Mine

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Remembering comes in flashbacks, in echoes. Tell myself it's time now, gotta let go

Five years later

"I wanna do that!" Alihan exclaims pointing at Kubilay as he makes his way off the cushioned stack of mattresses once the director calls cut.

His father, the man he knows as his father, scoops him up with a smile. "Did that look like fun, little one?"

Alihan nods, his wild brown curls bouncing, brown eyes wild with delight.

"You know it's just pretend though, right?" Kubilay said. He takes a swipe at the fake blood on his forehead. "Daddy's not hurt."

He nods again. "No owwie. Just pretend. I wanna pretend too. Just like you and Mama."

Miray is glad that Kubilay makes it clear that the scene he just filmed was just pretend. That everything their little boy sees is pretend. She's not sure how much Alihan registers, but he seems to understand.

They've started bringing him to work with them on their various projects sometimes. Kubilay visits her. Miray visits him. They're trying. They're better. Boran is in a locked box in her heart. Those few months of sweet madness locked behind a door she has vowed to herself she will never open again.

Kubilay's dark eyes are warm when he leans down and kisses her cheek. "I'll go clean this stuff off and then we can go out for lunch?"

Kubilay hands him over to her as Alihan exclaims that he wants ice cream for lunch.

"That's not lunch, that's dessert!" Miray insists with a laugh, watching Kubilay make his way back into the studio to get cleaned up.

She holds onto his little hand as he pulls her towards the cameras, wanting to see them more closely.

"Is part of lunch," he reasons. "You can jus' make it the first part cause you and Daddy the boss, right, Mama?"

Miray cocks an eyebrow and stares down at her son, looking up at her with a sweet smile that belies the devilish glint in his eyes.

So like his father. She swallows against the lump in her throat and pushes the thought away. Miray can tell herself to stop her heart screaming for Boran. She can play the dutiful wife and live in peace and some semblance of happiness she's determined to create without him. The life she lives is...dim. Not unpleasant, not unhappy but just... with a shield over it that doesn't feel quite real. Like she's on the outside of that shield watching the woman on the other side make all the right proper movements. The happiness she feels with Kubilay feels like a planned happiness, like a role she's determined to play. Eventually it will feel more real, she tells herself. She will throw herself into this role until it is real. Alihan deserves that. She deserves that. Her little boy is the only part of her life she can actually see in vibrant Technicolor. Even her job, while enjoyable isn't quite the refuge it was. A flare of rage grows through her that Boran stole even that from her when he left.

You've given your heart to a coward. That was how the letter started. Miray firmly slams the door on that memory and the weeks of crying, madness, screaming, begging her sister, her mother or even Pinar who suspected long before Miray confessed, for any word of him.

He went to New York first. For two months. She couldn't go to him. Couldn't contact him. The thing that had enabled them to have their affair, secret messages, clandestine meetings, only specific contact in specific ways at specific times, now kept her from reaching him. The irony was a bitter bitter pill. No, Boran didn't like texts or emails.