Fire, blazing around the entire wooden door, consumed it in its hunger. It wasn't just any ordinary one—it was raw, primal, and powerful. It was calling out to the young girl standing in front of it. Her irises had completely changed color from watching them grow stronger and stronger until they started to blacken the walls above. Home. It was calling out to her.
She takes a step towards it, a voice yelling over the door bringing her attention to the people on the other side.
"Layla, step away from the fire!" It was Father! He was carrying my sick mother, who couldn't breathe from all the deadly black smoke filling their room. They are going to die. No... I can't let them die, I have to save them!
But I couldn't move..... My feet felt cold, blood pinging in them to hold me from moving.
No....NO!
I try yelling, tears covering my face, which felt hot from the blaze as I saw a boulder dropping over them both, taking them under it.
I FUCKING HAVE TO MOVE—
A hand is suddenly on my shoulder, calling—no, shouting my name.
"Layla?"
It must be Ethan—
"LAYLA BRETH, GET UP THIS INSTANT!"
My head quickly jerks up from the desk, leaving my neck in jotting pain from sleeping in the wrong position. I grit my jaw as I try to massage my stiff neck while the teacher yells at me for sleeping in her class again. Why does she even bother yelling at me when in the end she just orders me to stand outside as my punishment?
I peek inside the class through the window, earning an eye roll from the teacher as she continues her lecture. The mean girl of our class, Anne Benjamin, looks at me with a mocking grin. Oh, how I wish to claw her cakey face to let the whole school see how much of a witch she is.
I show my teeth as a sign to back off.
I hear a cough from behind me. I quickly recognize that voice—how could I not? It has been 9 years since I've been living with him.
"Layla, this is the second time I was called, and the principal just forced me to come to the school, as your teacher complained AGAIN."
I don't meet my eyes with Ethan. I don't want to look at him with guilt on my face. He has been paying for my tuition and here I have been dozing off in classes, and my grades have also gone from high to barely passing.
"Layla, honey, look at me," he says softly, and I quickly look up at him, noticing how close he had gotten to me. And he is still handsome like he is every day, despite the dark circles under his eyes. I'm guessing he had just come from his night shift and had to come straight to my school and hear scolding from the principal. He is barely 29, and he still looks younger than he is.
"You're still having those nightmares?" he asks, looking directly into me. I swallow the lump forming down my throat. I nod, not wanting to talk about it because he knows very well. Suddenly his attention got caught on something else, to be specific besides my cheek and forgetting what he was talking about as I noticed his eyes changing expression of his face. Oh shit!
"Lay, who the fuck did this to you?" he asks, quickly grabbing my chin and tilting it to have a better view of the recent scratch mark I had on the side of my face.
"Anne..." I sigh. He knows my rants about her. He is just too stubborn—he always gets away from asking what is troubling me. Even if I succeed hiding it from him, the first person he will go to is her.
"I am going to have a word with that jerk sitting in that so-called position of principal. Come with me," he says, starting to drag me with him to the principal's office.
Oh, he is fucking angry.
He knocks at the door and the principal calls us in. His facial demeanor changes as he looks at me and then stills at the angry guy beside me.
"Mr. Ethan, is something wrong?" the principal asks, his face moving from me to back at him.
"Layla, show him," he only says, making the man in front of me confused.
I remove my hair from my face where a large cut, sat across my cheek toward my jaw. I didn't bother going to the infirmary to get something to apply on it.
"Ah yes, I forgot to tell you that your cousin had a fight with her classmate today at the cafeteria over a boy. That was meant to happen. I am glad that we were able to stop them before Ms. Layla over here would have made the girl bald," he said.
And I would have happily done it.
It is NOT my fault that her dick of a boyfriend was shamelessly staring at my breasts and she caught him. I even told her that it wasn't her fault she had smaller breasts than mine and that her boyfriend preferred these types of girls, which kind of bruised her ego, and lunged at me like a feral. If I hadn't grabbed her plastic doll-like hair, she surely would have stabbed me with the fork.
"My cousin had a fight, got hurt, and you didn't even bother to inform me?" Ethan started with a low voice. And I knew things were going to get a little rash from here.
