𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐲𝐧 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 is far from perfect. Before starting her senior year of college, she's already guaranteed her position as the black sheep of her once prestigious family. To make matters worse, she took up bedding the rival family's eldest...
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𝑫𝒖𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒆 𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔, Evelyn smiled to herself. Albeit, thanks to the exhausting crying she'd done throughout the day, she could hardly feel it. She felt the muscles at the corners of her lips twitch upward, but her eyes were so raw and intent on not moving as to not accidentally catch a glimpse of Michael's face that she imagined her smile looked more like a grimace. She was smiling because of all the hell that Yonas Wright had forced her to face, determined to break her spirit down into little grains of submissive nothings, he'd inadvertently strengthened her for this moment. Yonas never could love her right, but he couldn't hate her right either.
Just like she had during the beatings, the times she'd spent locked in her bedroom without meals, during his abusive tirades, she made herself feel nothing. She was nothing. Menemi¹. The only thing her father's brutal treatment of her hadn't prepared her for was facing this fear of becoming nothing to the one man she'd come to understand she truly loved. And telling herself she would feel nothing at the thought of his reaction was her greatest lie—right after her own identity. ¹ ᴬᵐʰᵃʳᶦᶜ ᶠᵒʳ "ⁿᵒᵗʰᶦⁿᵍ"
"Amari wasn't my brother," Evelyn said again, her crackling voice just as expressionless as her visage. She didn't lean against Michael. She didn't look at him. She stared straight ahead at the Mickey Mouse figurine on his desk, concentrating on her words the way she would when she was made to recite a speech. "He was my half-brother and my half-cousin. My mom and my uncle's first child."
For a long time, Michael left the words just hanging there between them. The intensity of his stare felt like two tiny dots of fire burning on her scalp, and from her peripheral vision, she could see his chest rise dramatically for each breath he took. After a short while of stunned silence, his soft voice returned in a flustered stammer. "I- I don't understand, Eve. Why would you lie about something like that to me?"
"It's embarrassing," she bit out with a scowl. "People already talked enough shit about my family. And even though we're part of this little Habesha community in town, we're still outcasts." As she continued to talk, her knuckles started to ache from how tightly she held Michael's covers around her and in her fists. "My father, Yonas, he's just so fuckin' traditional. Not in just a culture way either. He just uses our religion as an excuse to do what he wants—because men lead everything and women should just obey."
Evelyn felt her heart skip to her throat when Michael's arm slowly came around her to draw her close again. His hand made comforting strides up and down her back. Still, she refused to relax. She couldn't. He didn't know everything yet, and the pain of his rejection would only sting worse if she let herself get her hopes up now.
As if he'd read her mind and wanted to quell her in his usual sweet yet gratingly captious way, he tipped his head to catch her gaze and flash a shy smile at her. "Well, 's one thing you didn't learn from him, I guess."
