Utter dread blankets her soul and tears well in her eyes. Her body is frozen but not her tears. When she hears the door chime from being opened, the tears fall. The realization of the moment hits her like an eighteen-wheeler.
Akeem is here. He’s seeing her, and oh God, he’s going to hate me.
Her panicked and horrid thoughts unfreeze her body and her knees buckle. She reaches for the stair rail for support but it’s useless. Her sister’s words and what they imply make her knees crumble and she collapses onto the steps and drops her cell.
“You know my twin sister, Tan-ja-ya,” her sister announces with a devious grin.
“The fuck?” falls from his lips when his eyes meet the woman’s he thought he knew.
“I’ll let you handle her,” Sunjiya’s sister says before walking off, feeling victorious as shit. “She won’t be leaving me now,” she utters to herself.
Sunjiya’s eyes never leave his. In fact, she doesn’t even blink, for fear that he might leave and be gone in that flash of a moment. Her glassy eyes plead with him for forgiveness, understanding, and grace while his display the polar opposite. A storm of rage, confusion, and disappointment brews in his gaze and the sight sends shards of glass through her heart.
“Akeem, pl—” she begins, but he cuts her off. She’s not in control of this moment. He is because it’s apparent he can’t trust shit she says.
She lied. There’s two of them, fucking identical twins, and Tanjaya isn’t dead.
“Who the hell are you?” he demands with so much aggression his tone causes her entire body to flinch. When she starts to answer, he interrupts again. “And this time, make sure you tell me the fucking truth.”
His question, though seemingly simple, isn’t. The answer is heavy and layered and needs a full explanation. However, the coldness of his words sends a chill up her spine and she only manages one word.
“Tanjaya,” she utters.
Although he had already been informed of her true identity when the real Sunjiya opened the door and told him, hearing her confirm it hurts real bad. He thought he knew her but instead he fell in love with a lie and asked a liar to be his forever.Again, Ifell for another deceitful woman.
His entire body deflates and the storm in his eyes escalates. She can’t see the love she’s used to and is on the verge of passing out. Quickly, she pushes herself up and starts to walk down but he stops her.
“Don’t,” he warns before turning and walking away from her, from them.
The sight of him turning his back on her and leaving breaks her more. Pain shoots through her already shattered heart, forcing her to lurch over in pain. A soul stirring guttural scream originates in her stomach and explodes out of her mouth. He hears it, along with the entire neighborhood, but he ignores the pull in his chest and continues through the house out the door.
It takes her a minute, but Sunjiya manages to pull herself upright. She rushes down the remaining stairs and storms out of the house. She looks to her right then left and sees him jogging down the street.I can’t let him go, not like this!When he reaches a dark blue car and gets in, she kicks her slippers off and sprints toward him.
Of all the thoughts and emotions running through Akeem’s mind, anger leads the pack and he can’t contain it. The palms of his hands itch and his trigger finger twitches but he can’t do anything to relieve them. This time, he can’t kill the source of his anger because it’s her. The woman who made him believe in love again. The woman he shares his home with and the same woman he introduced to his son and his family. She’s the same fucking woman he asked to marry him.
He will never hurt her. Hell, he hurt hearing her scream like that at the house, and as much as he wanted to comfort her, he couldn’t because she lied to him the entire time. Only thing he can do is leave. However, when he lifts his weary head from the steering wheel to start his ride, he sees her standing on his driver’s side. Her face is filled with streaks of tears and her eyes are weary with pinkish-red pupils. She looks sad and defeated and he hates how the sight of her fucks with him.
“Fuck,” he huffs as he shakes his head. He’s not ready to talk to her. Because of his anger, he can’t trust his words. “Go back to the house,” he says through the window and she merely shakes her head. “Man, go,” he says more sternly and she shakes her head again after swiping her hand across her cheeks.
Turning away, he starts the engine. Everything in Sunjiya screams that she can’t let him leave. She rushes to the passenger side, opens the door, and practically falls into the seat before he can stop her. She slams the door and breaks all the way down. Her tears pour like a tsunami and she wails uncontrollably. To ensure he doesn’t give in to the tug in his heart instead of following his mind, he grips the steering wheel and trains his eyes straight ahead.
For almost fifteen minutes, they remain like this: him pretending to be unbothered by her emotional outcry and her struggling to catch her breath between sobs. Hurt, love, and anger fill the car, making the muggy night air feel stifling.Sunjiya chokes in a deep breath then struggles to blow it out and looks over at him. His cold, seemingly nonchalant demeanor threatens to send her back into a frenzy she fights to prevent. She has to tell him everything; this might be her only chance. So, she risks it all, closes her eyes and begins.
“I’m Tanjaya. You were looking for me, and when you found me, I did what me and Sunjiya have been doing since we first discovered one another. I took her identity and said I was her. In the past, we mostly switched for fun, but that evening, it was a necessity. I thought you were going to kill me, or worse, take me back to Marcelin,” she says and hearing death was better than Marcelin tightens his chest even more.
“The medical records you found were only a third of what I went through. That sick bastard loved hurting me and letting others hurt me. More visits exist, many more, he just made me use other names. I’ve been to every hospital, urgent care, clinic, you name it, in Dade and Broward counties. The last few months with him I’d been everywhere, so he got the bright idea to bring in quack doctors to treat me. I’ve suffered so many broken bones that I’m severely anemic. That’s why I eat so much damn ice. He hurt me in every way possible.
“I knew Lazy’s. I’d been there several times because Marcelin forced me to go there to dance and have sex with other men. Ano was basically pimping me out there,” she says, then pauses. The memory of those horrid nights causes her voice to crack but she pushes through. She needs him to know everything, in hopes that he’ll understand why she did what she did. He’s worth reliving the events. “For days, I was raped and degraded. My nights there were some of my worst but it was all hell. All of it and I couldn’t risk going back to that house with him. I wouldn’t; so I lied to you.
“Killing Marcelin healed something in me and I owe that all to you. I would have never made it back to the house and got inwithout you. But just like Marcelin, Tanjaya died that night. The broken, battered, and abused me was gone. I was free. Thanks to you, I could live my new life and we had already fallen for each other. You love Sunjiya, not Tanjaya. She was gone, is gone.
“We’ve switched so much that our names don’t even matter anymore. It definitely doesn’t change my heart or my feelings. I—the woman sitting in this car with you—love you. I love the life I already have with you and I only see forever with you,” she says, then wipes her tears.
“I’m sorry I lied to you and the last thing I wanted to do was break your heart. Damn!” She sighs. “I swear. Everywhere I turn, someone’s heart breaks. It’s usually just mine and I’ve gotten used to that. But this time, I included your heart and that shit hurts more than anything. I’m so sorry, Akeem, very sorry and I know you may never love me again, but I do love you. I always will, no matter what.”
She lets out an emotional breath then looks at him. She only gets his side profile because he’s looking straight ahead, emotionless. She can’t read him at all and that breaks her. The thin and invisible guard rail protecting her heart and mental collapses and everything in her falls, breaks, and shatters.
He doesn’t love me anymore.
