Stolen Identity: Mute Heiress

Chapter 154: The Past

Long after Emily shut the door in his face, Callan stood there in the hallway, his back leaning against the closed door of Emily’s room.

The hallway was quiet. The kind of quiet that made your ears ring, and his ears did ring with her last words.

He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. His chest felt heavy, like someone had dropped a big rock in it.

He didn’t mind her hating him. He didn’t mind her seeing him as a jerk. What tore at him was the hurt in her eyes. He would have preferred she was mad then hurt.

His fingers curled into a fist, then opened, then curled again. He wanted to knock one more time. He wanted her to come out so they could have a proper conversation.

He wished he could really explain to her and wipe away the hurt in her eyes. He wished he could make her understand things from his point of view, but something stopped him.

If she was still that hurt over the past, then maybe there was still a little feeling there. If that was the case, then it was better to just leave things as they were.

He would let her keep seeing him as the jerk. That would make her continue to keep him at arm’s length, and that would also help him stay away from her.

Even after all these years he couldn’t trust himself around her. The only way he could stay sane being around her was by teasing and annoying her. If he treated her like an annoying little cousin as he had been doing, then maybe someday it would eventually sink into his heart and body that they were cousins and nothing could be done about it.

Callan turned away slowly and walked down the hallway to his bedroom. His feet felt like they had weights tied to them as he dragged himself to his bedroom.

He sat on his bed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he covered his face with both hands.

If only he had not made that one stupid mistake six years ago.

His thoughts, like an open wound, bled into the memory he had worked hard to keep buried.

Callan had been exhausted from the all-nighters he’d been pulling for his exams. Grad school hadn’t exactly been easy, especially not in a different country, away from the familiar craziness of Ludus.

It was his twenty-fourth birthday, and he had no plans to celebrate it. All he wanted was to lie on his bed and think about his fucked up life.

He had never liked his birthday. He had always believed that his birthday was the worst day of his life and he never should have been born, but he never said that out loud to anyone.

The first couple of years after his adoption, his adoptive parents had thrown him a party to celebrate his birthday, but after he left for college, he always came up with excuses not to go home on his birthdays.

He preferred to be alone.

So when a knock sounded on the door to his off-campus apartment and he opened it to see Emily standing there with a shy smile and a duffel bag over her shoulder, his heart had nearly stopped.

”What are you doing here?” he had asked, stunned, blinking like he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming.

Emily’s grin had widened. ”Happy birthday!” She had exclaimed in a sing song voice as she embraced him.

Callan had blinked again, a slow grin forming on his lips. ”I—I don’t even know how to respond to this,” he said, laughing nervously. ”You flew all the way here just to say that?”

”No, I swam,” she said dryly as she pulled back to look into his face with a grin, happy to see him.

This time his laugh was lighter. ”Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” he asked as he took the bag from her and stepped back so she could get inside.

He shouldn’t have. He should have done what he did six years ago and chased her away from his doorstep harshly.

”Because we both know you’d have said I shouldn’t come and you’d make one excuse or the other like you’ve been doing for some years now,” Emily said, still smiling as she walked inside.

Callan shook his head. ”I can’t believe you came all the way here for me.”

Her eyes met his. ”Why not? You’re my darling Callan.”

That last sentence shouldn’t have made his stomach flutter. But it had.

”Are your parents aware that you’re here?” Callan asked curiously.

”No. Only Mari knows.”

He should have sent her back then. He really should have. He was the adult between them, after all. He was twenty-four and she was just twenty. He should have known better.

Or maybe he should have called her parents to inform them that she was there. If he had, he’d have had that feeling of responsibility towards her as her big cousin.

That evening had turned out to be nothing like he’d planned. Instead of staying in his room thinking about his life, Emily had insisted on taking him out for his birthday.

She had made plans even from the distance and had made reservations at a rooftop restaurant.

She had looked different that night. She had looked even more grown-up than he remembered, her hair curled and swept to one side, her dress pretty and flattering just above her knees.

He’d found himself watching her more than he should have. The way he watched when she wasn’t looking. The way he did when he knew no one else was looking.

Someone like him with his background had no business looking at perfect Emily that way, not just because of their family ties, because even if she wasn’t in anyway related to him, he still could never be good enough for her.

It didn’t matter that he was now part of the Quinn family. He knew who he was. He knew his background. No adoption paper, and nothing anyone was going to say could change anything about him.

Over dinner Emily told him about school, about all that was going on at home with both their younger ones, and they talked about Mari and Jamal, and everything else.

After dinner, they returned to his apartment. After they had freshened up, they returned to the living room, and she presented a white unicorn figurine. ”Happy birthday.”

Callan chuckled when he saw the gift, knowing what the gift meant.

