Teach Me How To Fly

15. Annalise

15

ANNALISE

I t has been almost a week since I last saw Maksen, but I was lucky that he had given me that little Vertu phone because I could talk with him whenever I wanted. But today he didn’t have much time to respond to my messages, so I just turned it off and sat quietly in the library.

I was alone again. Well, not alone completely as Olivia and the bodyguards were somewhere in the house, but there was no trace of my father and Katya since this morning, and I couldn’t be happier because I could study for as long as I wanted without anyone interrupting me.

I read a few more paragraphs and underlined the words that I had to keep in mind, and at the moment I wanted to turn the page and keep on reading, I heard some voices coming from upstairs, and one of them was my father’s.

Fuck.

Shit, I swore again. Double fuck.

I turned off the desk lamp and took my books in my arms, already feeling my fingers ready to fall because of the weight of what I carried.

I silently ran between two shelves of the library and tried to be as quiet as I could. If my father caught me studying for University, he would burn down all of my books.

I couldn’t find a reason why he hadn’t done it yet because he had seen me through the surveillance cameras all day. He could’ve just come in the library and destroyed each book, but surprisingly, he didn’t.

I put the books on the ground and sat beside them, trying to catch my breath and not reveal where I was. I didn’t want them to know that I was here.

“Are you sure she isn’t there?” Katya asked as they were stepping down on the metal stairs.

So my father and Katya needed a private space to talk about something no one would have listened to. Too bad I was already there.

“I looked through all the cameras and she is nowhere to be found. Maybe she’s lost in the forest, which is better for us because we’ll have time to talk,” my father said in a serious tone of voice.

Too bad that Maksen changed the cameras and he was seeing what was happening in the days before and not live. But what were they up to?

They were trying to talk about something that I wasn’t supposed to hear, which made me even more confused and curious.

“My wedding with Maksen is months away, which makes me think that I really should move in with him just to get along with each other,” she said and I heard my father sighing.

“You can move with him whenever you want, my dear.”

She was already planning to move in with him? Alone? I felt my heart being stung by multiple knives and I couldn’t do anything about it.

“I know I can, but I don’t know, I just don’t feel completely at peace doing it alone. I want to see a familiar figure being with me there,” she added in a lower tone of voice.

“Then you’ll take Olivia with you.”

“No, dad, I don’t need Olivia,” she quickly replied, almost angry at his proposal. “I want Annalise to move in with me. I need my sister by my side.”

I felt something getting stuck in my throat hearing her words and I couldn’t believe what I heard. She didn’t ever talk with me more than just mocking and making fun of me every time she had the occasion, and now she was asking our father to take me with her to move in with Maksen? Did she want me to witness their relationship, to laugh in my face, to hear them through the walls?

Confused was the right word to describe me right now.

“You can’t take Annalise with you.”

Katya took a breath in and then let out a deep sigh come out of her mouth. She spent a few moments in silence, then she cleared her throat and started walking in circles.

“I need Annalise, Dad. I know we didn’t have the best relationship as sisters, but me, Annalise, and Maksen were inseparable when we were little, so having her with me will help me get along with Maksen better.”

“ Suka blyad ,” he swore and I just knew he was getting angry.

“Dad, please, I need her,” she begged in a lower tone of voice. “I can’t do this alone,” she added quickly.

“You can’t fucking take her there, Katya! Maksen is in fucking love with her, and I need you to marry him! I fucking need you to do it, do you understand what I’m saying? Do you fucking understand?”

Maksen is in love with me? How did he know that? But considering how my heart started beating right now, it didn’t even matter how he knew.

I tried to catch a glimpse of them, and the moment I managed to tip-toe, I saw my father grab Katya by her hands and hold her above the ground.

Her face showed no other feeling rather than true fear. She was terrified, and if he was going to hurt her in any way, I was literally going to hop up from the place I was hiding and punch him in the face, something I never thought I’d say about my father.

“Why? Why are you not letting her marry him if he loves her, Dad?” she screamed and tried to escape from his grip.

He looked at her full of anger and willing to do the worst things imaginable to her, which made me fear for her. I was ready to walk to them, but he left her standing on her own feet and hit the desk with his fist, letting out a scream that filled the entire room.

