Chapter 27
Alayah
He loved me.
I couldn’t pretend like I wasn’t floating on cloud nine right now.
The confession had me stuck on stupid, then to have him explain it to me…
I was a mess. I must have dipped into the bathroom at Urban Indoor Adventures three times to cry my eyes out.
Being loved by my sisters, my aunt, and uncle was one thing.
To be loved by Killian was another.
I’d sworn off men. I told myself I didn’t want or need them.
Life as a lonely cat lady wouldn’t be so bad.
Then here came Killian Lake—once my only real friend and now my lover.
When I first ran into him at the grocery store, I was angry.
We’d been close, and the fact that he never wrote me or anything hurt my heart when I first went in.
Then I had to remember that we were kids.
He had his entire life ahead of him. He had plans for college and a career that didn’t include me and my thirty-year sentence.
I hadn’t even thought about what school had been like for him after my arrest. I could only imagine the number of questions and whispers that went on behind his back.
Kids could be messy as hell. Everyone knew we were friends. They saw us sitting together at lunch. We had the same study hall. We sat next to each other in class. We were always together, so by my assumption, he had to have faced some backlash for being friends with me—a murderer.
Even after all these years, he still found his way back to me. I’d never imagined seeing him in that courtroom at my parole hearing would lead to that man telling me he loved me.
As I stood at the bottom of the zip line waiting for him to come down, all I could do was smile and laugh. He really didn’t like heights and had insisted on going last.
“Come on, Killian,” Adrienne yelled. “Don’t be a chicken.”
Miyah started making chicken noises, and Adrienne joined in.
“Y’all are really funny,” he yelled. “Let’s see how you get home.”
The two of them reeled in their laughter, but continued to snicker as they watched him. The instructor seemed to be giving him an encouraging word, but he wasn’t going for it.
“You got this, baby,” I yelled, surprising myself.
“Look at her hyping her man up,” Adrienne whispered loudly to Amiyah.
“Y’all are about to get on my nerves,” I said.
They both laughed as they wrapped their arms around me.
“Come on, sissy,” Adrienne jested. “We have a lot of years to make up for with being the annoying little sisters. But for real, we love to see you happy. If he’s gonna be our brother-in-law, he has to get used to the teasing. It just means we like him.”
“Y’all really like him?” I asked.
Amiyah nodded. “We do. Every time we see you with him, you’re smiling. That’s a big improvement to when we first saw you. You looked…well, you looked dead inside.”
I felt dead inside when I first came home. Sure, I was free, but parts of me still felt caged and broken. I felt like I got out and had nothing to live for. Yes, I wanted to live, but I was just existing. I didn’t feel like that anymore.
“Miyah is right,” Adrienne agreed. “Also, I don’t think I ever apologized for how I treated you when you came to the house.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do. You were more of a mother to us than Kennedy ever was, Alayah. Things were so different without you around. We had to grow up fast. It was like our childhood ended when you went away. I was so angry because you weren’t around to protect us.
I feel like if you’d been there, you would have stepped in when Kennedy did the most. She would have left us alone.
“Then I realized she only left us alone because you took care of us. She would call us out of our name or hit us and take away our things. Now I realize you probably went through that, too, on top of being assaulted by that nasty ass…that perverted man. What I’m trying to say is my anger was misdirected, and I’m sorry. I love you.”
I smiled softly. Leaning in, I kissed her cheek. “I love you, too. All is forgiven. We’re just gonna focus on the future.”
She nodded, then looked up at Killian. “You won’t have much of a future if he stays up there any longer. Come on, Killian. Hey, give him a push!”
“They can’t push him,” I exclaimed. “Babe! You have to come down at some point.”
“This ain’t that point,” he yelled back.
I palmed my face. “I’ll be right back.”
I made my way back across the room and climbed up to the platform he stood on with the instructor.
“Killian Lake,” I said, my hands on my hips, “are you really that nervous?”
“Listen, I had a bad experience in collage, okay? Following my friends had me hiking across a rope bridge. Even though I had a harness on, I lost my footing and fell over the side. I was halfway to the other side hanging upside down for like fifteen minutes. My whole life flashed before my eyes, baby.”
I didn’t mean to laugh, but the look on his face was funny.
He kissed his teeth. “See, you and your sisters are gonna be walking home.”
“Awww, baby.” I cupped his face and pecked his lips. “How about I go down with you?”
He peered around me at the instructor. “Can she do that?”
“Sure. We have a tandem zip line that allows two people to go at once.”
“Why didn’t you say that before?”
“I didn’t think you’d be up here this long.”
Killian gave him a side eye as the instructor grabbed the equipment to hook me onto him. Once we were all set, I wrapped my arms around him.
“On three, we go. One…two…”
Before I got to three, I pushed off from the ledge, sending us sliding down the line with him cursing the whole way as my sisters cheered us on.
As someone who was usually cool, calm, and collected, it was funny to see him out of character.
Once we were on the ground and unhooked, he turned to Adrienne and Amiyah.
“The next time y’all pick an activity for us, pick something less traumatizing.”