"Go wait for me outside, Layla. I have a matter here to deal with him," he said, staring daggers at the principal—and it was my cue to leave.
As soon as I shut the door behind me, the doom began.
The entire goddamn time, my cousin was yelling at the principal, and judging by the replies, the principal was scared to death. The passing students and teachers gave me a look of terror, and I smiled at them awkwardly. I don't think anyone will bother to scare me or threaten me now that the head of the school himself has witnessed the wrath of my cousin today.
All of this reminded me of that day when I was 12 and had first visited the hospital where my cousin works as a cardiac surgeon. I was sitting with him in his office when he got an emergency call, and soon his face turned with rage clearly written over it. He said nothing to me and rushed out of his office, with a curious and worried-looking me running after him—but I stopped short at what I saw.
He was fighting with a senior who was his subordinate with such a tone that, for the first time in my life, I was actually scared of him. His other surgeon friends were stopping him from attacking the senior and killing him on the spot. Once the senior became afraid, he gave the permission for surgery.
My cousin turned around at the same time and his eyes bore into me, which made his face cringe with an emotion. He pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering a curse.
In front of others, he will look like a young man with glasses and lots of patience—and he did—but when it comes to hurting others, he will go wild and will not care who the other person is.
Ethan grimly smiled at me, coming for me, but being a child I stepped back a bit, flinching. He stopped and turned his hand into fists at his side and still smiled at me, hoping I wouldn't think of him as a monster. He turned to one of the female surgeons, who was his friend, and asked her to drop me at his home and wait with me until he was done with the last surgery before he was off duty.
The female surgeon told me that a low-class family who had no money for surgery of their family had begged the senior to do the surgery before and that they could pay the hospital fee afterward. Apparently, Ethan heard about it and straightaway rushed to the senior, threatening him to ruin the hospital's reputation, and offered to do the surgery with his own money. As he was one of the leading surgeons in the city, he had the money and the fame.
That night, there was a sort of respect for him which later developed as a crush over him. And that night, to apologize for his behavior, he had also brought ice cream from my favorite ice cream parlor back on his way.
We have been inseparable from that day onwards and grew closer. I know he still treats me as his little sister, who had appeared on time stopping me from jumping into the fire to save my parents, and took the oath to take care of me until I am capable enough to live and earn on my own. And according to him, I am still that baby sister of his who is spoiled and not capable of living on her own.
The loud yelling brought me back to the hallway where I was sitting, and curiosity got the best of me, so I went to the door to hear their talk.
"Do not make a mistake of thinking that she is alone, Mr. Terent. I am enough to back her up and to destroy the reputation of your school in the media. I am sure you may have heard about my articles on the internet. And the fact that your son is attending his medical school under my apprenticeship—and I always used to think where did he get that troublesome nature from. But now I know. If you want your son to make it safely through the end in order to get his degree, then treat my cousin as a student of your school and not some fucking rancid animal, like you said."
He threatened, and I could hear the principal stuttering at his words as he talked to someone else instead of Ethan—maybe to someone on the phone.
Soon I wait and then quickly go to my seat as I see Anne approaching the principal's office. I smirk as I notice the terror written in her eyes.
"Good luck" I say in an inaudible voice and wink at her. She knocks on the door and is called inside.
After a scolding from the principal, who somehow got his voice back, the door of the office opens and Anne walks out, glaring at me before disappearing down the hall. Soon afterward Ethan comes out and cheerily smiles at me, making butterflies flutter in my stomach every time I see that beautiful smile.
"Come on, let's go home," he says, and I follow him outside to the parking lot of the school.
"Wait," he stops me before I go to sit in his Tesla and opens his trunk, taking out the first-aid kit he always keeps inside his car.
"Come over here, Layla," he says, and I sit where he has opened the door for me.
"Turn your head to the side a little bit, sweetie," he says softly, as if I were still that 13-year-old girl who scraped her knee from falling off the bike the first time I tried to learn. Ethan, who was making a video, quickly ran toward me, scooping me up in his arms and consoling me to stop crying.
He picks a cotton ball with his tweezers and dips it in the bottle of antiseptic before dabbing my scratch, making me flinch.
