You stand before me in all your dark glory

Merette's world fell apart before she could actually comprehend it. Before it could sink its teeth into her firing brain cells. But it does fall apart all the same.

All because of a man she worked hard to get away from, who decided to show up all over again when she was finally holding it all together.

Why's god so cruel?

What did she ever do to be put through hell and back?

With an aching heart pulsing inside her chest and trembling hands, Merette Tries to be as calm as she can muster being even though being calm seems so far away from what she is actually feeling.

Kaiser, the man she had loved to her bones when she was a teen while having zero idea about how darker his world was, now stands tall and majestic in front of her. Looking nothing like the boy she fell in love with. There's no glimmer of kindness in his cold black irises.

Merette attempts to swallow around the lump clogging her throat though it's in vain. Her eyes can't seem to stick anywhere but on him.

"May?" Kaiser's pink mouth part around her name. And Merette's stomach drops to the floor beside her feet, sweat breaking out on her skin with a hotness that could compete with the sun's blazing rays.

The lines of her teeth meet in a tight grit, hands going ball on either of her sides. The familiar prickling sensation behind her eyes is threatening enough to get her defenses high.

She won't cry. No, not in front of him.

So instead of giving in to some stupid fucking sentiments, she holds it all up and buries it deep inside her. Putting on a show, "What can I get you?"

Kaiser closes his eyes shut with a tight push of breath out of his mouth, head twirling to his side and hand flying up behind his neck, over the blackness of his hair bleeding down to his nape.

Then his piercing gaze which she's sure as hell will haunt her in her dreams, is back on her in an instant. "Don't. Don't act like you don't know me when you did everything to ruin me." He grunts, voice low and as raspy as the crashing waves.

Merette stares at him dead in his eyes, jaw clenching. The sound of feet padding against the wooden floor is unmistakable and she doesn't have to crane her neck to know who. Rye is already beside her, moving the phone he held against his ear to talk to Merette.

"Lei is having a hard time being home without you. Aunt Sia says it's better for her to be here so… I'll go get your daughter." He says, in a hurry as he sprints out of the door before any word can flee past Merette's sealed lips.

Everything is a blur after that, the phrase your daughter echoing through her ears, brain sizzling, mind buzzing.

Her eyes snap up to Kaiser, too eager to know if he has picked up on what Rye had told Merette. His gaze is wide when hers falls on them, mouth agape.

Before he could form any words and push them out of his mouth, Merette speaks out, "If you want nothing, why won't you just get away from here?"

Unlike her utterances being strong and sass, her heart is beating violently against her ribs as if in an attempt to break the cage and fall out on the floor beneath her.

Kaiser's face pulls into a frown, perfectly sculpted eyebrows furrowing, pink lips pressed tight. He gazes at Merette for a moment as if to etch her into his memory. And Merettefoolishly presumes he's going to go, to never say a word as he does—

"You have a daughter." It's not a question, it's a clear statement made by certainty pouring out of Kaiser.

And not for the first time today, Merette's world crumbles, heart falls. Still, she manages to hold his gaze which threatens to scorch her into ashes.

"Why does it have to concern you?" The words flee Merette's lips before she can bite her tongue to kill them. She doesn't even know why she has to hit him in the face so many times with her phrases.

Kaiser's face falls, jaw ticking as he takes a big stride forward. Now standing just before the counter with his long large hands slam onto it. "Why does it have to concern me? Oh, you have the audacity to ask me that, May."

Merette's heart leaps up to her throat as her name rolls smoothly out of his tongue like velvet, knees buckling underneath her. All she knows is that he has to get out of there before her daughter gets here.

"What do you want?" She barks.

"Would you be able to give me what I want?" His voice, hushed and deep, cuts through Merette like a knife, darkness oozing out of his words.

Merette's eyes widen at the query he lays out toward her, fury running deep through her veins, stomach coiling. "I'm not sure, because I'm not going to indulge myself to give what you, peasant, want. And the last thing I would want is to get into your sick plays." She spits. Her tongue shapes out all the things she wants out of her.

From the way he looks crushed for a moment, she knows she blows him in the right places. But the amused glint replaced whatever kind of sentiment that made him look softer, almost like the boy she loved back then, making her stomach muscles seize.

"Who says I want you?" He asks and now it is his time to blow her in the right places. Merette cannot uncover any good reason why it would hurt her. Yet it does. The stinging in her chest is unmistakable. "I don't expect you to get in my sick plays either."

"What do you want then?"

"Answers. I want fucking answers, Merette."