Maple point mavericks, p.21
Maple Point Mavericks, page 21
“Ana,” Enzo says, his voice firm. The tone doesn’t match his eyes. “They’ve apologized.”
“So what? Does an apology get back over a year of my life? Does it give me the tools to graduate this year without busting my ass? It doesn’t, Enzo. It doesn’t make any of this easier. Words… that’s all an apology is. Nothing but mere utterances of bullshit.”
“Analise Louisa Fuentes,” my father booms. “I will not stand for your mouth being so disrespectful in my home. Your mother and I have done everything we thought was right from the time we found you in our room until now.”
“Right,” I interrupt. “As if leaving me for long periods right after I get home is exactly what I need.”
“Ana,” Enzo says again. “You—”
“Please don’t defend them,” I tell him, begging with my eyes for him to be on my side.
His expression tells me all I need to know about whose side he’s on. My shoulders sag.
“It’s not what you think,” he tells me. “They’ve been gone because they’ve been gathering information for something very important.”
“More important than their daughter’s well-being?”
He opens his mouth to respond but my father beats him to it.
“It’s for you, mija. We have been investigating the whole hospital since getting our hands on your original tapes three days before you were discharged,” my father says.
I frown and look back to Enzo. He nods, his eyebrows raised assuring me my dad is telling the truth.
“Why do you hide everything from me?” I ask, speaking to no one in particular.
“We don’t want you around here worrying about the horrible doctors who essentially held you hostage,” my mother says after dabbing her nose with tissue from the table next to her chair. “We wanted you to be able to readjust without thinking of any of it.”
“Well, the readjustment has gone swimmingly,” I say sarcastically.
“None of the fault for your readjustment should fall on your parents, Analise. I take the blame for how your return has affected you.”
“Do you not see if they’d simply been honest with you from the start you would’ve never done any of the things you did while I was gone and after I got back?”
“A boy needs to wander to know home is where he wants to be,” my father says.
My mouth falls open as I frown at him.
“Are you serious? So he needed to go fuck a bunch of girls I go to school with to value me? Am I awarded the same privilege?” I ask my questions fast, not giving them a chance to answer any of them.
“Over my dead body,” Enzo says. I know he means it.
I don’t even want to do what he did, but the fact my father is so blatantly okay with Enzo’s actions not only disgusts me but makes me not want to be here anymore.
“I’m ready to go,” I say, my eyes serious and trained on Enzo.
He knows I’ll run and if he doesn’t want to deal with being in the cold woods tonight, he will heed the silent warning I’m giving him.
“Wait a minute, Analise,” my father says. “This isn’t meant to upset you. You can’t change the past—”
“You see, I keep hearing those words…” I say calmly even though I feel my heart rate starting to pick up even more. “I can’t change the past. All of you are full of shit and I can guarantee I understand the premise behind the statement way more than a lot of people. Maybe even more than everyone in this room.”
My breathing is heavy now, my adrenaline already raging and my fight or flight response taking over more and more the longer I sit here.
“I can’t get back anything I lost. I can’t change that I was raped… that I lost my fucking baby. I know I can’t change the damn past! I don’t need to keep hearing it.”
“Maybe you do need to keep hearing the words,” my mother offers. “You don’t seem to believe them.”
I don’t have anything left to say because despite what she thinks I know, I can’t change anything about what I’ve been through. As I start to rise from the couch Enzo grips my leg. His hand moves across my thigh and I am still, looking over at my father. Enzo’s never touched me like this in front of him, but he doesn’t react at all. My eyebrows tug together in confusion.
“Let go,” I tell Enzo, grabbing his hand.
“You are not running from this conversation,” he tells me.
“Watch me,” I say, pulling at his hand and trying to stand anyway. My father gets up and walks over to the door, closing it as I stare at him. “This is bullshit.”
“It’s not, princesa. You must know who is loyal to you. We would’ve never left you there for so long had we known the truth. The doctors told us you were having delusions and so many other things that are nowhere in your files.”
“Was any of it real?” I ask. “The diagnosis, I mean. They said so much was wrong with me, but I just wanted to come home.”
“We will worry about that another time, Ana,” my mother says softly. “Let’s focus on mending what was broken because of greedy hands.”
I sit with my thoughts for a few minutes, everyone waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m sure they expect me to continue my resistance but the only thing I want assurance of is honesty. I can’t trust people who I think are going to hurt me in the next moment. I won’t trust them. I refuse.
“I will only forgive you for locking me away in that horrible place as long as you never lie to me again,” I tell my parents. “No lies of omission, no half-truths, nothing. I want the truth whether it hurts me or not.”
I watch as they both look to each other for answers but there’s only one answer I want to hear.
“We won’t keep the truth from you going forward,” my father assures. “The Brotherhood will have things we cannot tell you yet, but it will all be given at the right time. If it directly pertains to you, I promise I’ll be the first to talk it over with you.”
“Great, can I go now?”
They fall silent again and I let my eyes move around the room. My disinterest is written all over my face, I’m sure but I can’t find it in me to care.
