Isolation: Book 2 of The Quarantine Series Page 8

  I don’t bother telling her I have already decided to give them a loan that I don’t expect them to pay back.

  “Thank you,” Raven nods her acknowledgment.

  “Anything I can do for you?” I ask. Raven looks at me quizzically at the suggestion. “I know you want to start your own line. If you need the capital—”

  “I don’t want your money,” she says quickly.

  Raven has already declined my money multiple times despite how broke she is currently. I wire transferred money into her account so her bills wouldn’t get rejected. Raven was not happy about it.

  I give her a comforting smile. “It doesn’t have to be financial assistance, Raven. Moving forward, I just want you to be happy at the house if you are going to be living there.”

  “I am only staying at the house temporarily,” Raven corrects me on cue, but takes a moment to think about my offer. “Umm… is it possible to rip out the carpet in my room and replace it with something else?”

  “Of course,” I try to keep up a neutral face even though I am shocked by her random request.

  Raven is not into home decor, nor is she OCD about carpet versus hardwood floors. But I am not going to pry right now.

  “Anything specific that you want to change about your room?”

  “Anything other than that carpet,” she utters. “Tiles. Hardwood floors. I don’t care.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “It’s not urgent. If it’s not financially feasible—”

  “Raven,” I assure her, “it’s really not a problem.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I have one more question.”

  “Sure,” she sighs.

  “Do you hate me?”

  -----------

  Raven

  “Do you hate me?” Milo asks point-blank.

  Honest. Direct. Unexpected.

  We have barely come to an agreement when Milo throws another atom bomb at me. My whole body reacts to that question.

  “Hate?” I contemplate the word as it rolls off my tongue.

  Milo is holding his breath as he waits. The Sinclairs never understood that I don’t love the way they do.

  I might have used the word hate, but I have never applied it. When I love, I love unconditionally. I realized that at an early age in life.

  Although I am not a people pleaser, I am a Sinclair pleaser. I love all of them unconditionally. I have always done everything in my power to make them happy.

  That's how things got so out of control with Milo, even though I knew what was happening between us was wrong. Still, I tried to suppress it.

  After Mia told me how Reid felt about me, I couldn’t suppress it anymore, nor could I cross that threshold with Milo again. Milo was the one person Reid couldn’t bear to see me with. It would have gutted him.

  However, my decision didn’t stand. Milo started coercing me into sex.

  In the beginning, I thought Milo made a terrible mistake. I thought maybe it was a misunderstanding.

  Driven by jealousy, I thought he accidentally went too far. I was in shock, refusing to believe it was getting that out of control.

  The shock value lies in the fact that Milo can have anyone he wants. It's hard to believe that a man like him needs force to bed a woman.

  He is beyond good looking, intelligent, charming. Now, he is even rich and successful. From what I have heard, women still swoon over him. Milo looks like a freaking male model. He can now make grown women cry, not just pesky teenagers.

  So, the thought remains, why me?

  Why did he fixate on me?

  Milo used to sit me down and give me lectures on various topics; one of them was sexual conduct.

  When a woman says stop, a man has to stop. Milo taught me that. He emphasized there is no gray area with consent and told me if boys at school ever got handsy, to knee them in the balls.

  This is why it was so difficult to believe it when I was watching him morphe. It was like Lex Luther’s transition from good to evil, and I was the guide leading him to explore the darkest side of himself.

  That part is the most disheartening to accept.

  My new reality settled in when Milo kept at it because I reacted positively. He couldn’t understand that it was filling me with self-hatred for reacting positively to unwanted advances.

  One day Milo went too far, and it pushed me over the edge. I couldn't ignore what was happening anymore. I left for Paris the very next day.

  Reid was so angry at me for leaving that he stopped talking to me. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have Reid’s friendship to rely on.

  After I left for Paris, Milo flew out to bring me back. He begged me, said he couldn't live without me. He claimed that he snapped, but I didn’t want to hear any of it.

  Finally, Milo decided to do "right" by me. He asked me to come with him to file a report to turn himself in.

  Milo was always a willing participant to restitution. He was adamant that we belong together, and anything different is simply unnatural. His actions never felt fully wrong to him.

  However, if I felt differently, then he deserves to rot in jail.

  He refused to believe that I’d never do that to him, even if I felt wronged.

  I. Don’t. Want. Revenge.

  That’s not me.

  I couldn’t take revenge on Milo, nor could I forgive him. In his eyes, those were the only two acceptable options.

  Forgive him and be with him, or punish him and send him to jail.

  I chose neither and created a third option for myself.

  I promised Milo that I would try to forgive him if he stayed away. I meant it. I wanted us to eventually be a family again.