“Because she’s not my blood, and if she marries him, our family won’t benefit from it. You are my daughter, my DNA runs through your blood and I need you to marry Maksen to connect our families so I can rule this entire empire with him. There’s so much more behind –”

But he stopped talking the moment I ran from the library as fast as I could. I was disoriented, running out of the house and not caring for a second about where I was going.

The bodyguards tried to stop me, but I told them that I needed some time alone. They followed me every time, but when they saw me crying, they knew they had to leave me alone.

They also knew I had nowhere to escape, so that’s why they just let me get out of the house.

As soon as I stepped a foot outside the backyard and led my feet into the heart of the forest, I searched my pocket for my phone and as soon as I picked it up, I pressed my thumb on the contact application and called Maksen.

The tears were running down my cheeks, each one of them meeting on my chin. I was broken to the bone, and my soul was crushed in so many pieces I didn’t ever think I would have.

My father wasn’t my father, and my sister wasn’t my sister.

So who am I?

“Annalise? Anna, are you there?”

Maksen’s voice took me out of my thoughts and made me realize that I walked until I reached the edge of the forest.

“Please come and get me out of here. Please, come here now,” I mumbled and felt how hard it was for me to speak any word as the bursts of crying were announcing themselves.

“What happened? Where are you?”

“I’m in our place. In that beautiful place I took you to, and I don’t think I’ll make it. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to accept it, I don’t fucking know who I am or who I’m supposed to be. Please, just come and get me.”

I didn’t let him give me an answer because I ended the call and put the phone back into my pocket. I started crying louder, deeper and more brokenhearted than I’d been a couple of seconds ago.

I was watching the horizon line, lost and numb to my feelings and just wanting to disappear and never come back.

I couldn’t believe what I just heard. I couldn’t believe that I lived in a total lie that my father created for me. He was an awful man, but now he was the devil himself for me.

She’s not my blood.

They screamed at me to stop, but I didn’t.

I continued to run, trying so hard to get as far as I could from them. I didn’t want to hear anything they had to say to me, especially nothing from my so-called father.

My body was trembling so hard that I felt my jaw clenching and my knees almost melting like ice cream on a torrid day of summer.

It was hard for me to breathe and even think clearly, but the moment I saw the little boat I knew coming on the river, I knew that Maksen was close.

I looked at him as he was getting closer and the moment he was close enough to the river banks, I hopped into the boat and fell into his arms without even thinking about how the man who was driving it could see us.

I didn’t care. All I wanted was for him to hold me and tell me that everything was going to be okay, no matter how cliche that might sound.

“I’m here, little angel,” he whispered between my hair strands as the boat was moving away from the shore of the forest.

His words were like bandages on the open wounds of my soul, and I felt better hearing them, but nothing could’ve made all the pain go away.

“What happened? Tell me who did this to you. Tell me who made you let all these tears fall on your face,” he added as he caressed my face with his calloused fingers.

I was just keeping silent as I was sobbing with my head resting on his chest. I bit my lower lip and put my hands around his body, hugging him tight and inhaling his scent, hoping to find something that would comfort me.

He continued to caress me and hold me to his chest while leaving soft kisses on the top of my head.

I moved away from Maksen and wiped off the tears that were still rolling down my face. I furrowed and bit my inner cheek as I gazed at him.

“My father will search for us at your house first. We need to go somewhere else,” I said, feeling the fear creeping into my body.

I didn’t want to see my dad trying to break into Maksen’s house just to try and talk to me, because I didn’t want to hear him say any other word. I wanted him to disappear from my life. I wanted to be left alone in my grief while I was trying to process everything.

“We’ll go somewhere else then. There are plenty of places your father won’t search for us,” he quickly replied and I saw on his face how worried he was for me.

I felt bad for making him worry, but he was the only one to whom I could talk about what happened. And I knew that once I told him what happened, he’d feel every single thing I was also feeling.

“I want to go to Lydia,” I said, trying to snuggle into the hoodie I was wearing. “Lukyan always told me that I wasn’t allowed to go there, so I want to see my aunt. I think she can help me,” I added and I saw the little confused furrow on his face.

