Swirl of emotions

"Answers, I want fucking answers, Merette." Kaizer rasps. And Merette thinks it's quite terribly fascinating and unbearable at the same time to watch him unlock the door in her mind that she hasn't opened in a while— to watch a million memories of them flooding back in like a crashing wave to the shore.

Answers, she had them quite a lot which assured her to build up some courage and run away from the place which no longer served her right, a place that only dragged her down to her knees in more ways than one.

So Merette's not scared by his need to know answers. "Should ask and leave already, Kaiser, I don't have all the time in the world to tend to your queries. I have work to do."

Kaiser rumbles a laugh under his breath, shaking his head. "I don't believe you actually thought I didn't have better things to do than stand here and converse with you. If it weren't for you fleeing from Loch Fog without a word I would have not bothered looking your way."

"Then be less mouthy and," Merette pulls out a shelf under the table and fishes a Canadian classic as he had asked when he got there. "Pay for this and get away from here." She slams the pack of cigars onto the counter.

Kaiser huffs out a laugh again, leaning closer, "Don't think you could get rid of me that quickly this time. Been looking for you for quite a long time now."

A groan rolls out of Merette's throat, "The fuck you want?"

"I wanna know why you left me, May." Kaiser reaches a hand out and grabs the box of cigarettes from the counter, fishing out a wallet from his back pocket with the other. He pulls out a black card from it all the while Merette's mind reels about the roll of her name out of his mouth. "I was a madman hanging over in dark corners the moment the realization that you left me without a word sinks in. Was that the best you could offer me for all the years we loved each other? Or was it all a joke to you?"

Her hands do the job as if some muscle memory when her mind can barely concentrate. She hands him the card back and finds their anchor on the counter at his words. Was it the best? Maybe she could have told him she was leaving. The thought is wiped away from her brain the moment it arises. Because she knows it would be the stupidest thing to do. If she told him she was done with him and no longer wished to have a life with him and that she was moving to a different place, he would never have let her go.

Merette knows him too much to believe that absurdity. And that was the very reason she ran away from him, because, that was all she could do at the moment.

Even when she got to know that she was pregnant with his child, Merette never once thought she could go back to him or tell him she was carrying his offspring, well, that would be a lie. Once. She has thought once if it'd be a better option to go back to Kaiser, given that she didn't have a source of income or any financial stability.

But she was able to shoo the thought away before it could root into her firing neurons. No. It's better if their child stayed away from her daddy and his filthy bloody businesses.

If she's given another chance at making the decision all over again now, she would've chosen the same thing. She would leave him behind. That's better for her and her innocent daughter.

"I didn't want to do anything with you anymore, Kaiser. I was sick of your doings, I warned you, not once but too many times. How come you didn't pick on the signs I gave you?" Merette looks into Kaiser's dark brown eyes and she swears she can pick out a few sentiments she thought she would never find in those eyes. Pain, agony, desperation.

The last one is the last thing she thought she would ever see in Kaiser because Kaiser stopped being affected by anything when he entered into the dark phase of his life at the mere age of nineteen, barely a year after their relationship grew more specifically that they could no longer be laid under the label friends, the time when he decided to pursue his father's life, to step up with him.

Kaiser is mute, he won't open his mouth as if his tongue has forgotten how to shape words. His head hangs low for a moment and Merette thinks, a moment of weakness, in the next he's straining his spine into its full length, towering over her.

A sigh slithers past Kaiser's pink lips, tatted hand trailing up to smooth his stubble-crammed, chiseled jaw. "So you left me because you realize I am the man you no longer wanted."

"Because you're the man I don't dare to give my heart to." Merette corrects. "I would rather kill myself than love someone who's as vicious as the devil himself."

Kaiser lets out a laugh, startlingly deep and gravelly that it booms in the air between them and has the capacity to drown out the footsteps approaching them. Merette's gazing up at him with a scrunched face when a voice cuts through the tense air clouding them.

"Is everything alright?"

Merette's head snaps to her side in a flash, eyes falling on Brett. Her thin eyebrows are tightly pinned together, unsure eyes searching into Merette's.

Merette's face loosens up, and with a tilt of her head, she nods, "Oh, yes. Everything's alright." Her eyes trail to Kaiser, she finds it hard to hold his burning gaze so she cuts them back to Brett. That is it, she's fleeing again.

"Can I go to the kitchen now?" She asks Brett.

Brett's eyes dance between Merette and Kaiser for a few beats, then they settle on Merette. Uncertainty oozes out of her voice when she speaks.

"I mean, yeah."