BABY DADDY (34 page)

Ella sees me, too and stops talking.

My eyes are only for her from then on.

I stop in front of her. All noise seems to fade.

I smile at my love. “Congratulations, baby.”

I gather her in my arms and kiss her.

But she freezes in my arms.

She wrenches her lips from mine and pushes me away.

Then she runs away.

I inhale deeply. I turn to Cesare, look him squarely in the eye. “I don’t want it. Never wanted it. I still don’t. But if you touch her, I will want it. Badly. You hear?”

Cesare’s eyes blaze but he nods. Good. He’s wise enough not to fight this little battle and provoke a war we’ll both regret.

I transfer my gaze to Antoinette and whisper to her. I wish she had a softer heart. For me. Her only brother. “Mother says hi.”

I turn around to leave. But I pause.

I face Aiden. He smirks at me. “Sorry, boy. Not as lucky as I was, huh?” he whispers to me. He just couldn’t help it, the fucker.

I punch him in the face.

He falls flat on his ass.

“That’s for Ella.”

I look at his fiancee who’s standing there in utter shock. “You’re so beautiful, Regina. You can do a lot better than him. Don’t short-change yourself.”

I walk away from there, too.

TWENTY-TWO

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25 CONTROVERSIAL QUOTES FROM THE STYLE EMPRESS

On her ideal man:

He doesn’t exist or already dead.

We love idealistic people and then we get threatened

by all that love and goodness and kill them.

All we have are dead heroes.

Stella Rhodes

___________________________________________________

HE ENTERS MY APARTMENT AT PAST MIDNIGHT.

I’ve been sitting in the living room for close to two hours now. I left my own show earlier for Juancho to wrap up. He would know what to do. I just couldn’t function anymore after what Raiden did.

He pushed me too far.

We stare at each other.

For the first time since I met him, his eyes are devoid of warmth as he looks at me. I can feel the difference right away as I’ve received nothing but light from him since I met him. It’s a total eclipse of the sun. “Where have you been?” I ask him quietly.

“I went to walk the Brooklyn Bridge.”

I nod. I bow my head. I don’t know what to say to him. My mind is one huge chaos I don’t know where things start and end. I need peace and quiet. I need time off from all this shit.

I just want to be alone, but he’s here.

Silence pervades.

He walks closer to me.

“Why did you do it?”

I look up at him.

“Why did you push me away?”

His eyes are bleak. I know that’s exactly how I look too, or worse. I’m so drained I don’t have anything left in me tonight.

“You asked me to tell the world how much I love you. I did. But what did you do?”

For the first time since I met him, too, I feel his distance. He’s like a hologram now. Here but so far away.

“You and I…it’s just too complicated, Raiden.”

“I know. But isn’t what we have worth fighting for, Ella?”

His accusing tone lights up the dying embers of devastation inside me. I stand up to face him squarely.

“Don’t tell me I haven’t tried.”

“Yes, you have. But not good enough. You’re not even putting up a good fight. You saw your ex and you crumbled like dust at his feet.”

I clench my fists. “You know nothing of what I feel!”

“I do. You told me in the island. You tell me every time you push me away. I feel what you feel. Right now, I’m full of it. You’re looking at me and you’re seeing him.”

His words are slivers of truth cutting through me. I can’t stand hearing them. I can’t stand him seeing through me. I want to hide. To be shut off, to be impenetrable, but he sees me all too clearly and he exposes me with such honesty I hate myself even more. “I don’t have to listen to this. You better leave.”

He stares at me, a stricken look on his face. But I’m at my breaking point, too.

“So, you’re gonna run again? Just like what you’ve been doing all these years. Running away, but going in circles, always coming back to where you came from. It’s a cycle you need to break, Ella.”

I point to the door. “Get out!”

“I will. But you will listen to me first. Quit running! Stand still and reach inside of you. Listen to your soul. Find yourself again.” He slams his palm on his chest. “Your center.”

“Oh please, w
ill you quit spouting metaphysical bullshit, Raiden?
You’re judging me from the high tower of your perfect island where you live a perfect life!”

He smiles sadly and shakes his head. “You know very well my life has been the opposite of perfect. But the difference between us is I don’t live in fear of getting hurt. Of loving. I embrace the risks. I want to love. To give myself. I want to be loved, too.”

I sneer at him. “Have you ever been hurt and betrayed by the person you loved?”

“Betrayed, that remains to be seen. Hurt, yes. You’re hurting me so bad right now, Ella, you have no idea.”

I close my eyes and turn away from him.

“I’m not judging you. I’m just trying to help you see how beautiful you are. I want you to see yourself from my eyes. You can’t see yourself behind the thick fog of your fears, Ella. Please, have the guts to take a different road from your past. The road that you deserve. Take charge of your destiny.”

I face him again. “Destiny! Well, guess what, I took my destiny a long time ago. You have no idea what it took me to take charge of my fucking destiny. I know you believe that life’s beautiful and meant to be lived to the fullest. You have this ‘I don’t give a damn as long as I’m happy and not hurting anybody’ attitude only a 25-year old who’s been sheltered and protected in an island since birth can pull off without too much thought.”

I spread my arms. “But welcome to my world, Raiden. Everything here, I think about. Hard! Everything I do is measured. Risk is a factor and it must not be ignored. Opportunities are not taken for granted or squandered recklessly. I can only gamble so much but not beyond what I can calculate from past experiences. I’ve worked so hard to be where I am today and I’ve achieved all these because I’ve not let my foolish heart rule me ever again! That’s my life and that’s the way I’ve lived for so many years, and I’m not about to change that. Not even for you.”

