Chapter 20

Iyla

I SCANNED THE LIVING ROOM of my apartment. My stomach sank as I realized that it wasn’t mine . This was going to be the last time I’d walk into this place.

“Where am I gonna go?” I whispered to myself.

I’d sent Zagan to get me some boxes for packing my things. I didn’t own much as far as things my mom hadn’t purchased, but I did have a few items that needed packed—clothes Nahla had given me, photos, a stuffed dragon Gemma gave me one year, and a couple other gifts from friends and family over the years.

I felt like I was moving through molasses as I pulled out all of my belongings. The clothes and furniture that remained were meaningless. I didn’t care that I was losing them. It was what the loss represented.

The loss of my mom.

The loss of the girl I’d been my entire life.

What was I supposed to do now?

With Mom no longer expecting anything of me, it should mean new open doors for me, but I still clung to what I’d always known. Faithfulness. Obedience. Maybe if I stayed on track with my schooling and did as I’d always done, she’d welcome me back.

My stomach soured at the thought. Did I really want her to welcome me back?

I wasn’t sure of anything anymore, and I didn’t think now was the time to figure it out, not with the uprooting of my life being so fresh. My head would be clouded with too many emotions to think clearly right now.

I sat on the floor with my belongings, waiting for Zagan to get back. After almost two hours of looking over the things I was bringing with me, Zagan appeared in a plume of shadows. He held a stack of broken down cardboard boxes.

“Sorry it took me so long,” Zagan apologized, sitting the boxes down. “I had a couple things to take care of while I was out.”

That made me look sideways at him. “You didn’t go … finish off my mom, did you?”

He smirked. “It was a tempting idea, but no. The first thing I did was go get you this.” He held up a phone. “I’m assuming your mom is going to demand yours, so I got you a new one. Hand me your old one. I’ll transfer everything over while you start packing.”

It was true. My phone wasn’t one I had procured myself, which meant it was one of the many items that had to stay behind. I handed Zagan my old phone, and he held each device in a hand, his blue eyes bouncing back and forth between the two.

I grabbed a box and started folding.

Zagan knelt beside me and my things, momentarily glancing up from the phones with a furrowed brow. “Where’s the rest of your stuff?”

I gestured to the small pile of items. “This is it. This is all I have that’s mine.”

I placed the clothes, trinkets, and photos in the box and sat back on my heels. One box. All of my things fit into one box. Emotion clogged my throat as I realized how little I truly had and how much my mom provided.

“Am I a bad person?” I whispered, unable to tear my eyes away from the box. “She did so much for me, and—”

Zagan’s hand touched under my chin and lifted it. My gaze locked onto his beautiful blue ones. They were firm, steadfast, and sure as he said, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you think that shit for even one second, Iyla. If you want to see what a bad person looks like, look at your mom. Hell, look at me . What’s happening is not a reflection of you , okay? This is your mom’s loss of control. That’s it.”

I shook my head, sure he was wrong. “Look at how much she did for me, Zagan. She provided everything for me.”

His eyes pinched like they were pleading with mine. “Sparrow, this stuff wasn’t a symbol of her love for you. This was your cage .”

I stopped breathing as his words struck a chord deep inside me. Looking around at the apartment, I took note of the cold space, the stiff furniture, and the impersonal items I never asked for but was given nonetheless. And for what reason? My mother and I didn’t have a close bond, so why did she go to such extremes to give me what I needed?

My cage.

I’d welcomed the apartment and the money for my needs as a safe place and as a sign that I had a small place in her heart. But I realized now that Zagan was right. She didn’t provide all of my things out of love. She did it so that I had no choice but to rely on her, to obey her, and to stay in this gilded cage of lies and sorrow.

I was tired of the bars holding me back.

I turned back to Zagan and whispered, “Let’s go.”

He grabbed my hands and helped me to my feet. He tossed my old phone into the room. The device landed somewhere with a loud crack, but Zagan didn’t even bat an eye, uncaring of where it landed or how badly it just broke. I wanted to chase it down and carefully examine the damage, but I held myself back. That was still the girl inside of me who feared disappointing her mom.

I had to let that girl go, because she’d already done so much more than disappoint.

Zagan handed me my new phone. I distracted myself from my spiraling thoughts by double-checking my numbers and photos, all while he grabbed my box of belongings before I had the chance to. I bit my lip to fight the grin trying to take over when I noticed he’d changed his contact name back to, “Demon Daddy.” I decided to let him win this time and left it.

When we got to the parking lot, I started for my car out of habit, but I drew up short. It wasn’t mine anymore. Just as I wondered what we were going to do, I spotted Zagan approaching a matte black Camaro ZL1.

He placed the box in the backseat and gestured for me to go around to the passenger side. “Come on.”

I climbed in without argument, and I took a moment to admire the beautiful interior. It smelled like him—spicy, clean, and a little like fire.

Zagan started the black beauty up and left my apartment behind in record time.

I didn’t look back as we peeled onto the road. I kept my head facing forward like I was leaving behind my past and facing whatever came next as strongly as I could. And just how strong was that? I didn’t know, yet.

The first task to complete was finding somewhere to go. I was now penniless and homeless. Lead filled my insides at the prospect of trying to figure everything out. My entire world had been obliterated into a blank slate, and I somehow had to start all over with nothing.

“I’ve gotta find out where I’m gonna stay now,” I grumbled, raking a hand through my hair and fisting it in frustration. “I—”

“You’re staying with me.”

I looked over at the demon in surprise. “What?”

He didn’t even blink, unfazed by my shock. “My place is plenty big. I already have a room getting set up for you as we speak, which was the other thing that held me up so long. I’m not always home since I travel a lot, so you’ll still have your time without me if that’s what you’re worried about.”

