Did I still need to hear it? Yes.
I owed it to us both.
I lift my gaze back to his and swallow, heavy. “Tell me… tell me everything.”
Zayn takes a seat on the couch, but I don’t move an inch, not trusting my shaky legs. He picks up my kindle I had discarded earlier on the cushion next to him and a small, sad smile plays on his lips as he spins it between his fingers. He turns it on and absently starts flicking through my library.
“My dad was barely a step above my mum in the parenting department,” he starts slowly. “At least he was afunctioningalcoholic though and still went to work. There was food in the fridge.” A small ache begins to throb in my chest. It pains me to realise this won’t be the happily-ever-after story for Zayn that I had briefly envisioned in my head after he left. I loved him enough that I wanted that for him, even if it wasn’t going to be with me.
“Just because I was sent to live with him didn’t mean he miraculously had a change of heart overnight and actually wanted me there. Quite the opposite, in fact. Most of the time he just pretended I didn’t exist,” Zayn continues coolly, and I know even through his unflinching facade, his parents’ rejection cut him deep. No child deserves that life. He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, my kindle still between his nimble fingers. “I realised I wanted to be there, though. Once I arrived and met my nine-year-old sister, Zali.”
I gawk. “They called her Zali?” It was so similar to Zayn. Did his dad even know?
Zayn scoffs sarcastically. “Yeah. As if my dad was someone who cared enough about his kids to choose cute matching names. The irony is he didn’t even know my namebefore he got the call from DCP to say I was coming to stay with him. Didn’t hang around with my mum long enough for me to even born before he fucked off to Perth without another word.”
The underlying venom that laces every one of Zayn’s words punctures through my chest and makes the ache grow bigger. This is the most Zayn has ever spoken to me about his family. He used to only divulge facts when I specifically asked about something, and more information than necessary was never given up willingly. I realise with shame that the one time he’s been willing to talk to me about his home life and I’ve been avoiding him like the plague.
“I get it,” he says slowly, and I look up to find him watching me carefully. “If the roles were reversed I’d be angry at you, too.”
“I’m not angry.”
“You are,” he says, his dark eyes heavy with something that makes my breath catch. “But I’m hoping to change that.”
I grip the back of the couch to steady myself as he continues. “Zali’s mum is a lot like mine. Absent. Neglectful. A junkie. It fell on my shoulders to look after my little sister.” He puts the kindle down on the side table and leans forward, his gaze never leaving mine. “I loved Zali the second I met her. Even though she was only nine I suddenly didn’t feel so alone. I had been ripped away from you, sent to the opposite side of the country and placed in the care of a man who could barely even care for himself, let alone me. I was so fucking angry at the world. And then there was Zali, and we had something that connected us, even if it was the shitty DNA we shared.” He runs a hand across his jaw, and when he speaks there’s an edge to his voice: “I wanted tocome back to you, Gianna. Every second of every day. But I couldn’t leave my little sister to the same fucking fate as me. In the end, I wasn’t waiting for my eighteenth birthday to find my way back to you. I had to wait for hers.” He looks at me earnestly. “Can you understand that?”
I feel like I’ve taken a knife to the chest, and my knuckles turn white as I grip the back of the couch for dear life. Zayn watches on, his jaw tight as he waits for me to say something.
All this time I thought the worst possible outcome was that Zayn moved on to his new life and didn’t want me anymore. Never in a million years could I have guessed how wrong I was. I almost wish that was the case now. I should have been much more afraid ofthis. To find out Zayn did want to come back to me, but couldn’t.
Of course my sweet, damaged boy would never have left his own sister to endure the fucked up childhood he had suffered himself. Asister? I was still trying to wrap my head around it. I never in my wildest dreams could have guessed that this is what kept him away. And yet in my heart I knew what we had was real. The realest, most raw love I would ever experience, but still after he left, I was so quick to convince myself that I meant so little to him.
And what did I do in his absence? I did something unforgivable.
I gave myself to Daniel Sanders.
I’ve been explaining, defending, rationalising my relationship with Daniel since the minute I stopped rejecting his advances. To myself, to Anna, to our friends that I left behind once I let Daniel in. But now that Zayn said it, it’s planted a seed in my mind that I can no longer overlook.
Was I angry at Zayn when he didn’t keep his promise and come back? Did I turn that anger into something else?Did I subconsciously harbour that anger and twist it and use Daniel to get back at him? Was Daniel my secret revenge? I knew if word ever got back to Zayn that I married Daniel, it would destroy him, whether he still loved me or not. He hated Daniel. It was a clear betrayal, and in my darkest moments, maybe I relished in knowing that in some way I still had the last word.
The last laugh? Not so much.
As my reality comes crashing down around me, Zayn sits and watches as tears fall silently down my cheeks. He might be the cool, calm collected mogul that he is now, but I knew him when he wasn’t so perfect to the world, only to me.
“You could have fucking called, you know,” I say, relishing in the anger that takes root and spreads through my chest. Anger I can work with. “Did you think I would wait ten years without a single word from you?”
I swipe the tears from my face, but Zayn doesn’t even flinch, as if he was expecting my outburst. This somehow makes me angrier.
“Call?” He says with a dark laugh. “With what phone? By the time I got one, I didn’t have your number.” He stands, tucks his hands into his pockets and stalks slowly towards me. “I only ever went to your house thatone time,” he emphasises the last words, as if I would ever forget, “and we walked there in the dark. I didn’t even know your address to write you a fucking letter.”
He stops when his shins graze the couch, so it’s the only thing separating us now. I have to tilt my head back to look up into his devastatingly beautiful face. Finally within reach, but still so achingly far away.
“Then years later I got social media. And do you think I could find you online?”
No.Daniel didn’t like me having Facebook or Instagram, so I didn’t.
“Not a fucking trace of you. I was starting to think you were a figment of my imagination. Except Iknewyou weren’t, because every time I closed my eyes, I could still feel where you had touched me, like you were branded onto my skin.”
There’s fury in his words now. His indifferent mask is slipping.
