❝ I was born bad, but then I met you❞

❦

When I invite Laila inside and guide her to the kitchen, I show her to sit down at the table and ask her what she'd like to drink or eat. Fai is still standing by the door with his mouth and eyes wide open.

"Fai, won't you join us?" I ask him sweetly.

I see his mother is nervous. She's glancing between us unsurely, twisting her hands.

I didn't really picture Fai's mom before, but as I see her for the first time now, it's hard to miss she's absolutely gorgeous. She looks way younger than she is and I can spot a few similarities between her and Fai – for instance, they have the same smile and Fai's one brown eye is the exact same shade as hers and he definitely got her hair color.

Fai slowly walks into the kitchen as if he's in a daze. His mother watches him as I put a glass of orange juice down in front of her.

"What the fuck?" Fai asks.

I join his mother in looking at him. "Huh?" I ask innocently, sweetly, batting my eyelashes.

"What the fuck?" he repeats, still standing there in the middle of the kitchen, staring at us as if we're ghosts.

"I – maybe this wasn't a good idea?" Laila directs the question to me.

I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Nonsense! We're both very happy to see you."

Fai clenches his jaw. Then unclenches it. Then he clenches his hands in fists and unclenches then. He repeats this a few times. "How did this happen?" he asks when he gets himself under control, it seems.

"It's a long story, honey. Maybe you should sit down and we'll both tell you the story." I take out a chair for him to sit down, giving him my sweet smile. This will teach you, darling. You don't mess with me without getting something in return.

He sits down, looking like he's in a daze. I turn to the stove and put on water for tea. "Do you want some tea, too, honey?" I call sweetly.

I'm waiting for some long seconds for the response. "No," he finally says.

I make some tea for me and his mom and none of us speaks until I set the cups down and sit down, too. "So! How was your trip? I hope everything was well."

"It was. Thank you, Kadience." She turns to Fai then. "You have a lovely girlfriend, Fai."

"Lovely," he repeats incredulously, his eyes settling on me again.

I just support my head on my hand and give him a smile.

If I hate anything, I hate liars. Fai knows that.

I knew he was lying that day. Not only because Harper is a shitty liar, but because I've come to know Fai. I'm basically living with him and we spend a lot of time together. I know all the little details about him, everything that others may overlook. He is a guy that hides his truth well. He's learned to contain his feelings and he learned not to show his emotions.

But he can't hide from me. I know what makes him angry, what makes him sad, what makes him happy just by little changes in his expression or just the small changes in the tone of his voice.

I was so mad. So extremely mad at him for lying because I thought he was the person I could trust and rely on.

And then I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to do something to him that'll make him feel the same way.

Now we're here. And I don't regret a single thing. This is his lesson. I hope he's learning it well.

"You came here alone?" Fai asks when he finds his voice again.

"Yes," his mother replies. "It was safer." Her words, I realize, seem carefully chosen. She speaks slowly and uncertainly and I note an accent, but it's as if she's testing the English words out, as if she hasn't spoken the language in a long time. And maybe she hasn't. She doesn't live in America anymore.

She nervously looks at me again. I know she expected a different kind of meeting, but I didn't lie to her. I told her Fai doesn't know about her coming here and it's a surprise and I never lied about him being excited or anything. I knew he wouldn't be.

I put my hand on Fai's thigh. He can't seem to stop staring at her, afraid to even blink, afraid that if he does, she's going to disappear. "You shouldn't be here," he tells her.

Her eyes sadden and she looks down for a moment. "Yes, maybe not. But ... you've grown so much and ... a mother not knowing about their child ... it was killing me, you have to understand."

"It's too dangerous. I'm still not –" he cuts himself off. "It's still not over."

She nods as if she understands, but she looks like she has a hard time accepting it. "I understand. I knew the danger, yet I came anyway, even if to just see you once and never again. I wanted to see that you're okay. You're ..." She doesn't finish the sentence. It seems like she can't.

I suddenly get a lump in my throat from all of the emotions I can feel in the air between them. This just might be one of the saddest things I've seen.

I know Fai will think I did this to deceive him and get him back. And, yes, I did it with that thought in my mind – get him back. Hurt him. But as I'm sitting here and now, I realize I don't want to hurt him. Even though he decided to cold-heartedly do it to me, I don't want to see him in pain because my feelings are way too strong and I'm too soft when it comes to him.

