Chapter 29
The destiny’s puppets
Our ideas about the past were simple: something bad happened, and we learned to live with that our whole lives. Maybe it separated us, took us in different directions, but we didn’t get stuck in our memories. We got to live through as we pleased. Or, at least, after one of the logical ways of life.
In the past hours, I’ve been thinking: what would my life be like if Omar hadn’t appeared in that park? Would I have ended up with Lucas, or would there have been another boy to do what Omar did?
That simple and harsh action from the past is related to the tragic end of Lucas’s family, or are we just imagining these?
What if the things we thought about aren’t even connected with what is truly happening around us?
What if we’re just plain wrong about Omar and Bianca and the truth is totally different?
The questions are rummaging through my brain while I’m with Lucas in the kitchen. The others are with Clara, talking about their lives, laughing, and feeling like a family again.
I, on the other hand, am a prisoner of my own mind. A multitude of questions swarms in my brain, worse than a lion around its prey, and neither of them can get a response that is real or satisfying enough.
Omar appeared as the main image in my old memories.
The last time I saw his gaze was when he was on a hospital bed, having his face bandaged and his body connected to the medical devices that were monitoring his health.
He was in a coma for at least two weeks.
I felt responsible for his state, given that the awful misfortune happened because of me.
That is why I worked so hard to make that cake with my grandmother, even though the kitchen got so dirty from mixing the ingredients.
I don’t know why, but I think that visit only made things worse, even though his smile was authentic.
It’s not only Lucas’s fault that he beat him. It’s mine too because I felt sorry for him, however strange this could sound.
Irony of ironies. You want to do a good deed, to bring a smile to his face, and you wake up dragged against your will in hell 15 years later.
If my memory isn’t playing tricks on me and I remembered correctly, outside the hospital room Omar was in was an old man of about 60.
He gave me a long and very strange glare when I got out of Omar’s room.
When my grandma saw the frown on the old man's forehead, she took me on the other side of her, far away from him.
I thought it was just a fleeting glance from a sick man who was sore at the world.
It is very possible that you met Kevin and didn’t even realise.
Just as good, it is possible for me to be so fucking wrong.
Great.
Someone wants to implant ideas into my head. I don’t even know if they’re true. I’m trying to make assumptions on nothing concrete, just on missing puzzle pieces from our story. Anora just accentuates that distress while rummaging through my memories.
“I was always so curious why you always got so lost in your own mind and so little present with your feet on the ground in some moments,” Lucas tells me.
“The flaws of a person who’s thinking too much,” I respond and turn to face him. “Also combined with the side effects of the fact that I’m not alone in this head of mine.”
He takes out the ingredients on the kitchen island for whatever he wants to prepare. He looks at me with his arms crossed and a small smile on his lips, while studying my two copper crystals.
“I want you to tell me more of what you think about. I want to know everything about you. I also want you to know that you don’t have to process everything on your own.
Or, at least, not with Anora, but with a real person.
With me,” he gets closer to me, taking my face in his hands. “Do you trust me, Anmara?”
I stare into his gorgeous eyes and nod, accentuating his smile.
His gaze goes to my lips, and then he kisses them sweetly and softly.
His tongue enters through my lips, and I let it take mine in a slow waltz that calms down all the stress inside of me, leaving behind a more relaxed version of my being.
I think I have fallen crazy in love with the man in front of me, especially after how my blood aggressively pulsated in my veins and my heart in my chest.
He slowly breaks away, keeping his hands on my face. His body is so close to mine that I can feel his erection on my leg. If we would have been alone, my hand would’ve grabbed it…
“So, tell me: what are you thinking about, beautiful woman?” he asks me, dispelling my perverse thoughts.
“Now, about you,” I say, and my eyes go wide when I realise what I could’ve gotten out of my mouth, making him laugh softly.
“I entered that lovely mind of yours that hard, didn’t I? I’m slowly taking over all of your senses until there will be nothing more to cover, and you’ll feel my whole love everywhere you might go.”
“Maybe.”
I’m already feeling my cheeks burning behind his hands. Not to mention the multitude of butterflies inside of me and the abundant wetness from down there.
