Terrified for the one I loved so much.” Mom breathed out as she tightened her hold on my hand.
“I spent years aching for you. Praying for a way to fix it. For a way to take away whatever tormented your mind, so you could be free. Live a healthy and happy life. And now . . .”
She gulped, her head shifting away, her chin quivering as she struggled with the truth.