Right now, I'm actually happy I invited his mother here. I know when he talked about her, I felt the sadness radiating off him. The sadness of not knowing where she is, what she's doing, if she's safe. And now he has a chance to reconnect with her.

The loud sound of chair dragging across the floor takes me out of my own thoughts. Fai is standing up now, pent up with energy. "I need a word with you." He points his finger at me. Accusingly so.

"Can't you say it here?" I ask him because, hell, I can't help taunting him.

"No," he says simply, turning around on his feet and walking away.

I let out a sigh. "Excuse me. I'll only be a minute," I say to Laila.

I don't know if she hears me because she stares after where Fai disappeared to as if she's in a daze.

I go after Fai to see what she wants. He's in the bathroom, leaning over the sink. "You wanted a word with me, darling?"

He turns his head, looking at me with the most devilish expression I've ever seen. "Close the door."

I don't know if I want to, but I know that I don't want his mother to hear what's going to go down between us. It'll be ugly. I close the door and wordlessly step further into the bathroom. "What were you thinking, Kadience? What the fuck were you thinking?!" he bellows.

"You don't like the surprise?" I ask, cocking my head to the side.

He pushes backwards, stalking towards me like a panther, ready to attack. "You're playing a dangerous game. Don't play with my fire because you'll not only get burned, but it'll swallow you. You'll come out as ash and nothing more than that."

I give him a defying look. "I love when you talk dirty to me," I say with a completely straight face.

His face twists. And then, all of a sudden, his hand goes backwards and he hits the door right next to my head with such a force, it makes a loud sound that makes me flinch and squeeze tighter against it.

I don't want to show him, but my body suddenly starts trembling. This might be the first time ever I really got scared of him. Scared that I went too far and he's going to lose his mind and hit me.

But when he turns around, his hand pinching his nose, I realize how ridiculous my thoughts are. I know he'd never hurt me. He would never put his hands on me because he knows of my demons. Yet I still can't help my body's involuntary reaction to his anger.

I'm scared to say anything because I'm scared my voice will come out shaky and scared. Because that's what I am, even though I don't want to be.

"It's not safe for her to be here. I told you one little goddamn lie that hurt no one. And you go and put my mother in such a danger that could cost her life." He's not talking to my face, he's staring at the wall.

I'm thankful for that so he can't see how my body is trembling in aftershocks of his fist connecting to the door.

"She's traveling under a fake name and she's alone. No one knows she's here. She was just a normal passenger and she has a hotel reserved under the same fake name, so she won't be staying here."

He's silent for long, long moments. "You infuriate me like no one else. Can raise my blood pressure to the roof."

"Yes, well, before it totally cools down – you'll need to take your mom to the hotel because we can't risk her using public transportation."

Fai turns around this time and he does it before I even finish the sentence. "On what? My motherucking motorcycle? Christ," he says, already taking his phone out. "You really have to go and complicate my goddamn life. I should've never looked at you twice. Knew you were trouble."

"But you could never resist trouble, could you? A little havoc. Trouble makes you feel alive, doesn't it? Runs the blood through your body."

He lifts his eyes to look at me for two seconds. "I didn't know you were also a poet, among other things."

No. but I learned that I am infuriatingly in love with him. And though that doesn't make me want to write poems just yet, it does make me want to scream and curse because our thing has an expiry date that's approaching fast.

"I could be, but have you ever read poems where every third word is fuck? I'd be a terrible poet."

"Fuck do I know? I've never even glanced at poetry, let alone read it."

"Liar. You had to read it in school."

Fai just looks at me with an emotionless expression. "I didn't go to school."

"Really?" But that makes sense, I guess. I didn't really think much about it, mostly because he's too smart for that thought to just pop in your head.

"I was learning how to use a gun and my fists while others were learning all those mathematical equations and read fucking poetry books." He sounds mad about it.

I'd be mad, too. They literally stole Fai's teenage years and forced him into things no person should ever do in their life. I still don't know the full version of his story and I may never find out, but I know that he had to do things he's not proud of.

Yet I still can't see him as a bad person. And I'm not talking about just because he's good to me, doesn't mean he's good in general, because he is. In his own way. We're all villains in someone's story.

"Go to my mom, keep her company while I sort out the shit you created."

"I didn't create any shit," I say defensively.

"Go," he says.

I guess we're still arguing then. "This is your chance to spend some time with your mother. Don't blow it, Fai. See? Even when I go behind your back, I have good intentions somewhere in the back of my mind."

"So did I, Kadie. I didn't lie to you just because I'd want to and because I thought it'd be fun."