“Since when do you call your father Lukyan?”

I could tell from the tone of voice that he was confused about the entire situation, and what I was going to tell him now was going to make him even more confused.

“Since I found out he’s not my father.”

He turned into an ice figure, not knowing exactly what to do, but I understood him because I didn’t know either.

Maksen kept holding my hand during the entire car journey to my aunt’s house, without forcing me to talk or say anything that would’ve hurt me more.

He stood beside me, caressing my hand and keeping the silence I needed. It was the best he could do considering that I was close to crying every time I thought about my dad and my family.

Which turned out not to be my family at all. Not even Lydia, so I didn’t exactly know why I still kept calling her my aunt because she was just a woman with whom I got along well.

I kept digging in my mind for things to connect, but nothing came to me, just the question to which I might not receive any answer in this life.

If the woman I called mom wasn’t really my mom and she died when I was one year old, that meant it might’ve been a chance for me to really have a mother somewhere in the world. Or maybe a father who might’ve been better for me.

But what would’ve made any of my real parents better if they didn’t want their own child?

Nothing.

I no longer had a family, and I didn’t need one. I needed just myself and Maksen, if he wanted to stay by my side.

But what if he didn’t want to do it? What if he wanted to leave me too?

“Annalise,” he whispered close to my ear and that was the moment I realized we arrived at Lydia’s house. “We’re here.”

Why did I want to come to Lydia's house? What did I have in mind? Maybe I thought that she could’ve helped me somehow, but how could she help a stranger?

But wait. What if she knew that I wasn’t a part of their family and kept this a secret from me?

So many questions were coming into my mind and I knew that it was impossible to have the answer for them all. I just had to accept them and wait for everything to figure out by itself.

Maksen opened the car door and got out, then held out his hand to me and waited for me to entwine my fingers with his, which I finally did.

The bodyguards were staying by our side, while Maksen didn’t take his gaze off of me, not even for a second. He was waiting for me, not only to take him by his arm, but to speak out loud what was hurting me and what happened back home. Yet, he didn’t force me to do any of these.

I took his hand in mine and started walking towards the entrance. I pressed the doorbell button and waited quietly in front of the door until my aunt’s voice was heard from beyond it – Lydia’s voice.

I really did have to get used to the fact that all the people I thought were my real family were actually just strangers I grew up with.

The door swung open, and my gaze locked onto hers. The glimmer of fear and terror in her eyes left me bewildered.

“W-What are you doing here?” she stammered.

But the moment I walked inside the house and I inhaled the heavy air inside of it, I felt my knees weakening.

My heart started beating harder and harder, and the fear so familiar to me seeped into every fiber of my being. I could almost hear the haunting laughter of the man from my nightmares, and the hallway in front of me seemed to be filled with the same fog that had always haunted me in dreams.

The sickly shade of yellow on the walls, slightly ripped in the corners. I used to peel off the plaster, and he was always there to yell at me, thundering at me because I was destroying his house. Then he would punish me.

The Persian carpet was adorned with various red motifs. I used to play on it with my dolls, but one unfortunate day, I took a glass of orange juice with me and spilled it on it. He unleashed his anger upon me again, punishing me like no other day.

That vase with plastic flowers on the table next to the wall. I used to play with those whenever I came to their house, and Maksen was always offering me one of them and proclaiming that he gave me flowers because that was what princesses received.

He would come and yell at us, taking Maksen by his hand and hiding him somewhere in the house without letting him come to me again. Then, he would come back and punish me again, telling me that I was no princess, just a little thing he was using to get revenge on my father.

The pungent odor of mold pervaded the space, a scent my aunt always attempted to mask with scented sticks and aromatic oils.

My body gave in, and I could only feel the cold floor beneath me as I collapsed on it.

I could neither hear nor see anything as darkness enveloped my entire being. Uncontrollable tremors wracked my body, accompanied by tears streaming down my cheeks as each memory of my childhood started hitting my mind one after another, slowly and painfully.

My uncle. I forgot him, but my body didn’t forget anything from what he did to me

And then, it all came rushing back. I remembered every little painful, haunting memory of what he did to me.