Guardian by Kassandra Kush

I tilted my face slightly to the side, trying to be discreet and hide the bruise so he wouldn’t notice. “I’m so sorry, Rafael. I would have let you know, but I had no way to reach-”
    “Why?” he cut in, taking a step forward.
    In the silence that followed, I suddenly realized that Rafael was here, in my home, and I was all alone. I still had not decided if he was dangerous. What if he tried to hurt me too? My blood began to run cold. Was I safe with him? More importantly, how had he gotten past that locked door?
    “You… you shouldn’t be here,” I said as he took another step closer.
    “Why not?”
    You’re too big, I wanted to say. Rafael seemed to fill up the small, modest kitchen. This man was never meant to be kept indoors. His presence was just so magnified, so all encompassing, that I felt as though I couldn’t even breathe without feeling him, without smelling him. It was overwhelming. He towered over me, took up every corner of the room without effort. I felt as though I was drowning in Rafael. All of my senses went into hyper drive.
    “We, we only m-meet at the park,” I stuttered. For the first time in awhile, Rafael was making me nervous again. Just as I was starting to become more comfortable with him, he made a move that caught me totally off guard.
    He looked frustrated, but also… nervous. His eyes kept darting around the room, looking uneasily at the walls, the plain, worn furniture. As though whatever he saw there unsettled his usual permanent calmness. “We can’t meet if you don’t come to the park.”
    “I would have told you I wasn’t coming, I just didn’t have a way to get hold of you,” I protested softly.
    Rafael looked at the books stacked on the table around me, creating a wall of sorts that in no way made me feel safe from him. “You weren’t going to come today.” It wasn’t a question.
    I stared down at the table, tracing a crack in the wood. “No,” I whispered, so quietly anyone else wouldn’t have been able to hear. But Rafael did. He wasn’t like anyone else. I had known that the instant I met him.
    “ Why ?”
    “I just couldn’t make it,” I mumbled, still not looking up at him. “I have a lot of homework and-”
    “Lyla.”
    “Hm?” I pretended to focus once again on the biology textbook before me.
    “Look at me.”
    I jumped and looked up at Rafael. He had moved to stand right next to me without my even noticing. Catching a glimpse of his face, I was afraid of how mad he looked.
    “Why didn’t you come to the park yesterday?”
    I looked down at my book. “Because.” Pathetic as it was, it was all I could come up with. I was just tired all of the sudden. Tired of the half-truths, tired of trying to keep secrets and a façade of being normal.
    I started once again in shock when Rafael slid incredibly warm fingers underneath my chin and tilted my battered cheek toward him. I knew it was useless to resist him. Now that he had come all this way, he would find out eventually. Why not now? Ashamed and embarrassed, I looked away as he took in my large bruise and split lip. Never had I felt so weak and defenseless. I didn’t want Rafael to see me like this.
    “Who did this?” I detected a tremor in his voice. “Your mother or your father?”
    I looked up and what I saw scared me. Rafael was livid. It was the only word to describe him. The look of fury on his dark face was cold enough to cause me to tremble all the way down to my toes. I pulled away, hiding my cheek once again, as if that would just make it all disappear.
    “What makes you so sure it was them?” I asked sharply. I knew it was easier to deflect the questions. Maybe then he would forget about getting the answers from me.
    “Do not attempt to lie to me, Lyla Evans.” Rafael spoke so sharply that I jumped in my chair. “This is not the time. Now, I will give you one more chance. What happened?”
    I didn’t want to tell him. I never told anyone, not anymore. Hadn’t I learned