Kristie Cook - Promise

Ian rolled his eyes up to me, drinking in my reaction.

"Looks like my work is done here anyway," he said with a smirk. "Ya know you'll be welcomed back where ya belong, Seth…if the Amadis don't kill ya."

Several people surrounded our table by then, including Owen and the blonde. I couldn't focus on everything going on as I tried to simply breathe .

"Vanessa, I swear to God, if you touch her, I'll come after you myself," I heard Tristan say from what seemed like far away.

"So now you're swearing to God , huh?" a musical voice responded, sounding just as distant.

There was a lot of commotion and then I heard Ian's cackling and a chiming laugh fade toward the door. I vaguely heard Tristan say we were leaving, too, but I couldn't move. I was frozen, lost within myself.

Tristan doesn't love me. He never did. It was all just a lie. His words echoed in my head. She means nothing to me . I wrapped my arms around myself, clutching at my abdomen, my chest still heaving. My heart felt like it had been squeezed until it ruptured and now just sat in my chest, limp and lifeless, a burst balloon. I'm just an assignment to him. Nothing else.

Tristan came over to me and I shrank away from him.

"Alexis, we need to go." He reached out for my hand and I jumped off the chair, knocking it over. "Let me take you home and explain."

" Don't you touch me!" I screamed, not caring who surrounded us.

He grabbed my wrists with one hand and pulled me close to him, holding my chin firmly with his other hand to make me look up at him. He was too strong for me to break loose. "You have to listen to me because you can not believe him."

"But you even said…," I choked out.

"I told you I'd have to say things I didn't mean. You have to believe me that I really love you, Alexis. Please believe that. Please trust me."

No, he said he would have to say things he didn't want to say . There was a difference. He even lied to me now. The tears disappeared as anger enveloped me. I broke away from him, yanking my hands out of his. My voice rose in volume and octaves so I didn't even sound like myself.

" Trust you? After all this, you expect me to trust you? This whole thing has been nothing but a lie! You are a liar! You are the deceiver! And you are so good at it because that is what you are made to do!"

I glared at him as if he were a monster. I didn't even know who he was. His eyes—his whole face—filled with pain. And I was glad. I wanted him to hurt. I wanted him to hurt like hell. Because he had done the ultimate pain job on me.

"Go back to wherever you came from, Tristan, because you don't belong with me !" I ran through the pub, out the door and across the street to the beach.

Although the sand made it difficult, following the beach was the quickest way home. I ran for a while, not noticing the rain, not caring how dark it was, with only the light of the moon reflecting on the water. Someone came out of the darkness and grabbed me by the waist. I kicked and screamed.

"It's not safe for you out here," Tristan growled.

"I don't care!" I yelled, still kicking and thrashing my arms. "I'd rather be dead!"

"Alexis, please don't say that," he murmured in my ear.

"You've already ripped me into pieces. I'm as good as dead, anyway!"

"Lexi, please …"

"Let me take her, Tristan." Mom's voice came from the darkness. I saw her small frame step out of the black trees and shrubs lining the top of the beach. "I've got her now."

I squirmed and Tristan let me go. I ran into Mom's arms and fell against her, my body racking with sobs.

She held me and stroked my hair while I cried, the rain pouring on us almost as fast as my tears. "Let's go home, now."

We left Tristan on the beach, standing alone in the rain. The last image burned on my eyes was his beautiful face contorted with agony.

As soon as we were home, I stripped my wet clothes off, put on sweats and a t-shirt, crawled under the covers of my bed and sobbed. He doesn't love me. He never did. I mean nothing to him. The phrases chanted in my head like a sick mantra. When my stomach and chest hurt too much to sob anymore, I just lay there, tears streaming silently. I don't know when I fell asleep or for how long, but when I woke up, it was still dark and I was still crying.

As the new day dawned, I realized it was the first day of the rest of my life without Tristan. Without love. Without hope. When the tears didn't come, anger did. Anger at Tristan, anger at my mother, anger at myself.

"How could he do this to me?! Why would she let him?! How did I fall for it?! " I screamed at the walls and the ceiling. I beat on my pillows and bed, letting them take the wrath, and finally broke down into sobs again…then silent tears…then exhaustion.

Sometime in the late morning there was a knock on my door.

"Go away!"

"Alexis, I need to talk to you," Mom said through the door.

"I said to go away!" I turned over on my side, facing the wall, my back to the door in case she came in anyway, but she didn't knock again or say anything else.

Later that afternoon, I quietly slipped to the bathroom, relieved Mom didn't catch me. When I came out, though, she was waiting, a look of deep concern on her face. I glanced past her, into the living room, and saw the familiar sandy-brown hair over the top of the couch. Fresh tears sprang into my eyes.

"Leave me alone," I muttered and rushed back to my room. I swung the door closed, but she caught it. I crawled back into bed, my back to her.

"Alexis, please let me explain," she said.

I turned over and glared at her. "Why? It's all just bullshit lies."

"That's why. So you can understand the truth."

I sat up and hardened my eyes. "You mean the half-truth—no, not even half, the partial -truth. You two never tell me the whole truth. The only two people in this world who I thought I could trust. Why should I believe anything now? It's all lies !"

"You have to believe he really loves you, Alexis."

I glared at her. "And that is the biggest, bald-faced, bullshit lie of them all !"

I heard heavy footsteps, then the front door open. Mom looked over her shoulder toward the door and then back at me. "You're killing him, you know."

"Good! He's already all but killed me. In fact, I would have been better off if he had killed me when he wanted to."

The front door slammed shut. He'd heard that. I was glad. Not really . No, not really, but I wanted to be glad.

Mom came over and sat at the end of my bed. I scooted myself away until my back pressed against the broken headboard, a casualty of my anger fits.

"You know what really gets me, Sophia ?" I fumed. "You knew all along. You let all this happen. You're supposed to be my mother ."

Her eyes narrowed. "That's exactly why you need to listen to me, Alexis. I am your mother. I would not let anything or anyone intentionally hurt you. Do you really think I would have let this go on with him if I didn't believe he truly loved you?"

"Wasn't that the plan ?" I spewed.

"You don't even know the plan. You're all worked up about something you don't understand."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "So educate me. Tell me what I'm missing here that makes the lies okay."

Mom studied my face, took a deep breath and blew it out. "Over eighty years ago, when I went through the Ang'dora , we thought our bloodline would die out and the Amadis would collapse. Remember, the Amadis is a society. Our family started it and continues to rule it. It'll fall apart without us. I was the last in our bloodline and I'd had no children. Since no one had ever reproduced after the Ang'dora , your conception and birth seemed like miracles to us. Realizing there was hope for us to continue, it was decided it'd be in our best interest of survival—possibly our only chances of survival—if you joined with the strongest, most powerful male with original Amadis blood…."