“People, I guess.” He twitched his left shoulder in an attempt of a subtle shrug. “They’re never really what you expect. I mean, you have this idea of them, and they either prove you wrong by rising above your expectations, or by sinking even lower.”
Carmen’s smile slowly faded, and a frown replaced it. “Are we talking about Lottie here? Because I put her in her place after you left the cafeteria halfway through lunch.”
Asa shot her a quick sideways glance before turning his attention back to the road. “Damn.” He grinned. “I missed out on that. But, no, I wasn’t speaking of Lottie. I actually ran into Hunter today.”
“You ran into him?” Carmen furrowed her brows.
“Well. Okay. Didn’t run into him. I walked up to him and initiated the conversation.”
Amusement lit up her dull grey eyes, and she looked like she wanted to laugh. “Oh, Asa. Why on earth would you do that?”
“Learnt my lesson, don’t worry.”
“And? Did whatever you learn about him surprise you?”
“Definitely did,” Asa said, making a U-turn. “I mean, I always thought he was just an asshole, but I found out he’s actually a soulless bastard. So there’s that.”
“You seem disappointed.”
“I’m not.”
There was a short stretch of silence between them before Carmen interrupted it.
“He wasn’t always like that, you know.”“Hunter?” Asa frowned. “It’s hard to picture him without his permanent scowl and murderous glare.”
A light giggle tumbled past Carmen’s lips. “Seriously. Since my mum was always pampering him after his passed away, we’d spend a lot of time together. Mostly it was me going over to his place. We must have been around three at the time, but I still remember snippets of our childhood. And both of us had no siblings, so I guess I always looked up to him and regarded him as an older brother, and I the little sister he never had.”
Asa was finding it really hard to wrap his head around the fact that Hunter Donoghue used to have a heart in his robotic body once. Then again, nobody was born with hate and cruelty in their hearts, were they? Those traits were taught, or inherited, or even picked up from one’s surroundings.
“It’s…really weird to think of him that way,” Asa admitted, scratching the bridge of his nose.
“Sometimes I think it was all from a past life or something,” Carmen spoke quietly, her voice blending with the tranquil atmosphere inside the truck. “He’d be saying something vicious enough to rip my heart out in school, but all I would see is the boy who used to give me piggy back rides up and down the stairs of his house when I was too tired to climb it by myself. Sometimes I want to hate him so much, but I’d recall the numerous times I’d fallen asleep on the couch only for him to carry me to my room and tuck me in bed.”
Her eyes were unfocused like she wasn’t in the truck with Asa anymore, but in a place during her childhood when she’d known happiness and love.
“But then we turned six. Mum died. And that was that.” She let out a deep sigh, as if it had been sitting on her soul for far too long. “Everything just went up in flames.”
Asa hesitated but asked cautiously, “Why?”
Carmen was quiet for a long time; she continued to remain silent ’till they reached her place. Asa figured she wasn’t going to respond, but she eventually did. “They didn’t want me around anymore.”
“They?”
“Mum’s side of the family is the side where Hunter comes from,” she mumbled, exhaustion seeping into her voice. “They flat out told my dad they didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”
Asa’s stomach coiled into a tight knot, feeling both anger and grief on Carmen’s behalf.
“And your dad’s side?”
“They love Dad a lot,” she said. “They just don’t understand why he took it upon himself to raise me, someone who’s not even his biological daughter.” Asa recalled wondering before if Carmen was adopted because she shared no resemblance whatsoever with her father. He didn’t ask her any more than she was willing to offer him though, so he just allowed her to do the talking. “And they’d keep hinting at Dad to give me up to the system. I guess he got fed up with them because he no longer keeps in touch with his folks.”
“No offence, but you really didn’t hit the jackpot when it comes to family.” Asa mused.
And to his delight, Carmen started to laugh.She was full-on laughing: her head tipped back, hand covering her mouth, and eyes crinkled at the edges as the passenger seat vibrated with her shaking shoulders.
Carmen kept laughing, and Asa kept falling.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Asa didn’t hold back this time.“I do love you, you know,” he said, gulping slightly as his voice drifted into the air and filled the space between them with an emotion so raw, so tangible, that Asa thought his heart could burst any minute.
Carmen stared at him for a while, not saying anything, before her lips slowly turned up at the corners into a smile that could only be described as ethereal.
“I know,” she told him quietly, her eyes uncharacteristically bright.
“Good,” he murmured, tracing a finger along the hairline on her forehead and down her temple before moving along the curve of her ear. “Because I don’t think I’ll ever stop saying it.”
She opened her mouth then—no, wait—not opened. But her lips did part, and he heard the soft breath that spilled out of her mouth right then, and for a second—for a mere heartbeat—Asa thought she was going to say the words back.
She didn’t, though. And oddly enough, Asa was okay with that.
Because he
