I trembled, reaching for it, my brain in a frenzied awakening—somehow in denial, in disbelief, in complete stasis.
Tearing open the folder, I began reading.
Sobs racketed through my chest, as if they couldn’t figure if they wanted to be let out or to hide back inside my body where they were somehow safe.
I didn’t know either.
The truth hit me like a pile of unused bricks. Tackling me one by one like I was the waste bin, the person oblivious to the truth.
Criss-crossed on the ground, Christian’s blue shirt was now wet with my tears, and I knew that my tear ducts wouldnumb themselves—enveloping themselves into a heavy drought as soon as these sobs stopped.
I felt him before I saw him.
His energy walked towards me in slow motion.
“Adelaide…” Twenty minutes ago, I would’ve jumped in his arms.
Now, I barely had the energy to blink to make sure he was here.
You can’t fall into yourself. You can’t walk away from this.
Through a blurry gaze, I shifted my attention to Christian. “Is this… Did you really…Christian?” His hair fell over his forehead. A vicious, unattainable ache coerced me to go to him. But another, new awakened force prevented the idiocy. “You used me.”
Shaking his head defeatistly, he got to his knees and reached out for me. “Baby?—”
“Please don’t touch me.” I shifted backwards, falling back on his clothes. Not once looking at him. “If you touch me, I can’t think and I need to think.”
“This morning, I saw a girl that looked like Ayeza and then Monty mentioned her name that was her, wasn’t it?”
Christian released a hoarse breath. “I was going to tell you today.”
“But youdidn’t,” I spat.
He was close enough that I could feel the warmth of his arm. He was close enough that I could sense his teardrop settling on my dress.
“There was never the right moment to tell you.”
I’d never felt as small as I did now. Betrayal was afrequent act, but I never thought I’d be betrayed by Christian.
Maybe it was genetic, considering what I found out.
“There’s never a right time to tell the truth, Christian. You make room for it and push it through—no matter how suffocating it can be.”
“You’re right, baby. I’m sorry.” He grabbed my hand. “Let’s sit down and talk about this.” I didn’t point out that we were already sitting.
“This is wrong.” I snatched my hand away. Cradling the skin like it burned.
It did.
It burned from heartbreak and sedition and oxidized love.
“Eda wouldn’t do this.” Gazing at him, both of us held onto the door barely afloat with the weight of his lies and my love. Too selfish to let go and too selfless to drown. “She loves me—lovedmy parents. How could she kill them? How could she do that to your mom? How could—youloveme.”
“I do.” He fisted his pants. “Hasan and Osama know the truth too.”
If I thought my heart dropped before, it fell off a plane without a parachute now. “Hasan?” The man I thought of as a brother—who took family seriously. The same person who taught me how to overcome my panic attacks and encouraged me to stand up for myself. “He knew too?”
Christian’s eyes widened in despair. “Shit—fuck. Let me tell you the whole truth.”