It wasn’t what I was worried about. I actually liked having him around. It was the idea of seeming like I was using him or taking advantage of him. I quickly shook my head. “I can’t stay with you. I don’t want to freeload or—”

Zagan laughed. “Are you kidding? It’s not a big deal, Iyla. We’re literally stuck together for the remainder of your life. Living together just makes our arrangement easier. Stop overthinking it. And money isn’t and will never be an issue. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m loaded.”

I swallowed hard, and after a few seconds, I accepted his reassurance. How could I not when he made such excellent points? With that acceptance, the first sense of relief since everything fell apart swept through me.

I was going to be okay. Zagan was by my side. I didn’t have to face whatever came my way alone.

“Thank you,” I said softly. “For everything.”

He waved off my thanks. Instead, he shifted in his seat and cleared his throat, looking rather unsure as he probed, “Can I ask you something?”

I leaned my head back against the seatrest and turned it toward him. “Of course.”

“When you and your mom were arguing, you said you were her consequence. What did you mean?”

I dropped my eyes as tucked-away hurt tore through me. That was a story I never told—to anyone —nor did I ever give it the time of day in my head. When I thought about it, my heart ached tenfold, and I still couldn’t believe that Mom had ever told me the story or her brutally honest thoughts on the matter. Though, I supposed she did it to teach me a lesson.

Sex was wrong.

Wanting sex made me a whore.

If I opened my legs for someone who wasn’t my husband, only bad things would happen.

The acidic burn of hurt filled my throat, but I swallowed it down. I stared at the tattoo on Zagan’s arm, and I traced the detailed ink to give myself something else to focus on as the words poured out of me for the first time.

“Mom and Dad didn’t love each other for the first part of their marriage.”

He glanced over at me. “No?”

I shook my head. “Mom has always been the smartest girl in the room. Dad was the romantic, creative one. They went to the same high school but didn’t run in the same circles. At least, not until one night at some senior year celebration when they decided to let loose. It was their first time, apparently. The first time Mom decided to be a little wild. The only time she got a little wild. Because that one time was all it took for her to get pregnant. She was seventeen.”

I followed the scales of the snake on his arm, getting lost in the pattern as the somber tale continued. “She was from a religious family, so you can imagine their outrage when their unwedded, teenage daughter dropped the news of the unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. They forced her to get married to my dad.” I paused, my throat tight. “She didn’t want me, but they made her keep me.”

My eyes moved to his other arm to trace the vines and cobwebs. “She was supposed to go to Harvard before she got pregnant. She had this entire plan already made for how her life was going to go, but I threw a wrench in those goals. When her first semester at Harvard started, I was a newborn. Dad gave up his full ride to a performing arts school so that he could stay home and take care of me. He wanted Mom to focus on her career and doing what she wanted since he thought she’d been cheated out of her dreams. He was kind like that. Always thinking of her, even though he knew she didn’t want him or his baby.”

I cleared my throat of the raw emotion trying to climb up it and said, “Even with a lot of the burden off her plate, Mom realized she couldn’t handle both the workload of Harvard and taking care of a baby. So she dropped out of Harvard and went to a community college for her undergrad instead. She didn’t get into any of the law programs she wanted, she didn’t get a serious doctor for a husband like she wanted, and she didn’t get the child she wanted. Or rather, lack of a child. All her plans were … gone. The end goal still came partly true. She’s a very successful prosecutor making big money. But it took longer and was harder than she wanted it to be.”

I closed my eyes and fought the tremble in my lip as I whispered, “I think she’s always resented me for ruining her plans. I made her dream impossible, so now, she doesn’t want me to have mine. I … I feel like it’s my fault things were hard for her, so I always obeyed and did exactly what she asked. I wanted to pay her back for ruining her life.”

Saying that final truth out loud cut my soul into tiny pieces until I nearly felt empty. It was a bitter fact that I’d kept tucked away in the recesses of my mind, never allowing them time or energy to fill my thoughts. If I didn’t acknowledge it, it wasn’t true.

But that was just me deluding myself.

I could ignore it as much as I wanted, but that didn’t make the reality of how my mom viewed me any less real.

Zagan’s hand suddenly slipped into mine. He threaded his fingers between my own, and the warmth of his touch made some of the air come back into my lungs. It grounded me in the here and now, pulling me out of my head.

“I’m sorry your mom doesn’t realize how lucky she is to have you,” Zagan said, his deep voice wrapping around me like a hug.

I squeezed his hand. His words acted as glue, gathering up those tiny fragments of myself to reassemble.

Lucky.

Zagan saw my worth where she hadn’t. He saw how hard I fought for her, how desperately I clung to any sign that she might care about me, or how much I strived to be the daughter she wanted. I tipped my chin up higher as his words finally hit home. She was lucky to have me.

And I was done trying to make her see that.

“Where is your dad?” Zagan asked after a moment of silence.

Fresh pricks of pain stabbed my heart like needles in a pincushion. “He died when I was sixteen. He was grabbing dinner for everyone, and he got hit by a drunk driver.” I looked down at our joined hands and traced a lazy pattern over his tattoo with my free one. “It destroyed all of us, even Mom. She had come to love him by then after years of being married and having Gemma together. She found happiness with him and the new daughter she’d had. The one she’d planned for. So when he died and Gemma got sick shortly after, she took a turn for the worse. Got stricter. Quieter.”

“No excuse for how she’s treated you. You lost a father, too. You watched your sister fall ill, too. All without the support of your mom, I’m sure.”

It was true. I didn’t have her support. I had to grieve on my own. Nahla was there for me, but it wasn’t the same as the comfort of a mother. I guessed Mom was too broken by then to bother trying with me. I wasn’t worth the effort, and I realized with a deep breath that I never would be.