Mine

Chapter Fourteen

Cover my eyes, cover my ears, tell me these words are a lie...

Boran stares at the small piles of papers on his coffee table. He places the one in his lap on the table to join the others. Small notes are written across the envelopes that had contained each pile. Opinions from his agent on which role he thinks Boran should take next. He lights a cigarette and leaves the scripts on the table as he goes to the window. Three series offers, two movies, and a small note about a play in New York. Broadway. He's most tempted by the play. To be on stage again, he's missed it. He hasn't been offered a spot but his agent says he can get Boran an audition if he wants it. He's fluent in English. He could do it if he wanted to. If he wanted to. That's the thing, isn't it?

He's been putting off choosing his next role and he knows why. She is why. Miray. He wants to soak up every spare minute she has and if he takes on a new project, that'll be less time he has to spend with her.

The admission makes him feel a little ill. Restless. Annoyed with himself. He drags on the cigarette and blows, waiting for the nicotine to do its job and settle his nerves. He watches people on the street below, a couple with their arms linked. Easy. So easy for other people. Why not for them?

Because he never should have touched her. He knows that was the crux of it, but he did and now he's lost and a part of him, a big part is selfish enough not to give a fuck.

She's younger than he is.

Okay, seven years feels like a bigger gap to him than it is because they are so different. She is all light and joy and sweetness. He is jaded, dark and closed off to all but his most intimate circle and when he's acting, that is the only time he allows everything in him to spill out. Even then he is protected and safe by the cloak of story and character.

She's married. He would never ever imagine himself as someone who would get involved with a married woman. It always seemed like the height of stupidity and horrible to break up a family and help a woman betray her vows.

She belonged to him first! That part of his reasoning scares him a little. He never considered himself a possessive person, but from the first moment he saw Miray, rushing over to him to introduce herself, everything in him rose up in him and surged towards her that he had the most ridiculous primal urge to grab her and carry her off somewhere. Like a fucking caveman. God.

Alihan. That little boy has claimed his heart as surely as his mother. Boran can even smell his baby smell now if he closes his eyes, pushing through the cigarette smell. His heart swells almost painfully. Miray texted him as soon as she got home after dropping him off. "Where's Bobo?" She says the little boy asked for him, not seeing him when she came home when he had seen Boran leave with her. He texts her back that she doesn't have to say that just to make him feel better because of course she would know he'd been hurt by it. Such a stupid thing, to have his feelings hurt by a baby and yet Miray understood it without him having to say a word. She even sends him a little video of it and Boran's eyes burn with the threat of tears as he watches it. He's giddy watching the little boy asking for him. He knows he should delete it as he deletes anything on his phone between him and Miray that could arouse any suspicion but he rationalizes that it could be Alihan just asking about Mommy's friend because of course the tabloids would expect Boran to know Miray's child. It's harmless, he tells himself as he watches the little boy over and over again.

A knock on the door makes him startle by the window. A shiver of delight mingles with unease. Miray? They don't do surprise visits. It's much too dangerous. Every meeting must be carefully planned.

He looks through the peephole in the door and his heart drops into his feet. Miray's mother. Boran's not sure what will greet him on the other side but a sudden surge of panic tells him not to open the door. Let her think he's not home. Stupid. She'll just come another day. He knows why she's here, this woman who has never just dropped by his home.