Forbidden Love

~ 34

  I stormed my way towards the door with every blood in my body boiling. My hands were shaking as I tried to unlock the door with a few failed attempts. When the door was unlocked, I grabbed Rhea’s hands and dragged her towards her bedroom after I threw the keys away. I closed her door and bent down right in front of her, taking off the clips from her hair while trying to choked back the tears that I felt was coming.

“Mommy, are you crying?”

And there goes another failed attempt. I looked into her eyes with a blurry vision. Far into her deep ocean blue eyes, a memory flashed into my mind faster than my erratic heartbeat. Every faces, every laughter, every moments were swirling around my mind like a hurricane and I failed to stop it. I failed to even try. Memories were the soul torturer of me. I couldn't escape them, or hide from them; they were the worst kind of monster. I had always been scared of what my past held, all the memories that seemed to never escaped me. They were pinpoint needles, piercing my skin. I couldn't scream or fight back, I had to just endure the pain as the picture of his face flashed through my mind.

I had experienced pain before, but nothing amounted to this night. It felt like all the feelings I had been trying so hard to keep, came crashing down right on my shoulders. Every memories that made my heart ached all this time came back and hit me with its painful flashback and what hurt me even more was the fact that I couldn’t stop any of them.

Instead of assuring her that I was okay, I sat on the floor and pulled her close to me tightly and cried. If it was my emotions that controlled me, I would’ve pushed my daughter as far away possible because every single thing about her only made me think of him even more. But I knew better than to get burnt by the same flame twice and remembered the last time I let it happened, it went horrible.

“I’m sorry baby,” I muttered under my breath, tears kept flowing down my cheeks. “I always told you to be strong, but I.. I can’t, Rhea. I’m not strong and I can’t be.”

“Don’t say that, mommy,” Rhea looked up at me with her pair of shiny eyes. She put her thumbs on my cheeks before she wiped the tears off of my face. “You always told me that crying will not make you weak. You said crying is healing,” she sat up in front of me and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ears. “So you are not weak, mommy. You’re just healing.” She gave me a soft smile that helped my emotions slowly went back to normal.

I let out a small chuckled as I realized how matured she sound that she made me feel like I had always been the weaker one. I hugged her for the last time and finally took a deep breath. “Okay, smart one. It’s time for bed. Get up, I’ll take you to bath, change and then you go to sleep. Sounds good?”

“Yes,” She smiled and nodded her head. I quickly went to her closet and pulled out her pink Barbies pyjamas and threw it over my shoulders. A few minutes later, I finally tucked her to bed. It didn’t take long for her to fall asleep, the dinner must’d drained out all her energy.

Closing her bedroom door, I jumped a little when someone was knocking the front door. I knew who it was so I purposely spent a few minutes on the stairs, listening to his begging until I finally got up from the stairs and sighed. I opened the door slowly and Austin almost fell on his back. “Camila.”

“What do you want?” I leaned over the door and crossed my arms over my chest.

“Camila, I’m so sorry,” I jerked his hands off when he tried to grab my arms. “You know it was just an accident. I didn’t mean to leave her.”

“I only went to the bathroom for less than one minute, Austin.” I gritted my teeth.

“I know, but believe me when I said I didn’t mean to leave her alone. I went to grab a drink, and then she was gone.”