As I look around, I realize the books are different than before I left and it’s distracting. I spent so many days of my childhood under my father’s feet in this room and his book collection always grabbed my eye. The spines were all rich leather of all different colors, some big and some small. The gold writing was always so shiny and even before I could read, I would pull them down from the shelf and pretend to read like him.
They’re all black spine books now and the gold is nowhere to be found. So bland…
“You two may go unless you’d like to join us for dinner in the dining room,” my father offers but I am not biting.
“I’m okay. I just want to go back to the dorms. Maybe another time,” I tell them, pulling Enzo’s hand from my leg so I can stand up.
“How about we have a nice dinner here for your birthday,” my mother tries. I freeze.
I haven’t thought of my birthday, not wanting to reminisce about how I spent my last one all alone. It was miserable and while I don’t want to do anything for my birthday I nod and force a smile. “Sounds good.”
I head for the door and Enzo follows shaking my dad’s hand before nodding at my mother. “Bye, Mel.”
My skin crawls at him calling my mother by her first name, but we are both technically adults now and when you’re an adult in The Brotherhood you’re seen as an equal no matter if you’re eighteen or seventy-five. It’s why we’re all expected to carry our weight in the family.
I walk through the house and try to notice more things out of place. They hadn’t changed my room and my first few days back I didn’t leave my bed much. It’s little things I notice, like the books, that make me the most upset about leaving. They’re all tiny reminders of everything I missed while I was gone.
“Get out of your head, big baby,” Enzo goads.
“Fuck you,” I snap back.
“I know you want to,” he says, grabbing my neck from behind and pulling me back to him. “Let’s go back to my room.”
“You made me come here tonight. You don’t deserve—”
“Don’t you dare finish your sentence. I will pull you into the bathroom by the front door and fuck you so hard your parents will hear you from your father’s office.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” I say, walking closer to the steps.
“Wanna bet? I’ve always loved a good challenge.”
“Fine,” I huff, stomping down the steps. “I’ll go back to your room.”
I don’t have to look back to know he’s smiling when he responds. “That’s what I thought.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ANALISE
I’ve been avoiding Enzo today. I know he’s mad by the texts I’ve gotten from him, but I need to breathe and while he won’t let me go to the lake alone, I am allowed to eat alone in my room for lunch. He doesn’t know how to leave me alone when he’s in my face and to top it off he’s a complete dick about it. Ever since I got his first text asking why I wasn’t in the dining hall for lunch he’s been so hostile.
Of course, I haven’t told him where I am because he will just come and get me. I’m slightly surprised he’s not here already here. I would’ve thought he had GPS on my phone at this point. Who knows what he has though, he rarely shows his cards. He could know exactly where I am but is just letting me think he has no idea.
I pick up the smoothie I’ve been drinking from my desk and stand to climb up into my bed. I want to skip the rest of the day and not only because my birthday is tomorrow. Ever since the talk with my parents I’ve felt sick to my stomach. Stress fucking sucks.
They gave me so much information at once and I’m not sure I’m handling it all very well.
I thought I’d be okay if I stopped taking the medication they prescribed me at Cronin once I got home, but I feel the dread creeping up again. It’s consuming and impossible to ignore, but I don’t want to believe I need something to be okay. I just want to be okay.
What’s the difference between me and the next person? Why do I have more trouble getting over shit? I hate all of this, and I wish I would’ve never gone on vacation. If I would’ve stayed home none of this would’ve ever been a thing. I’d be safe and normal.
I’d be riding the high of not only being the best swimmer at Maple Point Prep, but I’d be top of my class too. Instead, I’m struggling to keep up and though I’ll never tell anyone this, I don’t even want to be at school anymore. I don’t want to be anywhere, not even in my own skin.
I lay across my bed, the small smoothie pouch almost gone, and contemplate all the things I’ve buried over the last year and a half. Maybe Cronin wasn’t the best hospital, but I am starting to wonder if a psychiatric ward is where I belong.
My thoughts consume me, cycling around and around until I feel like I’m drowning, only there’s no way to come up for air. I’m not in water but I’m drowning with the weight of my world on top of me and it’s too heavy for me to bear right now. I’m not sure I even want to hold it at this point.
I just want everything to stop.
When my dorm door swings open, I don’t have to look to know who it is. How he moves is different than Stella, his footfalls far louder than hers. When he gets to the side of my bed, he looks over the wooden rail, and even though I feel his eyes on me, I don’t look at him.
“So you’re just going to lay here all day?” he asks, his voice heavy just like everything I’m feeling.
I feel judged and I’m embarrassed for wanting to lay here for the remainder of not only the day but the entire month. He won’t understand and if I start talking about it right now, I’m afraid I’ll just be locked up again. While in Cronin I only wanted Enzo, but when I got home, he wasn’t who I thought he was anymore. I’m not who I was before either.
I don’t know if he still has the same love for me he’s had all of the years we were together, but I’m honestly too scared to try and find out. He’s read my file, the things that brushed the surface at least, but it was filled with the lies I told to the doctors to try and convince them to let me out, just like Delilah did. He has no idea what swirls around in this stupid head of mine.
