Page 70 of Teach Me How To Fly

“No worries, I can handle this. You just have to be with me,” I said, fixing a strand of hair behind my ear.

“You’re scaring me, Anna, so when you’re ready to talk about what happened in there, know that I’m here to listen, and I’ll try to give you the distance you need, but it’s eating me alive. I just can’t stop worrying,” he quickly replied, narrowing his eyes and glancing at me attentively.

I know who your real parents are and I don’t fucking have the courage to tell you. You would ask me why, and I would tell you that I’m afraid you would harm yourself even more when you’re alone, so until I figure out a way to heal you and make you stop cutting yourself, I have to keep this secret for me.

“There’s nothing wrong with me. Let’s go,” I quickly answered after having a whole conversation with him in my head.

He didn’t take his gaze off of me, just walked behind me as I moved my feet to the house.

The moment I opened the door, the familiar smell of my house hit my senses, and I felt the mixed feelings engulfing me. With each step I took, I knew I was going to bump into my father and have to face him.

The moment I turned to the right to walk into the living room, I was almost pushed to the ground by a pair of tiny arms. The perfume that met my senses made me instantly realize it was Katya.

She was sobbing as she hugged me tighter than she ever had, and for a few seconds, I didn’t know how to react. I hugged her back and somehow enjoyed how it felt. She had never hugged me before, or even showed me any act of love.

“You’re back. Finally, you came back,” she mumbled between my hair strands, then she moved a few inches away from me and pulled me closer to her again.

It was shocking for me to see her behaving like this, but I guess there were more things for me to discover.

“Yes, I am back,” I whispered as I caressed her back.

When she stepped away from me, I noticed she had been crying considering how swollen her eyes were. She gave me a comforting smile, then looked at me closely and moved her attention somewhere behind me. I knew he had come.

I turned on my heels and the moment I met his gaze, my knees turned into jelly. My body almost hit the ground but he took me in his arms and hugged me with so much force that I let out a vague sound in my mouth.

“Annalise,” he whispered, his chest rising and falling at an alarming rate.

“I need to talk to you, Lukyan.”

The moment I called him by his name, he released me, and I noticed how shattered he was hearing me calling him like that.

For the first time in my life, I could really see real pain showing on his face, and to my own surprise, I was kind of upset too. It was devastating to call the man whom you thought of as your father by his name. It really hurt.

“Come with me,” he said as he looked back at Maksen and Katya.

Without hesitating, I followed him as he started walking towards his office. I missed this house and all the things that made me feel at home, but these last couple of days, I realized that it shouldn’t have been the house that made me feel at home, but the people in it.

Strangely, I missed Katya, and maybe I missed Lukyan too, but I was too afraid to accept it as it was. I was scared that if I admitted my feelings and truly let myself feel them, everything was going to be destroyed again, so I had to wear this mask of indifference and live with it as much as I could.

Lukyan opened the door and let me enter the office. He closed it as I sat down on the armchair in front of his mahogany desk, trying to ignore the strong smell of tobacco and fine cognac I knew he always liked to drink.

He sat down on his chair, then put his elbows on the edge of the desk and pinned me with his eyes. He was waiting for me to talk first, but considering how much he tried to keep his mouth in a straight line, he had things to tell me too.

I hadn’t seen him like this ever in my life, and by this, I meant silent. He always made sure to control each discussion he had, to point out his arguments and convince the person he was talking to that he was always right. Yet he didn’t do any of those now. He was just waiting for me to talk.

I sucked in a deep breath and moved a little in the armchair, looking him deeply in the eyes.

“Firstly, why did you lie to me?”

“I didn’t want to lie to you, Anna,” he lowered his voice. “I just didn’t find the right moment to tell you and to be honest, no father out there could ever find the right moment to tell his daughter that she’s adopted,” he added, a glistening of tears showing in his eyes.

“Yet you could tell Katya this with such ease that it didn’t make me think it was that hard for you to speak the truth,” I said, keeping my face straight.

He looked at me and gulped without saying anything. His gaze fell somewhere on the ground, and I noticed how uneasy he was feeling now.

“Secondly, did you forbid me from leaving the house because you were afraid I might find out I was adopted?”

“No,” he quickly answered. “I did all of that to protect you. I thought it was better this way for you.”

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