They both laughed as they gave him sisterly hugs.
“Poor lil’ tink tink,” Adrienne jested, causing him to playfully mush her forehead.
“Please tell me y’all have had your fix of this and we can move on to the obstacle course.”
“Come on, Courage the Cowardly Dog.”
“I foresee a future of me and you tussling, lil’ girl.”
“You get harassed by association. Accept and embrace that.”
I smiled and shook my head at their bantering, but honestly, I loved that they could get along. The three of them held weight in my heart, and if they could love each other, that would do me all the good in the world.
The obstacle course was just as funny as the zip-lining experience. Killian and my sisters really sounded like siblings with their back-and-forth banter. We had such a good time, and I couldn’t wait for more days like this.
Currently, we were on our way to my childhood home to put the battery in Adrienne’s car. It was like a cloud of gloom spread over us as we pulled into the yard. Kennedy was being held without bail, so we didn’t have to worry about her coming out to act a fool.
“We’re gonna grab a few things while you put the battery in,” Adrienne said, taking off the car key.
Killian nodded as he took the key from her and got out of the car. “Are you good?” he asked, looking back at me.
“I’m good. I’ll just wait here.”
“Okay.” He leaned back in the car and pecked my lips before closing the door.
I sat there, staring at the house as my sisters went inside.
Memories began to flood my mind of the time I spent here—the things I endured.
Part of me felt bitter. Why me? Why did I have to suffer at the hands of a woman who should have loved me?
Why would she allow a man who wasn’t our father to stay with us overnight while she wasn’t in the house?
As I sat there brewing in my thoughts, my limbs somehow took on a mind of their own. I opened the car door and got out. I could hear Killian calling my name as I made my way up the front steps, but I couldn’t answer him.
Trembling fingers reached for the knob and turned it to push the door open.
I stood in the entryway looking around the place.
Kennedy had upgraded the furniture, but all I could see was the living room as I remembered it.
Absentmindedly, I walked through the house until I came to that door.
My old bedroom. The place where my nightmares were real.
Turning the knob, I slowly opened the door and stepped inside. While the room was now filled with my sisters’ taken possessions, all I could see was my old bedroom.
The iron-framed bed against the wall where my nightmares began.
The mismatched desk where I used to study.
The beanbag chair in the corner where I used to read.
Then I saw the blood…there was so much blood. I could hear myself pleading with Rodney to stop because he was hurting me. I saw the fear in my own eyes as I frantically grabbed those scissors and stabbed him repeatedly. Every time my hand came down, my body shuddered.
I couldn’t breathe. My hand flew to my chest, clutching my shirt. Why was this shirt so tight?
“I–I can’t breathe… I can’t breathe!”
I could hear my sisters behind me, but I couldn’t answer them. Adrienne screamed for Killian, and the next thing I felt was his strong arms around me pulling me out of the room. With my back against the wall, he cupped my face and spoke to me.
“Breathe, baby. Deep breaths. Follow me.”
He began deep breathing, mimicking what I needed to do. Closing my eyes, I listened to the sound of his voice and followed along. After a few minutes, my lungs recovered, and I could breathe again. Opening my eyes, I found the three of them looking at me with worried expressions.
“Are you okay?” Killian asked.
I nodded. I hadn’t had a panic attack in years, and that one felt like it would take me out. Much to my surprise, he picked me up and carried me back outside to the car.
“Why would you go in there, baby?” he asked, voice full of concern. “I was calling you.”
“I’m sorry. I just…I couldn’t stop myself from going in. It’s been so long, I didn’t think it would do me like that.”
“I get that, but don’t relive that trauma if you can avoid it. You’re in a good place. I don’t want you undoing all the work you’ve done on yourself. You’ve worked too hard to come out of a dark place. Don’t give those demons your energy.”
I sighed. “I hear you.”
He cupped my chin and pecked my lips. “I’ll be done in a second, and we can get out of here.”
I nodded. He closed the door, leaving me there with my thoughts.
It wasn’t long before the girls were filing out of the house with trash bags of what I assumed were clothes and shoes.
Killian grabbed the bags and placed them in Adrienne’s trunk.
They went back inside once more and returned with their laptops and tablets then came over to me.
They opened the passenger door, leaning in to hug and kiss me.
I smiled faintly. “I’ll see you at Killian’s.”
They nodded and closed the door. Once everyone was in their respective cars, we left. Killian reached over and grabbed my hand.
“I know your heart is heavy right now, but we’re about to be around the people that love us. No matter how much was taken from you, you’re gonna get that back tenfold. You’re in a position to win in every season, baby. Nobody will take another thing from you if I can help it. I’ve got you.”
As we pulled to a stop sign, I leaned over to kiss him.
I believed him when he said he had me. He’d followed through on every word he’d spoken since we’d reconnected, and I loved him for it.
I didn’t have experience with men, but I knew from my uncle that there was nothing like a man who tells you what he’s going to do, then actually does that shit.
Putting the panic attack and helpless feelings out of my mind, I decided to focus on the good instead of the things that brought me down. Today had been a good day, and this evening would be better.