Chapter 19
Zayn doesn’t drop me outside like an Uber driver. He parks out the front of my building -illegally again, might I add -and escorts me all the way past the foyer and into the lift. He doesn’t bring up the last conversation we had in my apartment, and neither do I.
“Don’t you have anything better to do on your Friday night?” I ask as I push the button for the fifth floor and silently hope he doesn’t have anything, or anyone, better to do. “A girlfriend to see? Friends to go out with?”
“No. I don’t have plans and I haven’t had a girlfriend since you.”
He leans back against the wall and his gaze finds mine. I have to break the intensity of the moment by rummaging around in my bag for my house keys before my blood catches fire and my heart is successful in its plight to escape my chest. He really hasn’t committed to anyone since me?
“Okay, maybe not a girlfriend, then. A... lady friend?”
I act distracted, but my cheeks flame as a lick of jealousy rips through me.
“A lady friend?” he asks, dark amusement brushing his lips. “Not tonight, no.”
“Oh?” I feign nonchalance while my stomach flips harder than a pancake. “Is that something you do often, then?”
He raises a brow at me, his amusement growing. “I admit I haven’t been celibate since we were sixteen, if that’s what you’re asking.” He cocks his head to the side. “Are you jealous, Gianna?”
It doesn’t go past me that he doesn’t actually answer my question. He admitted as much as I could have guessed, but I want to know if he’s seeing anyone now. With a face like his, I’m sure he has many, many lady friends -the asshole.
“As jealous as you were when Brett asked me out for drinks.” Which is a lie, of course. I’m so jealous I feel borderline violent.
“Very, then,” he replies, an edge to his voice I can’t quite place. Did he just admit he was jealous of Brett asking me out? What is this weird game we’re playing? Are we… flirting?
When the lift doors glide open, I hurry out and fumble with the key before I unlock my door and head inside.
I don’t explicitly invite Zayn in, but he takes my lack of resistance as an invitation in itself and follows me inside, closing the door behind him.
I kick off my shoes and make my way to the kitchen.
“Would you like a wine?” I ask, not bothering to be embarrassed at the fact I’m assuming he’ll stay for a while.
“I’d love one.”
I feel his electric gaze on my back as I pull down two wine glasses and falter.
What the fuck?
My eyes have landed on the couch where my file full of notes for the Hope House fundraiser lies open, seemingly discarded in a rush with papers half hanging out of sleeves.
“What’s wrong?”
I look over at Zayn, who’s shoulders have tensed under his suit jacket.
“My folder,” I say, my throat suddenly dry. “I came home after Hope House today and left it on the bench. I was in such a hurry to get to work I didn’t even go into the living room.” I look at the folder now laying on the couch. “Someone’s been in my apartment.”
“Wait here.” Zayn’s tone leaves no room for argument as he strides away and starts searching my home.
A chill has spread over my skin, and I start to shiver, goosebumps coating my arms like lots of tiny little ant hills.
I place the glasses down carefully and, ridiculously, try to remember whether or not I made my bed this morning.
Zayn’s in my bedroom now, my bedroom, searching for a fucking intruder, and all I can think about is whether or not my bedroom looks presentable to him.
It takes only a minute for Zayn to check my entire apartment and come back to give the all clear.
“The lock hasn’t been tampered with,” he says upon his return to the kitchen, where I’m still standing, staring at the offending folder. “Who has access to this place?”
“No one. I changed the locks when I moved in.” It was the first thing I did to ensure Daniel couldn’t come in when ever he pleased and help himself to what he thought was his by right.
AKA me.
“If you say someone has been in here, then they must have a key.”
He stands right behind me and I turn on shaky legs to face him. His strong, immovable chest is like a shield, protecting me from what ever lays beyond him, and in this moment I’m so grateful that he’s here.
Someone was inside my fucking apartment. Oh my God.
“It had to have been Daniel. There’s no other explanation,” my voice has raised a few octaves and I sound borderline hysterical to my own ears. “He must have got his hands on a key. But how?”
“Has he been left alone with your keys long enough to make an imprint?”
Zayn has turned into full lawyer mode, and I’m glad for the stability of his calm collectedness because I feel like I’m about to lose my shit.
Sensing I’m on the verge, he places one steady hand on my shoulder and the other under my chin, gently tilting my head back to look into my eyes. “It’s okay, Gianna, we’ll sort it out.”
“No, he hasn’t -, oh, yes he has been!” I say, remembering the day he sprung me at family lunch. “He could have done it at my parents’ house. I leave my keys in the foyer and he knows that.”
