Chapter 125 WHAT THE HELL, PARENTS?!
AMARA’S POINT OF VIEW.
“Amara.” My mother gasps in shock, her face contorting in horror; the complete opposite of the blissful one that she had earlier, much to my horror.
Someone please tell me there’s bleach for the mind, so I can scrub this from my memory box immediately. Scratch that, what I need is something I can take to wipe my memory.
Someone please!
“Amara, turn around.” My dad gasps, and frankly, he didn’t have to tell me, because I turned around the second my mother confirmed my horror.
My mom and dad were in bed…together….doing the thing Ace and I do very often. “My parents were doing the thing Ace and I do. Which—fine, karma, I deserved that. But somewhere under the horror and the desperate need to bleach my eyeballs, there was this… spark. Like maybe the universe was finally setting something right, just in the most traumatising way possible.”
What the fuck?!
“Please, someone explain what the hell I just saw?” I said, my hands rubbing at my eyes like the frantic motion could help erase what I just saw.
All I could hear was the frantic rush of both of them putting on their clothes. The atmosphere in the house was awkward to say the least. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me. I wanted some superhero to walk in here right now and tell me I was in some other world….anything as long as I could erase the past five minutes of my life.
“We’re decent now.” My mother said, her voice low, almost like she was shy. I turned around slowly, my mind not believing that they were covered up, but they really were.
I released a sigh of relief and folded my arms. My stance was defensive as I stared at them with an expectant expression. “Well, I need answers,” I said when all they did was stare at me. My mother looked uncomfortable, while my dad had a small smile of victory on his face.
It was like he didn’t care about the fact that I walked in on them, because he would have done it over and over again as long as he had my mother again.
“Amara….I….we…..” She trailed off and stopped, her eyes darting everywhere except my eyes. I could tell she wanted to avoid this conversation. The way she held onto the sleeves of her robe, pinching it like she needed it to ground her, was not lost on me.
I averted my gaze to my dad and gave him the same expectant expression from before. “Well, you talk then.”
He stared at me for a moment before turning to face my mother. All of a sudden, it was like I was no longer in the room, because all he did was stare at her. She avoided his gaze, too and fondled even faster with the sleeves of her clothes. Her cheeks burned bright red with a furious blush as she looked everywhere but at him.
“Mia Cara.” He started, and I stifled the urge to cringe.
What?....they’re my parents. Of course, seeing them like this is weird.
“Dante….” My mother said, calling him the name I’d seen her refer to him as in her letters. “We shouldn’t have done this.” She whispered, but I could see the sheen of tears in her eyes.
My heart broke at the sight of my parents…two lovers who were forced apart because one witch in that mansion thought she was the better choice, and just could not let love win. I knew my mother still loved him, and that my father felt the same way.
They tried to hide it from the rest of the world, but I could see two bleeding hearts longing to be reunited once again. I stumbled upon a room in the shed out back in the mansion. I don’t even think I can call it a shed. That place looked too luxurious yet simple to be called a shed.
And inside it, there were different paintings of my mother. I knew the moment I saw the large pieces covered by a white cloth that they were something important. And my nosy self couldn’t resist the urge to check it out.
When I pulled the cloth apart, the sight of my mother in different paintings, with different bouquets in her hands, greeted me. I had gasped sharply at the sight, wondering who would do such a thing.
But it was painfully obvious. I could not paint humans; my stepmother would rather cut off her own arm than paint my mother, her son was an absolute animal… so that left my father.
In that same shed, I saw the different pictures of them which my mother always kept on her bedside table, and kissed every night.
I wanted more than anything for them to find their way back to each other, and if this was how the universe had planned it, at the expense of my poor eyes, I would welcome it.
“I still love you.” My father whispered, taking each step towards my mother. His eyes not once strayed from her form, not even as she avoided his heated gaze,
“Dante….we shouldn’t.” She whispered, her hesitation clear and loud.
“Look me in the eye, and tell me you don’t still love me. That you have stopped loving me, because I haven’t stopped loving you. I still love you, I’ll always love you, mi amor….. I never stopped. If you tell me you don’t love me….I won’t say I’ll stop pursuing you, because I will never stop.
I don’t think I can love without you anymore.”
“You’re married, Dante. You have a family of your own.” She said, her voice breaking as she turned to look him in the eye now. “A wife, and a son…..we can never be, not anymore. Dante…” Her tears rolled down her cheeks now as she whispered, after biting down hard on her lip. “We’ve lost our chance.”
“What wife? And what son? That bastard isn’t mine.” My dad spits, stopping beside her. “She’s been lying to me this entire time, mi amor. The kid isn’t mine.”
“What?” My mother and I echo, our mouths open in a gasp. What’s he talking about? “Are you certain?” My mother asked.
“Yes, mi amor. I decided to get a DNA test a few weeks ago, after my private investigator saw her in bed with some guy in a hotel room. The bitch has been lying to me all this time. I was the fool who chose to let his parents control him all those years ago.” He said, pulling my mother close to him so she was standing face to face with him.
“I should never have let you go. I should have fought my parents and every other person who tried to separate us all those years ago. I should never have subjected you to the hell you had to face because of our love. It’s all my fault, because I failed to be man enough for you.
I failed to be a man worthy of you, and I forced our daughter into a life where she had to suffer the whims of someone as horrible as that blonde-haired witch.”
All of a sudden, he got on his knees before my mother, and grabbed her hands softly; “If you let me in again, I swear to you, I’ll be a man worthy of you, and I’ll never give you cause to doubt my utter devotion towards you.
I came here today with one plan in mind: to get my love back.
And I swear on my life, I will never let myself disappoint you like I did back then. Please…don’t say no to me, mi amor. “
“Dante….I-“ My mother started, and then stopped. She licked her lips and looked around for a moment before looking back at my dad on his knees. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Amore mio….please, say yes. And I swear, I’ll kick that bitch out of the home that should have been ours, and get you another one. I love you.”
“You’re crazy.” She said with a laugh.
“For you? I am utterly insane, and completely at your mercy, my love.” He swallowed hard, like he’d desperately needed a glass of my mother.
“I have loved you, even in my cowardice. Especially then. I loved you when pride made me choose duty over you. I loved you when I watched you walk away and told myself it was for the best, that you’d be safer with me as far away as possible. I loved you in every lonely dawn since—when the bed was too cold, the house too quiet, the air too full of your absence. And I will love you for every day I have left, even if all you give me is distance.”
“You broke me….you broke us.” She whispered, and my father nodded.
“I did, and I swear I will make amends. I will make it all up to you for every second of pain you had to suffer.”
“I want to hate you,” she said, her voice breaking. “God, I should hate you. But every time I look at you, every time you say my name like that, the hate just… slips away.”
She smiled widely at that, like she was no longer willing to fight him, and herself. “And what if I say I no longer have the strength to resist you?”
My father smiled widely at that, like she just told him she found the cure to cancer. “I’ll pull you in my arms so we can stay in each other forever.”
“Then yes, Dante.” She whispered. “I’ll say yes to you.”
“I should’ve been traumatised, honestly. But as I stood there watching them, I realised something — love isn’t always pretty. Sometimes it’s just two idiots who took too long to find their way home.”