Emily had grinned, ”I knew you’d get it. I kept thinking hard about what to get you, and then I saw Mel playing with the unicorn and I remembered the first time we met at the orphanage home and how you refused to accept the stuffed unicorn. I had to find someone to make this,” she had said, and he had laughed again.

”I guess I can’t reject this, can I?” He had asked, and she shook her head.

”You can’t.”

Callan had placed the unicorn on his center table, and they ended up watching reruns of a romcom on his couch.

Somehow, he still remembered every detail— how she’d curled up beside him, head resting against his shoulder.

”Cal?” She had called softly after a while.

”Hm?”

”Jamal said you’re not in a relationship at the moment,” Emily had said looking up at him.

His breath had caught, but he had avoided her gaze and tried not to look down at her as he grunted. ”Hmhm.”

”That’s good,” she had said, and this time he had looked at her.

He remembered the look he had seen then in her eyes. It had gleamed with something he couldn’t place. She had looked sort of scared and hopeful, like she was holding her breath.

And then before he could react, she kissed him.

And he kissed her back.

He had no idea what he had been thinking then. Maybe he had not been thinking. Maybe he had too much wine over dinner. He had no idea why. But he had kissed her back.

At first, it had been gentle. Careful. Then it hadn’t. They’d stumbled their way to his room, lips tangled, hearts pounding.

He hadn’t known she was a virgin. Not until the moment he broke past her barrier and their eyes locked and her cheeks flushed.

He’d hesitated. ”Em...”

”I want this,” she said softly.

He could have stopped then.

He should have.

But he hadn’t.

That night had changed everything.

And the morning after had shattered it.

She had still been sleeping, her body tangled in his sheets, lips slightly parted, bare shoulders rising and falling with each breath.

Callan had sat at the edge of the bed, heart racing. Panic clawed at him.

He deflowered Emily.

He had his first sex with his own cousin.

Even if they weren’t blood relatives— not really— it didn’t matter. The family would still see it as betrayal. As sick. As something that should never have happened.

It was bad enough that he had been nurturing fantasies of her in his head for years. Now he had made it a reality.

He had realized it somewhere between her laughter on the rooftop and the feel of her body trembling beneath his, that he was in love with her.

He didn’t know when it had started— only that he had crossed a line of no return.

Being in love with her didn’t matter. No, it didn’t. The shame that burnt his insides was louder.

Emily didn’t deserve this. She was like an angel compared to him. And a princess like her deserved better. He knew it hadn’t been casual sex to her. He knew she would want more. But there was no way this could happen again between them. He couldn’t let it.

She was younger than he was and might not understand, but he did. So he had to find a way to snuff the life out of whatever they had been created the night before.

He had dressed quietly, grabbed his phone, and left the apartment without waking her. His footsteps had echoed in the hallway like guilt trailing behind him.

He had walked to a nearby café and sat outside for almost two hours, numb.

Then like a coward he had gone back to campus and found the first girl who tried to flirt with him. He couldn’t even remember her name now.

She was loud, pretty, and completely uninterested in a serious relationship.

She had been perfect.

He had brought her to the apartment that evening and introduced her to Emily as his girlfriend. The look on Emily’s face had nearly broken him.

He remembered the way her smile faded, how her lips parted slightly, as if trying to form words that wouldn’t come. Her eyes had searched his for an explanation. She wanted to know if it was a joke or prank.

He had given her none.

He had thought it was the right thing to do. The only way to make her stop expecting anything from him. To make her think it had meant nothing.

She had gone inside, picked up her stuff and left. He had not stopped her.

It had been the cruelest thing he had ever done. But that had been the easiest way out for him, and also the best thing to do for her.

Being Callan Quinn gave him an identity. It made me somebody in a world where he had no one and nothing. If he was disowned, he would have nothing.

That night, he couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was the hurt on her face. And when he called two days later to find out if she arrived safely, he had realized that she blacklisted his number.

He had gone back home for Christmas with a different girl, and during the family dinner, she had avoided him to the extent that everyone had asked to know if something happened between them.

After he returned to school for his final exams he had called his father and asked to be assigned to the Husla branch after graduation.

”Are you sure?” his father had asked. ”You’ve always said you wanted to come back to Ludus and work alongside me.”

Callan had hesitated. ”Yeah. I just... I think I need the space. The independence.”

He hadn’t said it was because he couldn’t bear to see Emily.

Because if he saw her again, he might not be able to stay away.

Callan sighed now as the clock on the wall struck ten, bringing him back to the present.

He sat forward, his elbows on his knees, face still buried in his hands. His chest ached.

He had thought time would help. That distance and time would fix what he had broken.

But it seemed he had been wrong. It seemed in the same manner Emily had never really left his mind in the past six years, what he did to her was also still fresh on her mind.

He was a jerk and he deserved her hatred. He only wished she would hate him and not hurt anymore because of a piece of crap like