Chapter 12 #3
“What is this place, Gianna?”
“A woman’s shelter,” I swallow. “Beth’s husband wasn’t supposed to know where to find her.”
Zayn closes his eyes and looks as though he’s counting to ten in his head. “And what are you doing here, Gianna?” His eyes open to reveal the fury still dancing behind his black irises. “Do you use this shelter?”
“What? No!” I rush to correct him. “I volunteer here every Thursday.”
He watches me for a long moment, assessing my face in the way he does that makes me feel exposed, not sure exactly what it is he’s looking for.
“Are you okay?” There’s an edge of concern in his voice that makes me feel uneasy.
He isn’t supposed to care about me. I had convinced myself a long time ago that he didn’t.
He couldn’t. I look back at Beth, suddenly remembering we have an audience.
Lucky. Because it’s harder than I thought to not blur the lines between the Zayn I was in love with as a teenager and the Zayn that stands before me now.
“I’m fine, honestly.” I tuck an escaped tendril of hair behind my ear. My ponytail was loosened in the scuffle and I haven’t bothered to fix it yet. “I called you here for Beth, not for me. She needs help and can’t afford a lawyer.”
Beth clutches her cup tighter and a blush stains her cheeks as she averts her eyes downward. A rush of sadness fills my chest for her. What an awful situation to be in, and with her children no less. I look back to Zayn to find him watching me, a brow raised in question.
The thought of whether or not he would actually help Beth pro bono did cross my mind after I called him. The Zayn I knew a decade ago wouldn’t have hesitated. But this Zayn? I’m not so sure, but I had to try.
“Okay,” he says slowly, drawing out the word while tucking his hands into his pockets. His dark gaze on my beaten face is unwavering. “I don’t usually work for nothing, but in this case I’ll help your friend.”
A heavy sigh of relief escapes my lips. It’s mirrored by Beth in my peripheral vision. Zayn’s body is blocking my view of Sam, who’s been unusually quiet since Zayn arrived, but I can practically feel the gratitude that pours from him, as well.
“Thank you,” I breathe, hoping he can read the sincerity in my eyes. I go to leave and give them privacy, but his voice stops me before I reach the door.
“Don’t leave this house. I’ll find you when I’m done.”
When Zayn finishes with Beth, I’m laying with Emma on her bed flicking through the gossip magazine I smuggled in for her this morning.
“He’s just so dreamy,” Emma sighs, blowing her strawberry blonde bangs from her eyes as she points out the very lead singer we were discussing last week from a page of paparazzi shots. “Look at those eyes. The colour of a summer sky.”
I groan internally. The singer looks like an unwashed, malnourished gutter rat, but I know from first-hand experience that youthful infatuation can’t be dissuaded. I had a crush on Pete Doherty in my teens, for Christ’s sake.
“Mmm,” I murmur sarcastically, settling further back into her cushions, “nothing sexier than infidelity.”
An unamused scoff sounds from somewhere nearby and I look up to find Zayn taking up the entire doorway to Emma’s bedroom. Ignoring him, I focus on the magazine and casually flick over the page.
“Now that’s what I call dreamy,” I say, pointing to a wet, topless photo of Charlie Hunnam. “I binge-watched Sons of Anarchy with my friend Anna and for a month had the sweetest dreams of him stealing me away on a motorbike. I have the biggest crush on him.”
“Mmm,” Zayn says, repeating my words back to me with his notorious blank face. “Nothing sexier than psychopathy.”
I scoff, flicking the pages now with a hint of aggression, refusing to lift my gaze. “He may be a psychopath, but at least he didn’t disappear for ten years and then come waltzing back under false pretences.”
Wow, okay. I don’t know where this hostility has sprung from, but it seems my gratefulness for Zayn’s help with Beth has worn off and I’ve defaulted to passive-aggressiveness.
“Ummm, who are you?” Emma asks from beside me, her voice sweet as honey and her eyes locked on Zayn, who’s leaning against her doorframe looking ten shades of delicious, the asshole.
It dawns on me now that muddled in with that flaming ball of fire in my chest that I assumed was only attraction, is actually also unadulterated, burning hot rage. I’m fucking angry at Zayn. Livid, even.
Teenaged Zayn made me promises, and not only did he not fulfil them, but now he’s come back ten years too late to seemingly rub them in my face.
“False pretences?” Zayn responds, completely ignoring Emma the way he did with Beth earlier.