"Just a little bit. You should endure it as it's your punishment for not going to the nurse to get that checked. Do you know how many infections a scratch can get?" he begins lecturing me.
"Well, it's not like I got this from falling over the road. That bitch did this with her nails," I say.
"You should have cut her hands off before she could try to touch you. And no swearing in front of me. Why did she do this? The principal said it was a boy matter," he says, remembering.
"Her boyfriend stared at my chest for too long," I say, and notice the flick in his gaze, which became stern and threatening.
"That bloody motherfucker. I should have killed him if I knew," he suddenly curses, making me smirk at him, and he sighs with defeat.
"Yeah right, no swearing. But that doesn't mean I won't use my surgical instruments on him. And will make him suffer by making him my lab experiment. Then we'll see how he thinks without his body part whenever he dares to look at you."
Okay, that made me cringe at that thought.
He quickly puts on the bandage on my scratch before keeping the kit back, and we both get in his car to head home.
The apartment complex where we live was only a 20-minute ride. The area is a high-class posh society—except that narrow alley on the street behind the whole complex, which becomes creepy at night as no one dares to walk past it. The security guard standing at the front of the gate of the society greeted us before opening the gate. Ethan parks his car in the parking area over our reserved spot, and I run before him, quickly wanting to waste no time getting into the shower and then to bed.
We take the elevator up to our house, and as soon as I enter the door with Ethan behind me, I am near my bedroom when Ethan speaks.
"Layla, stop. We need to talk for a few minutes. Then you're free to go to your room," he says, and I turn around, looking at him as he takes a place on the leather couch. The apartment was given to us with furniture assembled by an interior decorating team on the budget. I take the seat beside him, and he just stares at me.
I quickly become nervous as he isn't speaking—he is just staring as if he were talking to the soul inside me.
"How often are you getting those nightmares now?" he asks, straight to the point, catching me off guard.
"I... It has been 2 days," I say quickly, looking down to play with my hands to fight off the nervousness.
"Don't lie to me, Lay. Look directly at me when you're talking. I know you were awake on Monday night, when I dropped you for school. Your words can lie, but your body can't. And yesterday, my suspicions were confirmed when the principal called," he says, and I bite my tongue so hard that I felt the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.
"It has been a week almost. I would get my sleep during the break and other classes, but now it is even haunting me in the morning every time I sleep. And you wouldn't have found out if I hadn't slept in that one teacher's class for two consecutive days and gotten low grades in her class, as she is too biased," I say.
He mentally groans, running his hand over his face. The bags under his eyes mock me.
He needs sleep, and he is bothering himself over such an incident.
"Listen, it's fine. You just get some sleep—you had a night shift," I say and was about to get up when he grabbed my wrist.
"Sit back down, Layla. I haven't stopped talking," he says, and I sit down.
"Will it kill you if I tell you to—"
"No. You will not continue that sentence if you care about me. I will not go to see a therapist. I am not crazy," I spat this time, to let him know my decision will remain the same even if I get these nightmares for life.
He exhales deeply and then sits a few inches closer.
"Listen, Lay. I am just scared about this affecting your mental health. Your body isn't getting its rest. It will tire out, but you won't be able to sleep if this continues," he says, and I choose to say the reason which I have been dreading to let myself think about.
"Maybe I deserve it somehow for not saving Mom and Dad that night. It's a punishment for me," I say.
"Listen here, Layla." He grips my shoulders, putting all of my attention on him. "It was not your fault. You were just 11. And most certainly, you do not deserve this. Do you get me? And if it makes you better, even when I have said this a million times—I am fucking thankful that you are safe," he says, with admiration burning in his eyes, and I nod before he grasps me into a hug and I give in to his warm embrace.
"Okay okay, now let me go. You're sweating all over. I want to take a bath and sleep," I say, and he leaves me.
"Sorry for not stopping to take a shower and running to your school just because I care about you," he says, and I grin.
"Goodnight, Ethan," I wave, and he also bids me bye before retiring to his room.
I quickly take a shower and hop into my bed, sleep quickly catching my eyes, and I hope the nightmare doesn't wake me up again for the third time today.