“Get up, Ana,” he tells me. “You can’t sit around letting yourself get depressed.”
“You think it’s that simple?” I ask, still not looking at him as I feel tears well up in my eyes.
“Is it not? You can’t just change your thoughts?” he asks and I kind of want to slap him.
I don’t.
“If it was so easy, don’t you think I would’ve fixed myself by now?”
“Are you depressed?” he asks. “I can help.”
I let my head fall over to the side, my tears falling. “Sex doesn’t help everything, Enzo.”
“Yes it does,” he tells me with a suggestive smirk. “But I’m not referring to sex.”
I sniff hard and wipe my tears away as more silently fall. “Then what help are you talking about?”
“You’re not the only one who was forced into therapy,” he explains. “Mine wasn’t as forced as yours was but the lady I see tells it how she sees things and even though I wasn’t trying to hear her mouth while you were away, she was talking some real shit. Maybe she can help you. I doubt your parents know how you’re feeling, but I do know they wanted to give you space after being at Cronin for so long. Maybe space isn’t what you need.”
“I know, but since talking with my parents I have no idea what was real and what was fake while I was there. The diagnosis of bipolar along with PTSD. Was any of it the truth? They had me taking medicine, Enzo. I felt broken the entire time I was there but when I wouldn’t take the pills they gave me I only felt worse. I haven’t taken any pills since I left, and I sense the feelings of doom creeping back into my mind just like before.”
“Come to my room so I can at least make sure you don’t hurt yourself. I get it, you don’t want me to make a big deal about your birthday, but you can at least humor me and drag your ass out of this room. I’ll even let you skip the rest of the school day,” he offers. “It’s Friday anyway.”
“Let me?” I question. “You think I need your permission to not go to class?”
“I am bigger than you,” he says.
“So what?” I snap.
“If you won’t drag your ass out of bed, I’ll do it for you. As I said, I’m bigger than you,” he repeats.
I sit up and look down at the smoothie pouch I was drinking. “You are such a dick.”
“But you’re smiling,” he says. I look over to find a grin on his face too. “At least I’m good for that.”
“Who says you’re any good at it?” I ask, looking down at him.
“Get the fuck out of the bed, you little shit. I want to go to my room.”
“You can go,” I try.
“You’re coming too.” His tone is confident, and I know I’m going with him, but I still push back.
“I—”
He doesn’t say anything else before he walks around to the steps and yanks me down to the edge of my mattress. “I guess you want to be thrown over my shoulder and carried around.”
“I’m kidding. I’ll come down,” I admit. “Move.”
“Why do you have to be so rude?” he asks, backing away from the stairs.
I get to the bottom of the steps and look up at him and muster up my best fake smile. “I learned from the best.”
Walking past him I head over to where my shoes are. He follows me a few steps before defending himself.
“I’m not rude,” he says, tapping his chest. “I mean, at least not on purpose.”
“Oh, so being naturally rude is okay? Well, I guess I’m in the clear,” I tell him, chuckling as I slide my feet into my vans.
“I’m waving my white flag, baby. I’m maybe rude but I have been doing my best to not be rude to you. I hold my tongue more times than not because you have a smart-ass mouth. Sometimes I want to break your little ass in two,” he explains, laughing as well.
“Lorenzo Akardi... admitting defeat? Oh, I see you, Enz. You’re really pleading your case,” I joke but he doesn’t respond.
Instead, he pulls me away from where I was putting my shoes on and leans in to kiss me. His lips are full and feel so soft, but I push my tongue in and he follows my lead quickly.
One of his hands goes to the back of my neck while the other is gripping me hard low on my waist. His heavy hands are holding me tightly in place and as he moves his tongue against mine, I can only think about what he does with that tongue of his when he’s between my legs. I squirm in his arms, wishing now I’d just gone to his room with him already.
His touch might not be magic, but it sure does make my problems fade into the background for a while. Even the depression can’t seem to grip me if he’s holding me close. Maybe that’s how it’s been all along, all my mood swings held at bay because he was with me to fight those demons for me.
It wasn’t until I didn’t have him anymore that I was consumed by emotions deep inside of me I didn’t even know existed. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, and I had no hope anything would get better. I was ready to die if I couldn’t go home, but the day I decided would be my day to say goodbye to everything, I found out about my baby.
I don’t know whose kid it was, but I do know it was mine, and being that there was a possibility it was Enzo’s and it changed my mind completely. A baby I’ve never known and never will know saved my life and as I stand here in front of Enzo, I can only be thankful for the tiny life that grew inside of me for the short time it did.
I don’t know why I lost the baby, they never told me but in the grand scheme of things I feel like he did what he came to do because I wouldn’t be alive right now had I never found out about him.
“I want to go to your room,” I tell him. “I want to talk to you about something.”
“I knew you did,” he taunts with a smile. I push him forward, not wanting to acknowledge him being right.