It’s like no one else exists when we’re in a room together.
“I’m not the one who didn’t recognise you.
” His eyes flash with his sentiment, and a flush swiftly creeps up my neck.
I can’t believe I didn’t recognise him either.
Yes, he looks different, but now that I know, I can’t understand how I didn’t see it before.
Probably due to the fact you refused to think of him for the last decade, Gianna.
“You let me believe you were someone else!” I say, and even I can hear the hysteria creep into my voice.
“I was calling you ‘David!’” I sit up and almost fall off Emma’s single bed.
The bedrooms at Hope House are modest and quite bare apart from a bed and dresser.
Emma’s has been filled with little trinkets, photos and other personal items, seeing as she’s been here the longest at six months, but most women don’t bother to decorate as they move on quite quickly.
Poor Emma has nowhere else to go, and Sam would never make her leave before she was ready.
“Is your name David?” Emma asks, confused, as she sits up beside me. The magazine falls from our laps.
“No, sorry Emma, this is Zayn,” I say, practically spitting out his name. “An old friend of mine.”
“Ten times hotter than Charlie Hunnam,” she murmurs under her breath with a giggle, and I swear Zayn heard her by the smug grin that stretches across his gorgeous face. His dimples, the ones I loved more than I loved my own annoying brother, trigger a violent reaction in me.
“Also ten times more likely to break your heart then show up like it never happened.”
The grin slips off his face. “I told Sam I’m taking you home, Gianna. Let’s go.”
I don’t bother fighting him, and we don’t speak to word to each other for the entire drive, the weighted silence stretching and pulling between us like an elastic band on the verge of snapping.
He doesn’t drive me home. It becomes obvious where he’s taking me after just a few turns.
When we pull up in the deserted carpark of our old high school, I don’t wait for him as I jump out of the car, slam the door behind me and follow the hidden dirt track down the bank I know leads to our gazebo.
The fact that I’m still calling it our gazebo stokes the fire in my chest, and not in a good way, especially because he seemed to have let go of the idea of anything being ours long before I did when he broke his promises and fucking deserted me.
Grey storm clouds hover over the sky like a foreboding warning. It’s freeze-your-tits-off cold, the chilling wind whipping so fiercely I may as well be wearing tissue paper instead of my black puffer jacket and tights.
When I reach the cover of the familiar gazebo, I turn to find Zayn right on my heels. I step back to put distance between us, ignoring the longing and nostalgia this place stirs up within me. With a heavy chest, words start pouring from my mouth without warning.
“What do you want from me, Zayn? Why are you here?”
“You called me and asked me to come,” he says, always the fucking epitome of cool, calm collectedness, while I feel like my head could blow off any second with the storm of emotions raging inside of me.
I managed to stuff all these feelings down in the last few days, locked them away the same way I’ve been doing since the day he left.
But being this close to Zayn, and him acting so fucking obtuse, there’s no possible way to avoid them now.
“Don’t fuck with me Zayn. I’m not in the mood.”
A whisper of a smile, so wildly opposing to my heated words, tickles his lips. It’s as if he’s remembering something amusing, and that just makes me angrier. He doesn’t get to stand here and bask in fond memories while I’m a raging pool of fire.
“I told you I would come back,” he says quietly. He places his hands inside his pockets and watches me intently.
“Yes,” I say sarcastically, putting my finger to my chin and nodding in mock agreement. “The second you turn eighteen, if I recall correctly. Which I do. That was exactly,” I pretend to count off my fingers, “ten fucking years ago that you were due back. You’re a bit late, don’t you think?”
Thunder booms overhead, echoing inside the pillars of the gazebo. It must be mid-year school holidays because there isn’t a soul around. I wonder if Zayn knew that when he brought me here.
“I came as soon as I could,” Zayn says softly, and there’s an edge to his voice I can’t quite place.
My heart jackhammers and my palms start to sweat even though the air feels below zero degrees.
After all this time of wanting answers, it turns out that now the moment has arrived, I can’t bring myself to hear them.
There can’t be a valid excuse for Zayn not returning.
There just can’t be, because that would mean everything I’ve done since he left has been in vain.
I had convinced myself long ago that Zayn stopped caring.
That he never even loved me to being with.
To hear any other version of events would shatter me all over again, and I’m barely holding it together as it is.
Useless. Dumb. Nothing.