“Okay,” Zayn says slowly, before a dark threat enters his voice. “Is there a specific reason you had the locks changed when you moved in?“
If my heart wasn’t hammering before, it certainly is now. My skin grows clammy.
“I just didn’t want Daniel to be able to waltz in whenever he felt like it.”
Zayn stares at me for a long moment, a storm of magnificent fury building behind his eyes.
He clenches down on his jaw and everything on his face grows firmer, yet he still cradles my chin with the gentlest touch, as though I’m made of the most delicate crystal that could shatter easily. Perhaps I could.
“Gianna. You need to tell me what happened,” he says carefully, as though it’s taking every effort from him to keep his composure. “If he did something, I need to know so I can help. I can get an Intervention Order today to make it so that if he enters this apartment it’s against the law.”
Flashes of the night I left Daniel interrupt my vision.
In place of Zayn’s beautiful face, I only see cruel, blue eyes.
A humourless smirk that taunts me, calling me vile things.
The weight of a gold Rolex against my throat, stopping me from screaming.
The excruciating pain of a forced entry between my legs.
My legs start to shake as I attempt to push the memories down into the dark recess they’ve been buried in for nearly a year. But it’s like Zayn’s presence acts as some kind of incendiary to my memories and I can’t shove them away.
There’s pressure at the back of my head and it takes me a moment to realise Zayn’s fingers are threaded into my ponytail, holding me steady, and I blink a few times to clear the images from my mind and see Zayn’s stunningly furious face staring down at me.
“Nothing happ-”
“Gianna,” he cuts me off gently but firmly. “I know you’re hiding something.”
He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, the fury is gone.
It’s replaced with a softness, a plea, that I can’t ignore any more now than I could when I was sixteen.
I feel safer right now, in Zayn’s arms, than I have ever felt before, and for the first time since it happened, I find that I want to tell someone about it. Not just anyone, I want to tell Zayn.
“I don’t want you to make a big deal out of it.” By it, I mean my sexual assault, which of course was a huge deal. But I don’t want to take it further. Daniel would have squashed my claims then, and he’ll squash them even more easily now.
Zayn doesn’t confirm nor deny my request, and I start to shut down. I want to tell him, but I won’t have him making a circus out of my trauma, which I’m perfectly fine to keep buried away for the rest of my life.
“Gianna,” he breathes, the rise and fall of his chest steady beneath my hands. “Please tell me what he did to you.”
“Promise me you won’t tell a soul or take it further,” I demand shakily.
He only lets out a long breath, searching my eyes. “You know I can’t promise that.”
I relent with a sigh, knowing that he’s right. He’s never made me a promise that he didn’t think he could keep. And yet, I decide to trust him with my secret anyway. Because what I also know is that Zayn would never do anything to hurt me, physically or emotionally.
“Daniel…,” I swallow. “He…,” I drop my gaze to Zayn’s lips, but can barely see through the tears welling up in my eyes. “He raped me.”
Zayn goes unnaturally still.
The kitchen is so quiet I can hear my heart thumping away in my chest. It’s the first time those words have left my lips, but instead of the fear and humiliation I expected to overwhelm me, instead I feel… I don’t know. Safe.
Relief at having told someone. I don’t have to ask to know that Zayn believes me.
To know that he won’t brush it off as anything but the marital rape that it is.
I feel relieved… even though Zayn is staring down at me now like he’s ready to tear the world apart before setting it on fire and roasting Daniel over the flames.
“I know we were married, but I didn’t want it.
” Tears track silently down my cheeks, and Zayn’s palm cradles my face to keep my eyes on him.
“I found out he was cheating on me and I told him I was leaving. That’s, that’s…
. when it happened. He said I wasn’t going anywhere, and I was his to do what ever he wanted with. ”
Zayn’s eyes are so dark, so cold, that a deathly chill settles over me. Yet still he runs a thumb down my chin with the softest touch. When he speaks, his voice is calm. Almost too calm.
“I am going to make him regret every single time he laid a finger on you, both consensual and not,” Zayn promises me quietly, lethally, sending a shudder down my back. “He will regret the day he ever laid his fucking eyes on you and decided he wanted what will never belong to him.”
I blink and tears overflow, rolling a salty, uneven path down my cheek. Zayn tracks the movement with a tick of his jaw, reaching his thumb to catch my tears before they can reach my lips.
“Please, Zayn. I just want to forget.” I breathe, finding way too much comfort in his touch. I’m too vulnerable, and he’s too here.
“I will help you to forget,” his words are as soft as his thumb that continues its caress against my face. “But him?” His tone turns to ice. “He doesn’t get that luxury.”