"No, you just didn't think at all. Don't do it again. I can hit back twice as hard."

"Clearly," he says dryly. "You hit back without thinking of the consequences."

I shrug my shoulders, just giving in. "I make problems, you deal with them." I send him a wink, catching his scowl just before I turn around and march out of the bathroom.

His mom looks at me with wide, scared eyes, standing up immediately when she sees me. "Are you alright? I heard ... He's mad, isn't he?"

She's looking over my face, probably wanting to see if he hit me. I wonder if Fai's father was the kind to hit women – his mom precisely. I think he was of what I heard about him.

I swing my arm in a nonchalant matter. "He'll be fine. He just likes to be dramatic sometimes." I smile. She doesn't smile back. She's worried. Worried that he turned out to be exactly like his father, maybe? "He's a good guy, you know? Doing bad things, yes, but he has his limits and he has his head on right when he needs to," I find the need to reassure her.

She nods tightly. "How did you two meet? Tell me about that. I'm curious."

"Funny story that," I say, tracking the edge of the table with my hand, my head lowering and a smile appears on my face. It seems so long ago because so many things have happened since then. It seems like I've known him forever.

Fai walks into the kitchen just at the right moment, still looking pissed. "How great that you're here. I was just about to begin telling your mom the story of how we met."

Fai doesn't look any happier at that. He stops when he's beside me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and looking at his mom. "The night I met her, I thought she was the biggest bitch I've ever met. To this day, my opinion still hasn't changed."

I have to laugh at that, not taking any offense. A lying bastard, that's what you are, my eyes say when I look at him, but what comes out of my mouth is, "Aren't you an asshole?"

He looks into my eyes and whatever snarky comment he had prepared for me, dies on his lips. "The first night I met her," he starts again, still looking deep into my eyes, "I thought she's the most gorgeous, the bravest and the smartest girl I've ever had a chance to lay my eyes on. And I knew I have to have her in any way I could get her."

My smile disappears on my lips and my playful mood is replaced by shock and surprise at his words. I stare at him, speechless. And that is a rare condition for me to be in.

He's the first to break our gentle gaze when he turns back to his mother, removing his arm from my shoulders.

I see his mom smiling, looking reassured now. And ... content. "You found yourself a good girl," she says.

Fai gives her one of those half-smiles. "The good is a little questionable, but I sure did get myself a girl."

"Which is a miracle," I butt in. "Not every girl would be prepared to put up with your ass, so I better see you kneeling and hear you thanking all your lucky stars every night you found me."

"It's your job to be on your knees – not mine."

"I'll take the job as soon as you start paying me for it."

"Can I use the bathroom?" Fai's mom suddenly asks. She can hardly contain her grin.

"Yes, of course. I'll show you. Come with me."

I lead her through Fai's bedroom and she takes everything in. She looks proud, yet a sad smile is marking her face. Before she enters the bathroom, she turns to me, taking my hands in hers. "He loves you," she tells me. "It's lovely when I see him like this, knowing that he has something good waiting on him when he comes back from his ... jobs. That he has something light and not something that'd weigh him down even further."

My throat closes. What is happening to me tonight? Am I going to turn into cry babies? Am I going to be the one who bursts out crying at some cute moments? Shit. I can only manage a nod.

Laila gives me a warm smile and then enters the bathroom. I stand there, staring at the closed door for a few seconds.

Something light. Something that wouldn't weigh him down.

I find Fai standing in the kitchen window. I see his silhouette in the window and see his serious expression. He sees me approaching and he's looking at me, not reacting in any way, just waiting.

I wrap my arms around him from behind, whispering, "I'm sorry I did this. I was too mad to think straight and I just did the first thing that came into my mind, although I did try to be safe about it. But it was unfair and I took it too far. I know you're trying with me. I'm sorry I'm such a trouble-maker for you." I don't care how soapy I sound. I don't care that I'm appearing weak. I left the ego in the other room because it was ruining things from me.

Fai lets out a sigh. He picks one of my hands up and places a kiss on the back of my hand. He doesn't have to say it, but he forgives me.

I place my cheek against his back and close my eyes, letting myself to get lost in him for a few seconds. I find it exhilarating to have someone I can get lost with and lost in because I know he'll always find me and bring me back.

*

I made this chapter a little longer because you had to wait so long.

But we're on chapter 39 already. That means ... We're nearing the end of this story. I'm terrified of that, not going to lie. I'll make it good, though :)