Page 6 of She will Always be Mine

Suddenly, the door jerks open and my stomach bottoms out as my eyes search for the person on the other side, praying that it’s him.

Instead, it’s my mom who enters the room with her suitcase in one hand, looking freshly showered and dressed in one of her kurtis. Her beautiful face is a mask of nothingness. Cold. Emotionless.

Turning toward me, her gaze takes in my rumpled state and bloodshot eyes, courtesy of me crying the whole night.

“Get ready. I’ll wait for you here,” she orders sharply and I flinch at her tone.

She emphasizes the wordhereso I know as long as we are in the same city as Riaan, I’m not allowed to be anywhere alone. Not even deserving of basic privacy. Still, I can’t blame her. When I stay motionless, she scolds me in a hard tone.

“Hurry, Nyra! Your aunt is waiting for us downstairs.”

Before I do as she says, I ask the one question that I can’t hold myself back from asking any longer. “Will you tell her?”

My voice comes out nervous and low as my hands twist the bed sheet in my fist while I wait for her to answer.

My aunt has treated me like her own daughter since I have been away from home and I can’t imagine the devastation it will cause her to know what went on under her roof. I’m scared I will never be allowed to come back here, effectively ending any ties I have to Riaan.

I desperately wish my mom would just tell me what’s going on in her head because I can’t handle her silence and angry taunts.

How long can she behave like this without hearing my explanation? Because if she believes pretending like it didn’t happen will make it all go away, then she’s only fooling herself.

“No.” Her clipped reply pulls me out of my troubled thoughts. Holding my gaze, she continues in a nonnegotiable voice, “This disgusting transgression of yours dies here, Nyra. Do you even realize what you’ve done? In what world did you think it would be all right to kiss your cousin? I didn’t know I had to teach you the difference between siblings and other men.” Her voice raises at the end and doesn’t drop until she realizes somebody could hear her.

She stares at me incredulously and with that same tormented look in her eyes. This time, it takes her a bit longer to hide the look and a knot forms in my stomach at what it could possibly imply.

Is she that horrified of what I’ve done? Have I really done something so terrible?

I shudder at the thought of how she’ll react if she found out I lost my virginity to him as well. I still haven’t found the courage to ask her what she said to him after she ordered me to run to my room last night.

“I never saw him as my cousin, Ma.” I tell her the honest truth and every muscle in her body goes rigid. “I only ever saw him as Riaan. The man who loves me.”

A second later, she’s in my space and tilting my face up with her tight grip on my jaw; there’s no mistaking the raw anger in her unblinking eyes and firmness in her low words.

“The only kind of love that can exist between you two is the kind of love siblings share, Nyra. Nothing more, nothing less.” Once she releases her tight grip on my jaw, she twists away from me as if she can’t stand to look at me, and utters, “The sooner you accept that, the better. Otherwise, the consequences will be too dire.”

“You don’t think I know that?” I reply back, even though my instinct is to scream. “Don’t you think I have tried to bury these feelings for him? That it’s killing me to see you hurt or the fact that there’s a constant pain in my chest every time you stare at me with those blank eyes? I never wanted you to find out like this. I was ending it last night, Ma.”

There’s a tightness in her shoulders as she faces me again and for the first time since coming here, she stares at me softly and lovingly, despite the shadows of hurt and distrust still evident in her eyes. Before I can soak it in, though, her eyes go back to being vacant and dull while her voice comes out soft and emphatic.

“Love like yours can only end in pain, she murmurs. “Or scars too deep to heal.”

As soon as those words leave her lips, she goes back to ignoring me while she busies herself with rearranging the clothes in her suitcase that are already perfectly organized.

Feeling tired to argue, I grab my extra pair of clothes that I brought with me and go into the attached bathroom to shower. While my body goes through the motions like a robot, my mind is imprisoned in the memories of the last time I was here.

Riaan had sneaked in while I was taking a bath, and I can almost hear his voice ordering me to get on my knees so he could fuck my mouth with this thick cock until his cum had coated my throat. His hands were so rough and greedy as he used me for his pleasure. I could still hear his grunts filling my ears as if it only happened yesterday.

My nails had left scratch marks on my arms in an effort to keep my hands to myself until he allowed—or more likeordered—me to touch him. Once he was finished, he took me into his arms and finger-fucked my pussy until I came all over his hand while the taste of his cum embedded itself in my mouth.

Now, I’ll never get to touch him. The emptiness of the bathroom leaves me with only the shadows of our past. I already know no other man will ever compare to him. And if I can’t have him, then I’ll brokenly survive with his memories because no one can ever steal them away from me.

After all, you only get one soul mate.

And Riaan is mine.

When I get out of the shower, I hear my mom talking on the phone in the corner of the room with her back turned away from me. I slow my steps and lightly shut the bathroom door behind me so as not to alert her.

I hold my breath as I listen to her and when she says my dad’s name, my heart beats faster in pure fear. Because while she may hide it from everybody else, she has never kept any secrets from my father, which is why I can’t help but panic.

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