“Good, then it is settled that after we’re done with this mystery, we’re gonna go on crazy dates and I’ll make you go skydiving with me,” he winks.
“You’re crazy if you think I’m gonna do something like that,” I laugh.
“Crazy for you, yes, you guessed it. Let’s cook something until I eat you whole,” Lucas says, kissing me gently on my lips.
He lifts me up and brings me in front of the ingredients, almost putting me alongside them. He stops just before doing that, knowing the others are in the room next to us.
He takes the cucumber from the island behind me, bringing it subtly near my belly, making us both laugh.
?
“I still can’t believe that you are a cook almost as good as me,” Blake says while he’s washing the dishes.
“Almost? I think I beat you long ago, brother,” Lucas says, putting another dirty plate in front of him, getting a frown out of Blake, and making me smile. “You even licked your plate in the end.”
A moment of relaxation to regain our strength, perfect for the battle that’s coming, all among the most beautiful people. They help me recharge my batteries only through the energy they are emanating in the room.
“Hey, I knew that you would put me to do all the work, so I thought about making it easier.”
“Is it always like that in your family?” Clara asks with a small smile on her face, standing on the couch between Paul and me.
There comes a moment of silence, leaving a trace of sadness behind. The nostalgia of our childhood and the good times want to capture my mind and make me forget about the losses from our past, to stop my hot tears from falling down my cheeks.
“The three of us haven’t really spent time together since… your funeral,” Paul says, his voice getting lost on the past part. “I’m so glad you’re alive, Clara, but I still can’t believe how much you've grown up and how mature you’ve become.”
I can see some tears forming in his eyes, but he looks away and wipes them before they can fall.
As it seems, Paul is the most emotional of us, even worse than me. He is the creative brother who puts all of his emotion into absolutely everything. The family’s painter.
At least they still have a family.
I look at Lucas, and my gaze falls on his sad eyes, which lighten when he sees me looking at him. But the bitterness gets hold of me, and I’m feeling like I need a moment alone to gather my thoughts and not burst into tears in front of them.
“I’ll be right back,” I say and get up from the sofa.
My steps take me to the other room. I can feel Lucas coming behind me, so I let the door open. He closes it once he’s in the room with me.
“You know that you’re a part of our family, don’t you?” Lucas asks me.
A wide smile spreads across my face, along with the tears in my eyes, making me too fucking emotional. I don’t know what to say, even though I feel so good with all these people around me. Like a real family.
Family…
In my head, there are already a lot of hypotheses for all kinds of things. I want to laugh at how fucked-up they are and how unfair the universe is to me.
I even do that, earning a confused and curious glance from Lucas.
“So I got away from the devil, and I reached the family of Satan. My fate is sealed.”
“Don’t say that! You can’t know for sure what’s gonna happen,” Lucas says, trying to be positive, but I have too many connections in my head to even be able to agree with him.
“Lucas, what if these people have been planning the revenge on both of us for 15 years? Do you have any idea how many aspects of our lives could’ve been modified?
Maybe they even caused your parents’ accident,” I say, and he agrees with me, so he already thought about that.
“Also, they could’ve even planted Cathal where it was needed. ”
This makes him open and close his mouth a couple of times. It seems this aspect didn’t cross his mind.
“Moreover, Bianca appeared in my life in that… fragile period, around when I started going to the gym. If I process it all better, I even met her there,” I laugh.
Then all of my thoughts fall on me, and I freeze.
No, she couldn’t…
I think she did.
“She helped me find the waitress position. She knew I was working that night. Oh my God, what if…”
“What if she was the one who lured Marshall? Is that what you wanna say?”
“Yes! What if she worked with him behind my back?”
“Then why did she kill him just now? Why didn’t Marshall write about that in his journal?”
Well, I have to admit that his words make so much more sense than what is going on in my head.
“Ok, yes, you are right, but I still don’t think that Marshall appearing that night at the restaurant was a coincidence. Bianca started to know me really well. She knew what kind of men attracted me.”
“But what she didn’t know was if Marshall would fall for it.”
“Why do you have to be so right all the time? You organise the ideas in here too much,” I say, frustrated, pointing to my head.