  However, Milo wanted the promise of reconciliation along with my forgiveness. He wouldn't leave until I agreed, which I grudgingly did.

  Hope. Hope was the only thing I could give him to ensure that he would stay away from me.

  Yes. It was idiotic to encourage a man who holds on to very little. But I was seventeen. I was petrified of my guardian, who had legal rights over me and could manipulate my mother into forcing me to go back.

  I had no one else to turn to, nor could I enforce a restraining order against him.

  What else would have kept a man like that at bay?

  So, I gave him hope, never thinking that four years down the line his feelings would still be the same.

  My years in Paris were… difficult, but I never hated Milo. I hate the actions he chose, but I don’t hate the person currently in front of me who is working on finding a different path so we can coexist.

  This, I understand.

  It’s logical.

  In the last week, we stayed focused on our Tessa related efforts. Things were somewhat calm between us in the beginning.

  Of course, Milo’s attention quickly shifted. But after the incident, as he keeps calling it, he hasn’t touched me or forced choices down my throat.

  So, I have put my differences aside for the family’s sake. It’s almost as if we have been keeping things “professional” during a bad situation.

  “I don’t know if hate is the right word,” I slowly unravel my thoughts. “I’d say that I am angry at you and I feel resentful towards you.”

  “Resentful?” Milo asks curiously.

  Another significant change I have noticed is Milo's ability to intimidate our family members.

  The part that has not changed is that everyone in the family still respects Milo, despite feeling intimidated by him.

  They adore him.

  Our families were extremely quick to believe Milo's account of our relationship. No one, including my own parents and Reid, even bothered to ask me for my version of the story.

  “I am angry at you for what you did to me, and I resent the fact that you still get to have the whole nine yards,” I try not to lace my words with my bitterness and focus on being forthright. “You have a dream job. Perfect condo. Family. Adoration. Friends. I have to watch you thrive while I am still struggling to move past everything that happened.”

  I watch Milo from the corner of my eye to assess his mood.

  “But I didn’t thrive. I drowned,” Milo sounds astonished by my assessment of his life. “Other than paying for my family’s expenses, I barely see them. I work all the time. I never stay at this condo. Most of the time, it irritates me to even look at it.”

  Mia told me the same thing, but I don’t understand why the condo isn’t good enough.

  This is my dream home. Perfect view. Perfect location. Giant living room. High ceilings with a beautiful chandelier. Absolutely gorgeous.

  When I first walked in, I was speechless.

  “Milo,” I keep my voice low and even. “Just because you have a busy life doesn’t decrease my resentment. Your prestige as the hard-working entrepreneur and prodigal son still precedes you. Both of our families look at you like you are their savior.”

  “That’s not a good thing,” he argues flatly. “That’s just a reminder of the same truth I had to live with my whole life, the expectation for me to lessen the burden of others.”

  His words give me pause.

  That’s how I always saw him as well.

  Despite his new sociopathic tendencies, Milo is still a man of habits. His habits include being responsible and a caretaker.

  He resents this family. It's clear that the years of being tied down to them had an adverse affect on how he views them now.

  However, Milo still takes care of them because that's what he has always done.

  I know that Milo has a deep loathing for Tessa, one that he will never openly admit. It vibrates from his very essence. He resents Tessa for forcing him into a role that he never wanted.

  Still, after everything started going downhill with Tessa, he was the first one to step up to the plate while Uncle Reese checked out.

  Per usual, everyone assumed Milo would carry the burden. Unfortunately, it's all true.

  Growing up, Milo’s poker face never betrayed his emotions. The only thing he couldn’t control was the panic attacks.

  Having observed him recently, I realized that he doesn’t get panic attacks anymore, and his poker face is even better than before.

  Milo never complains about the burden he carries, so it’s impossible to determine how his responsibilities affect him.

  Did taking care of us have such a demonic aftereffect on him?

  I stare at him in an attempt to decipher, but I can’t get a read on him at all. “Regardless, the whole family listens to you. You banned them from seeing me, and they complied without question. As a result, I lost a whole year with Mia.”

  Over the years, I remained close to all the other Sinclairs. Mia used to spend all of her vacations with me. Uncle Reese and Tessa joined in at times.

  The entire family, sans Milo, even came to Paris to celebrate Reid and my twenty-first birthday last year.

  However, one year Milo banned the family from seeing me. Everyone chalked it up to us having a fallout. Milo’s dictate came off as almost a call for allegiance.

  Our families are aware that Milo is not a petty person, but even Uncle Reese didn’t question the ludicrous ban on Raven. Uncle Reese would have come off as ungrateful if he had argued.

  Since his business took off, Milo took over the larger bills for Uncle Reese so he could move back home from the Cayman Islands.