He bows his head and nods repeatedly. His shoulders slump in defeat. “I see,” he says quietly.

I know, if there’s ever a point where I drive the knife straight to his heart, this is it. But I can’t take back what I said. It was the truth and honesty has always been my thing. I can no longer live in this illusion with him, in this sandcastle that could get washed away by the cruel waves any moment. It’s not strong enough and I’m not strong enough to wait for that moment to happen.

I’d rather end it now.

“You know what, you’ve been judging me too much because of my age, as if it’s the only thing that defines me. From day one you’ve been seeing through a tunnel vision, from that single perspective alone and I realize now, no matter what I do, no matter how I try to make you feel how precious you are, not only to me but to the world, you’ve already judged me to be a person who cannot make up his own mind, who doesn’t know what he’s doing, who’s not capable of anything you think you’re capable of as a mature individual.”

His voice is soft but so clear. I wish he would rant at me so the pain in my heart will harden until I become numb. Even in this ugly moment, he’s still beautiful. How can I ever measure up to this?

“And it hurts, you know, because my age is beyond my control. I was born this way when you met me. I’ve wished a lot of times that I’m older, so you would feel normal being with me, so you won’t be ashamed of me, so you can walk beside me proudly and shout to the world that I’m your boyfriend and you’re so in love with me. I wanna do all that, too, so very much, to show everyone I have this talented, hot girlfriend that I’m so in love with. But I always think of you, of how you would feel. And it’s a struggle to curtail my feelings every time because you know me to be an expressive person. But I always pray for the day, when you’d finally allow us to be free to openly express how we feel for each other, uncaring of what others will say.”

I can feel my doors rattling, my walls shaking.

“I understand your fears and doubts, Ella. More than anybody else, maybe I’m the one who truly does. You know why? Because I have them, too. You know what my fears are?”

“No. You’re fearless.”

He shakes his head and smiles wanly. “Before I met you, maybe I was. But after I met you…I started to be afraid. I started to question my existence. I started to see myself for what I was. I spent a good number of years in that island, isolated from the outside world. It was a choice I made for the benefit of the people that I care about and respect and I’ve accepted it and learned to appreciate it. Nature was my most loyal companion and I was okay with that. I was content in that island, despite this hole in my heart that nothing could seem to fill. I occasionally ventured out to see the rest of the world, scale the tallest mountains, ski the most dangerous slopes, jump the most challenging cliffs, but that island is my true comfort zone, my real home. However now, I think I’ve limited myself. My world was so small.”

The doors that I slammed shut earlier are being being violently wrenched open one by one by his words.

“I never thought I’d feel like this, until you came along and changed everything. Now you…you have no idea how much I admire you, Ella. What you’ve done for yourself. I’ve read your life story, everything that I could find on the internet about you. You have a remarkable history and people adore you, respect you for your strength of character and achievements. And my fears started to manifest.”

“Oh Raiden…”

“I’m afraid that you’ll not like me for who and what I am. I’m afraid that you’ll see my flaws, my shortcomings, my inexperience in a lot of things. I’m afraid that what I am is not enough to convince you to be with me for the rest of our lives. I’m afraid that you won’t trust me that I can take care of you, that I can defend you and stick with you no matter what. I’m afraid that you’ll find my meager achievements lacking compared to yours. I’m afraid that I cannot make you feel secure emotionally, that I cannot provide you calm and peace so you would want to stay with me for a long time. What I have now, the material things, were inherited. My only real achievements are my art works in the island, and they’re nothing compared to your global successes. I’m afraid that I’m not the man you want to stand beside you, that I’m not worthy enough to be called your partner and equal. I’m afraid the world will see it that way too, that I’m just your passing fancy, the current boy toy of the mighty Stella Rhodes. And most of all I’m afraid that you will not love me back even just half of the way I love you, enough for you to commit to me, to a life with me. I’m so very afraid, Ella.”

My walls are crumbling down. All of it.

“You see, we have the same fears and doubts. You’re not alone in that. But I’m willing to overcome them so I can be with you. Because I love you and I want a life with you. But I cannot do that alone. You have to help me.”

My fortress snaps.

“What happened tonight…you hurt me. So bad. Right now, a huge part of me is broken. You told me about your past, how that man hurt you. How he destroyed your self-respect, how he killed your self-worth. You maimed my self-respect tonight and I’m sorely doubting my self-worth, too but I can promise you this, I will not be like you. I’ll not end up like you. I’ll not carry a torch for you in the coming years, hating you, hating love, refusing to believe in it anymore. I’ll continue to hope and have faith in it. I will not give up on you, on us. I will pray everyday that you will come back to me, Ella.”

I’m shaking from inside out. I’m stripped to my very soul by his gentle words. I want him to hold me now. Pick me up. I move forward, but the look in his eyes tells me I shouldn’t touch him.

“You give yourself so little credit, Ella, and because of that you give me no credit at all, too. Why won’t you believe that you’re beautiful inside out? That you’re worthy of all the love from any decent man worth his salt out there? Not only from me. Anybody would be so lucky to have you in their lives. But I hope that in the end, it’s me you’ll give and entrust your heart to. Completely.”

I break down in front of him.

I drop on my knees and let it all go.

But he doesn’t hold me in his arms like he usually does. He’s just standing there, looking down at me, his hands clenched at his sides.

“I’m fighting myself. I want to pick you up and carry you so badly, my love. But I want you to learn to stand up with your real strength, on your own. Only then will you be able to love and give yourself completely. And I won’t settle for anything less.”

I look up at him, my entire body shaking with my sobs. “I’m sorry, Raiden...I’m so sorry…Oh god, I’m so sorry!”