Walls Between Us

prologue

A M A Y A

Death is like a slow poison — not just for the person who breathes his last but also for the one who takes that breath.

I know that. I have taken one. It doesn't matter in the end if he was a good man or a bad one; all that remains is the fact that he had a life that was taken from him untimely by someone else.

Nine years ago, I killed a man. Not just any man — I killed my mother's husband, my step-father, the person who had adopted me as a daughter while still letting me keep my father's last name, and the person who was the worst mistake of my mother's life.

It would seem like he was a good man at first glance but it is also true that he was not.

I killed him to protect myself and the boy who I loved.

The boy who left me after four years at the altar of our wedding.

I remember each moment of that day like it was only yesterday. I remember how I woke up next to him, feeling ecstatic beyond anything. He showered me with kisses before our parting, took me in his arms, and then took me once again in our bed. He moaned and twisted with me, connecting our bodies with a promise for life.

He told me he was the happiest man on earth today and I was the reason. Just like I always had, I believed him then. I believed his promises, I believed his lies, I believed he was mine forever.

Then came the moment when I was wearing the bridal veil in front of the mirror, smiling at my mother who was dressing me up. We were both happy, so much that we were crying tears, and it was then that I told her that she was going to be a grandmother.

I told her I was to become a mother and in half an hour I would be breaking the news to the father.

We chuckled with happiness, my heart feeling like it would burst with joy until...

Shaun Thomas was the one to bring the news.

He had the sheet of paper in his hand and he handed it to me while his eyes carried a look of pure rage. In his anger, he had managed to crumble the paper.

Staring agape, I took it from him, my hands shaking as I read the words.

'I am sorry, baby. I have to go.
-Yours, Carter'

Carter Bell and I were together for four years and it took him only eight words to break it all up.

I crashed to the ground, taking my Mom down with me as the words danced in front of me and the baby in my belly had suddenly gathered a new weight.

I dialed Carter Bell's number a total of 107 times that day, each time being guided to his voicemail instead.

"Pick up. Please pick up..." I cried, clutching the phone tightly in my hand. "Carter...please don't do this...please pick up. You can't leave now."

I pressed a hand on my belly as with every cut of the call, a new kind of fear kept burning me.

What if something had happened to him? Why wouldn't he pick up? Why did he leave?

Carter Bell was my rock. He couldn't just leave me stranded. He was my Carter. I was his Amaya. We were meant to be together.

He didn't pick up a single call, and nor did he call me back ever again.

Months later, I gave birth to a baby who was supposed to be ours but who was now only mine.

I let Melody give him his name because she was the only one apart from my family who stayed by my side all along.

"Parker Sommers," she said, carrying the child in her arms.

I looked at Mom and found her nodding.

The name was good, a little reminder of his father's side for the boy and a little reminder for me that I once had a lover too.

I raised my boy with the help of my family, with the help of Melody, Stephen Crawford, and his husband, Kyle Dickson. I raised him with the help of his Aunt Lucy who made us shift to LA from New York when she informed me about the opportunity for a job with better prospects.

As they always do, my Mom and Shaun moved with me. We stayed in different apartments but near enough so that my son wouldn't be deprived of their love.

He was my sweet boy, my perfect boy. The only thing wrong with him was that he looked a little too much like his father who was now a person whose face I only knew from television.

'Overture welcomes new entrepreneur'

'Carter Bell launches the Complex Strategy for Market Development'

'Billionaires Grandfather-Son duo raise the stakes higher'

The headlines were all about him, smiling and giving interviews by his grandfather's side — a man of 70 by the name of Vance Bell with dark hair and green eyes. Carter himself had been altered by the years that passed, becoming an icon of his own.

The more I saw his smile, the more his betrayal shone through it and whenever I went to sleep at night, I would start awake with dreams of our past.

As I said, Carter Bell was my rock. Without him, there was no one to pull me out of my dreams. The more years passed, the more sleepless I became. One year with a child turned into two, two into three and soon, three would become four.

Carter Bell doesn't know what he took from me when he took himself. He doesn't know the horrors of our past which only haunt me. He doesn't know that he left carrying a dark secret of mine.

He thinks the dead man is gone for good and with that, his leaving didn't make any difference at all. He doesn't know that he has a son who has never known his father. He doesn't know the fear that my nightmares give our son.

He doesn't know that he left a heart so broken that it still can't put the pieces back together.

He doesn't know that in my dreams, the dead man still lives.

He doesn't know anything.

•••

author's note

No regular updates for now but thought it would be good to share the prologue since you guys have been waiting!

Let me know what you think!