Cyn. "You know, it wasn't always like this." i found myself saying out loud to Paul. "My father I mean. He wasn't always like that, a monster." Paul just listened to me, he said nothing, he let me have my thoughts and when I spoke he listened. "Everything changed after mom died. Something in him broke and he could not handle it. She was his whole world and he didn't know how to live without her. So he took it out on me. He wished I was the one that had died instead of him." i said in tears. "But you didn't deserve how he treated you Cyn, don't make excuses for him." Paul finally said, he said it so calmly but when I looked over at him, he seemed so angry. "You don't know everything, I should have been the one that died not her.""I don't have to know everything to know it's a parents job to protect their children, he was supposed to protect you.""I killed her Paul." i blurted out in tears, "I fucking killed her." i yelled. "That's not true Cyn, and you know it." he said caressi

Kaya. My parents were finally here.I had not realized how much i missed them, especially my mother. But I had not expected it to be this. I did not expect what they told me. The truth about him, the man that had claimed to love me more than any anything. It was all a lie. “He is not your fiancé Kaya,” my father said, the words swirling around in my head as the air was sucked out of the room. “In fact, you had a restraining order issued against him that expired just a day before the accident.”I stared at his familiar features, trying to make sense of what he was saying. I knew him, knew every inch of his face. There were a few new wrinkles that weren’t there the last time I remembered seeing him, but he was still my father. And my mom, sitting beside me holding my hand, was the same as she had always been. And then there was the man standing just inside the room, a shadow darkening his handsome features. Less than ten minutes ago I was kissing that man, touching him. Convinced th

Kaya. They removed my cast today. I wasn’t completely free of restraint because they replaced it with a removable boot to continue to support the section of the tibia that was broken the worst and continued to resist healing. My physical therapist said that I would be free of the boot in a few weeks if I kept working as hard as I had been doing these last few weeks. I couldn’t wait to have my body back. This broken thing felt wrong, like it belonged to someone else. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t know the woman looking back. My hair was growing, but it was still so short like a little boy’s cut. But my collarbone was finally healed though it still ached from time to time and my ribs were good. If I could just get this leg to heal…I stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom that had been my primary space since leaving the hospital and stared at the summer dress I was wearing. It flowed nicely from my shoulders, the thin, white material making my pale skin look healthier than

Ace. I couldn’t believe it. My Kaya was back.I stood just inside the door of the gym and watched her as I had done so many times in the past few days. She was humming just under her breath, some pop song that I vaguely remembered being popular years ago. She was an amazing artist, but she wasn’t much of a singer. But I didn’t care. This was the Kaya I had known, the Kaya I fell in love with.When Margaret called and told me she was working on the mural again, I was livid. I couldn’t believe that Margaret would do this, that she would bring her here without talking to me first. But now…let’s just say I was a little less peeved than I was before.“This is familiar,” I said.Kaya looked up and smiled widely. “Hey.”“Hey to you, too. What are you doing?”“Margaret came by the house to tell me about the opening here tomorrow night, and I thought seeing the building might help me remember something.”“Did it?”She bit her lower lip, a touch of sadness coming into her eyes. “Not really. I

KayaI waited until Ace went to work before I made my way slowly upstairs to the master bedroom. This was the first time I had come up here, thanks to the cast I’d had on my leg for so long. I had to stop for a second at the top of the stairs to admire the layout of the second floor. There was so much light, most of it coming from a skylight that was centered over the stairway. I hadn’t realized just how high that ceiling was, or that there was, apparently, a room designed around the open skylights. It had never occurred to me to wonder what was up here, or what might be above this, before. I mean, you could tell from the outside of the house that it had three floors.But I had never thought to ask what was on the third floor.What better time than now to find out?There was another set of stairs tucked into the back wall at the end of the hallway. I had already decided that the master bedroom was behind the double doors at the end of the hall that much I remembered from the memory I