Page 52 of Teach Me How To Fly

“No!” He exclaimed, and walked away from me.

He put his hands on his head, pulling his hair as he was probably trying to deny the idea that my so-called uncle could have abused him too.

I wished it wasn’t true, but our stories were connecting way too much, and the fact that we both had nightmares of the mysterious man who was chasing or abusing us made me think that it could’ve been true.

Me and Maksen could’ve been abused by this man, and both of our brains chose as a coping mechanism to block our memories and not let us live with the trauma. But forgetting things didn’t prepare us for facing the trauma, and now, we were in a pure agony where we tried to accept that the reality we had been living was a total lie.

“I want to leave this place, but we have nowhere to go,” I said and I stepped towards him.

He was breathing heavily and he kept pulling his hair out of agitation.

“Everywhere we’d go, we could be found by Lukyan or by his people, and I don’t want to face a situation like that now.”

“Maybe aunt Lydia has an idea. Where is she?”

He tilted his head and exhaled deeply, then passed his hands over his face, maybe trying to get out of his mind.

We were the same. When something bothered us, we locked ourselves deep into our minds and planned not to leave there for a long time.

“She’s downstairs. Do you really think she’ll help us? I don’t remember her much, and I have mixed feelings about her,” he said and I nodded, sure of what I know.

“She’ll help us because she always loved me, or at least I hope she did. ”

We looked at each other for the last time before we stepped out of the room and made our way downstairs. I tried not to look around too much because with each step I took, I felt like I was five years old again and my uncle was going to appear at any moment.

Little me didn’t feel safe here, and neither did I.

“Lydia?” I exclaimed, and as soon as we entered the kitchen, I saw her crying beside the kitchen counter, with a bag of pills near her.

“Annalise! Oh, my dear!” she replied and came running to me, taking me into her arms and hugging me tightly.

I hugged her back, even though I was confused about her now. I always considered her to be the mother I never had, just as I considered Olivia, but now that I found out that I was not part of the family and that they both hid it from me, I could no longer feel compassion for them.

They should’ve told me the truth. They should’ve prepared me for the moment when I was going to find out, but they did nothing. They kept lying to me, and maybe they would’ve kept going if it wasn’t for me hearing the discussion between Katya and Lukyan.

It was so strange to call him by his name after all these years when I called him my father.

He was Lukyan Makenova, and I was Annalise, if that was even my real name.

“You have to help us get away from here without my father knowing the location we’ll be going to,” I said as she moved away from me.

She cried a lot in the past hours,considering her swollen eyes and the redness around them. Maybe she was hurting too, but at that moment, I didn’t care about anyone but me and Maksen. I had to be like that, even though my heart didn’t say the same.

“There’s an abandoned cabin in the middle of the forest. The coordinates are on this paper,” she explained and gave me a piece of paper she just took out of her pocket. “Maybe your father forgot about it, so there won’t be any security cameras. He hasn’t ever talked about it since he sent your uncle away. They used to go there after they were finished hunting animals in the forest,” she explained as she kept her hands on me.

“So, Sylvian isn’t dead?”

Maksen’s voice filled the entire kitchen, and both me and Lydia startled.

“No,” she quickly replied, sighing. “He’s hospitalized in a sanatorium.”

The moment I turned around and looked at Maksen, I got frightened. I’d never seen him like that before. His eyes got darker, and his lips curved into a more evil-like grin that made me wonder what exactly was going through his mind. But I knew he was portraying the exact moment when he was going to kill Sylvian. He had it in his blood, and by that I meant killing people who did wrong to others.

“We’ll go to the cabin then.” I told her briefly.

She looked at me attentively, then breathed out and grabbed a key to hand to me.

“We have to talk about everything you found out, Annalise. There’s more for you to know.”

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