  Uncle Reese now only works part-time at a private clinic to dedicate more time to his ignored daughter and his depressed wife.

  It sliced my heart open, but I refused to put the family in an awkward position by asking them to go against Milo’s wishes. I understood their length of gratitude towards Milo.

  Mia was the only Sinclair who fought to see me and overthrew Milo’s ban on Raven. Her stubborn sassy ass went toe to toe with Milo for a whole year till he finally conceded.

  Milo’s business exploded over the last few years. Due to his schedule, Mia was often left alone at home during her school vacations.

  Despite Uncle Reese’s presence, Milo saw the negative toll it took on Mia to be exposed to an on and off depressed Tessa around the clock. I was the only other adult he trusted with Mia, so he finally gave in.

  “I didn’t ban them from seeing you.” Milo sounds infuriatingly unapologetic. “I gave you the choice to come to New York to visit them.”

  “It wasn’t a choice,” I say evenly. “It was blackmail. You took away the only family I have ever known. But you still get to keep up this godlike façade in front of them. I can’t help but keep hoping that someone shreds this cool exterior of yours so you can be just as affected like the rest of us mortals,” I say under my breath, failing to keep the bitterness at bay. “I want you to also get kicked around in life the same way I did.”

  “The last four years have been nothing but me getting kicked around in life,” Milo looks livid at my recount of his life. His frustrated voice vibrates with tension. “It was torture. It’s like everything good inside of me was eradicated, till nothing even remotely good existed anymore.”

  “Stop exaggerating!”

  “I’m not,” he says in a clipped voice. “I feel empty; soulless. It’s exhausting to slap on a smile and walk a void, empty body around,” he growls in a low voice. “It’s like living without hope. Food has no taste. Life has no meaning. It’s just hollow and nothingness.”

  I tense at his brutal honesty and wait for him to continue.

  Milo takes a few harsh breaths as if trying to calm himself down.

  “I work all the time to support my family. But I also do it so I won’t have a moment to think about you,” he confesses in a quiet voice. “I avoid New York because this city feels empty without you. I don’t see my family because they remind me of you. I don’t stay at my condo because I bought it for you.”

  “You did what?” I ask before the last word even leaves his lips.

  His eyes finally soften around the edges.

  “I bought the condo because you used to tell me that Soho is the heart of New York, and the only good view of it is the one from above,” he says hoarsely. “You told me that your dream home would have high ceilings with chandeliers hanging down. I had hoped that someday this condo could be ours. That hope started killing me as the years went by, and you wouldn’t change your mind. I couldn’t look at it anymore.”

  I blink.

  Milo’s words are equivalent to a punch in the gut.

  His pained expression, even worse.

  This is so unfair.

  He did me wrong. By textbook definition, by societal definition, and by the standards of the law, Milo is the villain. He belongs behind bars. He did unforgivable things. He can’t possibly be pinning me as the villain. I look away from him to deflect the contradictory image.

  “You can’t make me feel guilty for your poor decisions. You pushed me too far. It’s not my fault if you didn’t like the consequences.”

  “You always needed a push before you could make a decision.”

  “Pushing me has never got you what you wanted out of me,” I respond coolly. “Maybe it’s time for you to change your methods.”

  Milo quietly absorbs my words. I see the wheels turning in his head as he reflects on the truth behind them. Minutes go by, though it feels like hours.

  He finally says, “You are right.”

  -----------

  Milo

  She is right. Pushing her and forcing her has only driven her away from me. “You are right.”

  Raven looks at me and waits for me to add more to my statement, but there is nothing else to it. She is right. That’s it, pure and simple.

  “So...” I prod her gently. “How do we move forward? We do still have to live together.”

  I want us to progress this discussion. This is the most I have ever been able to dig out of her.

  Raven is not an emotional person. But right now, she is actually stating her needs and voicing her thoughts. I need to hear them before she shuts down.

  Raven mimics my neutral tone.

  “I know that we have to live together, and I do want to find a middle ground. I can acknowledge how much you are doing for the whole family. Others might take that for granted, but I appreciate it. I just don’t know how to get past what happened, nor do I trust that it won’t happen again,” she says pointedly. “I can’t control how I feel. A feeling is not a choice. But my actions are my choices.”

  I hold my breath as I wait for Raven to continue.

  “I-I need control over my life and over my body. I need to feel safe, I need you to respect me, and I need to be able to trust you. If you can give me those things, I’ll meet you halfway. I’ll try harder not to reject you, and we can have a cordial friendship. I want peace, but I can’t agree to any more than that.”

  I nod. It’s not enough, but it’s a start. I can convince her of more if she is not running away from me.