Luce di Stella • Kenan Yildiz

Chapter 41: Sinners

🎶 Fire on Fire - From "Watership Down" — Sam Smith 🎶

"What the hell are you doing here?!" Kenan and I asked both in unison as we stood at the front door.
"You own a house?!" he asked confusedly first and I was stunned for a few seconds.
"It's not a crime!" I defended myself. "You want to buy a house?!" I asked back agitatedly. He was buying a house for his family. The one he's not having with me.

"It's not a crime!" he mimicked me and pushed inside past me uninvited. Or was he invited? "And by the way... I'm not looking to buy" he added, leaving me even more confused.
"Then why the hell are you here?!" I asked, my head spinning as I tried to figure out what was going on. I closed the door behind me and saw him standing in the entrance, looking around. He sighed before looking at me... with a hurt expression?

"I... I started doing this in London, a few weeks after moving... I'd visit houses for sale and... imagined us living there" he admitted and I froze.
"No. No! You don't get to say stuff like this!" I first said, but my tone went up until I was shouting. "YOU LEFT!" I almost screamed now.
"And I regret it, every day, first thing in the morning" he replied through gritted teeth as he grabbed my arms to hold me.
"No! Get off of me! You're getting married!" I yelled, and he let me go.

"Stop... talking. You have a fiancée and I have a boyfriend" I said as my chest was uncontrollably rising up and sinking down.
"Oh, yeah! How could I forget?! My best friend you started shagging behind my back!" he exclaimed and shook his head with a sarcastic smile.
"Urgh, again with this story! Get fucking over it'" I yelled back.
"I CAN'T!" he shouted and I opened my mouth to say something, but somehow I was speechless.

"I... I can't. I thought I had, I thought I could, but coming back only brought me back to that night two years ago... again and again. In my dreams, which turn into nightmares, I relive it all the time and it tears my heart apart knowing that I should have stayed" he said with a shaky voice. "... But you could have fought more too" he added and my eyes widened.
"Excuse me, you leave and I have to fight?" I exclaimed.

"Imagine that, Bibi! You're not an almighty person sitting on a throne while all us other mere mortals bustle around you!" he shouted.
"Let me get this straight - you wanted me to fight for you just because you didn't?!" I asked confusedly and angrily. Who the hell did he think he was?!
"Yeah! It would have showed you cared! I didn't even know if you did anymore... All I ever wanted was to make you proud, I craved for your praise all the time" he said defeatedly.

"I bought this house for us" I blurted out. It made no sense to fight over the past, we couldn't change it anyways.
"What?" he asked confusedly.
"I saw it on the market all those years ago and... It was perfect. Huge garden in the back to play football with friends... or kids. A few rooms upstairs for them, a huge garage..." I blabbered, but stopped myself. "I was about to tell you after that game... but you preferred to leave" I mumbled and leaned against a wall, while he tried to process the information.

"Show me" he said, almost pleaded, after a minute. This already felt so much like cheating. But it was Kenan, so I went on with his request.
"Kitchen - big enough for a chef teaching us how to cook, someone from the team would have gifted us a voucher for cooking lessons at our wedding, given how naturally untalented we both are" I chuckled and ran my fingertips over the counter before slowly walking to the living room. There weren't any sofas because they would have dusted way too quickly, but there was a small table at the side with photographs: one of me and him with Uncle John, one of Dado and me, one of him celebrating the goal that won him his first Scudetto three years ago, and a few of us two together.

"Paris..." he whispered as he picked up our printed selfie, taken at Trocadero, on which I kissed his cheek and he smiled brightly into the phone camera, the Eiffel tower behind us.
"We had some bombastic sex that night" I chuckled and he laughed too.
"Oh yeah, we did" he replied with a smile playing on his mouth. "A piano is missing over there..." he said as he put the picture down again and pointed at a place near a pillar. "You love to play and the kids should learn it too" he added and I nodded in agreement.