Zeath pats my head, letting me rest my jaw on his palm.
He remains silent as he stands properly with me in his arms before heading outside the warehouse.
It's dark already, and there are slight traces of a storm. Hopefully, it won't meet us while we're still down here.
"Up there, what do you see?" Zeath jerks his head upward, and I squint my eyes into the dark to stare at the glass windows.
"Our matrimonial… room?" I respond hesitantly.
Zeath huffs a smile, looking at me. "You're shaking. How do you feel?"
I didn't know about that. But… "Optimistic," I say anyways. The man cocks his head before I whisper, "scared."
That's pure honesty. I am scared.
He draws his face close and pecks my lips. "I want you to keep your eyes above you." He jerks his head toward the windows again. "I have an encouraging surprise for you."
Zeath gently lets me stand before leading me into a small glass cube attached close to the warehouse exit.
When he tries to walk away, I hold him by the arm. "How about Yolie?"
That question has a hint of desperation. But who cares, when a tiny string once linked I and my happiness. Any more brutality from Zeath and it'd have been cut. Thankfully, he turned a new leaf—or it's what I want to believe.
I only hope it's real. And I'm shaken with the thought that it may not be.
"I…" Zeath pauses, biting hard on his lower lip. He seems conflicted; worried too. "…will take care of her―" His lips hang open. Then he just nods and strolls away.
I watch him walk farther into the house, while the rain leaves patters on the glass cube.
My heart is beating really fast. I'm nervous; more than I've ever been. And it's worse when I don't know what Zeath will show me.
He's not someone with lack of surprises. Each month, there's always one.
But this time it's different.
I'm holding on to a thin rope. One instinct tells me he's mine and that whatever happened this week is a mere ripple of non-reality. The other demands I be cautious, inviting the question—what if what we did was just a game as well; another dare to see if I'll sleep with him?
The reality of who loses also comes to mind. After all, I'm the one who put all my faith in what we had when I let myself be vulnerable to him.
The room lights switch on before Zeath shows up behind the window, and I smile, though unable to concentrate fully due to the threatening thunders. I hate them. They freak me out. Zeath knows that.
Hopefully, he'd come get me before things spiral out of hand.
When he disappears from the window, it doesn't take long before I start to see shadows. Two persons. And one's figure looks just like Zeath.
It seems they're in a tangle. But I only realize it's worse when the two figures slam against the window, one's face in contact with the glass. And she's looking at me. F-cking Yolie.
Zeath is closely behind her. His hands are crawling inside her blouse, his crotch grinding her ass as he traces soft pecks from her shoulder to the side of her face.
Then his gaze lands on mine—eyes full of lust, but daring me in a challenge of emotional strength, which I lose rather quickly.
"Does this encourage you to divorce?" I hear through a small speaker by my right, flinching at the voice. Zeath's voice.
My heart sinks as thunder strikes.
I flinch and let out a shriek, watching as lightening flashes in Zeath's eyes, making his devilish smirk all the more creepy. And frightening.
"I will take care of her… like I should a lover," his voice comes again, "—that is what I meant to say earlier."
I try to resist my tears. But even that has turned too stubborn that they roll down my eyes with every breathe I take to hold them back.
Zeath chuckles. "What did I tell you about jealousy, and envy? I see it in your eyes now. And I was mistaken. It does look good on you. Desperation too. Adds more entails to what you are; a desperate sl-t. Frolicking for love. The love you never gave, and will never get."
"Stop," I croak out, shaking my head, my chest heaving.
More thunders, more lightening. I think I've grown immune to them. Now, the only thing that scares me are Zeath's next words.
"I'll leave this window transparent and let you watch every detail of what real love making looks like. You need the lessons badly."
"Please…" I'm fighting to not break. I desperately am, though even my voice betrays me. "…stop."
Zeath's hands dig deeper into Yolie's blouse. I see them press her br-asts, and I hear her moan.
"This is a yearn for love—to complete each other—and not some desperate move to provide a son or prove something to me. That's pathetic, and a huge turn off."
My wails burst through my lips despite my restraint. It only pains me now that Zeath and I won't be able to do the things we once did.
Our years of happy marriage has been flushed down a pit by my least offender, and the agony of that bites in my guts, forcing me to squat down while screaming into the now wrathful storm.
Now it dawns on me. Reality. And I don't know where to start accepting it.
Watching the scene behind the window is pure cruelty. To me, it's like their bodies constantly slamming the glass would shatter the latter. And each broken piece would come for me.
They'd slice me in half, then gather around my heart like magnets on metal, each taking a chunk of the former as if it's a pie.
I wish the glass would shatter still. Only, it's better if they target my eyes instead. Make me blind. I can endure being blind as long as I don't have to see this wickedness.
As thunder strikes, there goes my wails.
It slashes the earth again and again, rumbling the grounds, an echo of the turmoil going on within me.
My knees fail. This time, I can't hold them, so I fall to the floor.
I don't care about the rain beating the glass, each constant drop sliding down rapidly, all forming streaks of water that look like streaks of pain.
"You didn't have to do that…" I mumble. "You should have told me you didn't want me." He sure did.
But maybe I needed to hear it several times to believe it. Zeath only had to show me, to cast me off sooner.
How brutal.
And it had to be behind the same window where we kissed, where he promised he'd f-ck me.
Yes, he always mentioned it. He said it rather too often it now seems like a script.
The taunting sound of their heightened moans tells me they've reached org-sm.
"I love you," Zeath confesses. If only I had the courage to pretend he said it to me.
"Do I have to say it back?" Yolie moans. How I want to rip the hairs off that bi-ch's head.
"Yes. I love hearing it." Zeath chuckles as Yolie hums sensually.
Her words flow through her lips like summoned smoke. "I love your di-k, and your lips, and your eyes. I adore every part of you to your last bit. I also love how we share one pleasure."
She looks at me with poison in her gaze; makes me feel like I'm being melted under the scrutiny of snow white's wicked step mother.
While Yolie's stare lingers until Zeath grabs her away from the window, the man doesn't spare me a glance before they disappear from my sight.
However, it's his voice that chokes me out of the little comfort I have left. "You say sleeping with me proves how much I want you. No. Hell, it doesn't. What it proves is that you're one in a billion f-ckers who'd bathe in gross to grasp the thing they want that can never be theirs." I whimper, bursting into tears once more. "This time, it wasn't a dare. It was nothing, really. Just fun. An empty fun."
Or an empty pain, because now it feels like I have no choice but to watch as my entire world crumbles.
And you know what's worse?
It's that I love Zeath so much I can't bear to hate him.