Free Unwillingly Yours (Warning: Love Moderately) by Marian Tee, Lourdes Marcelo

sheds. Jaike leaned against the wall and slowly slid down to the ground. She pulled her knees close, tucking them under her chin.
              When she closed her eyes, she was a little girl again.
     
    The wardrobe cabinet was near to bursting with Diana Hepburn’s clothes, but Jaike was a small child, and she had no problems squeezing herself all the way to the back. She had panicked at the sound of footsteps, knowing that Diana wouldn’t be pleased if she caught Jaike entering her bedroom without permission again.
              Diana was talking, and Jaike had thought her mother was on the phone until she heard a man answer her laughingly. Carefully pushing the plastic-wrapped gowns to the sides, Jaike wriggled forward until she could peek between the slits of the cabinet doors.
              The first person she saw was Diana, her blond hair big and wild around her face. There were dark circles under her eyes, and the red marks around Diana’s neck were already familiar to Jaike’s eyes, even though she didn’t quite understand what it was.
              “Do you love me, Diana?”
              Her mother lowered herself on her knees, head bowed. “I love you more than anything.”
              A naked man came into view, and Jaike knew him. Jaike had heard people call him ‘Anthony’ or ‘Mr. Carras’. But to Jaike, he was simply “Uncle Tony”, someone who had been in their lives for as long as she could remember even though Diana had told Jaike he wasn’t her daddy. He was a nice man, someone who took the time to play with her and her dolls.
              Uncle Tony caressed her mother’s bowed head in approval. “And you will do everything for me?”
              “Yes, oh, yes.” Fervor made Diana trip all over her words .
              “Anything?” He fondled Diana’s silk-covered breasts.
              “Anything, Anthony.”
              Jaike scurried to the edge of the cabinet when she heard the door squeak open. She pushed the dresses away to see who was coming in, and she cried silent tears when she saw another naked man walk in. Everything suddenly felt wrong and bad, like the time the doctor told her she had food poisoning. It was because she had eaten something rotten, and the scene before her felt like that. Ugly. Nasty. Rotten.
              “Love us both, Diana.”
              Diana swayed on her knees, but Uncle Tony didn’t reach out to help her. “W-what?”
              “Love us both.” He grabbed Diana by the hair, and her mother cried out. “It’s a fucking order.”
              Diana hadn’t a chance to answer. The two men were tearing her clothes away in seconds, and Jaike cried with her mother as Diana lied sandwiched between Anthony and the stranger, the rapturous expressions on their faces at odds with the agony in Diana’s eyes.
              And when they were done, when they pulled out of their mother, their flesh flaccid, Anthony had asked Diana to crawl to them and kiss their feet. And she had.
    Jaike leaned back, closing her eyes tiredly as the back of her head touched the wall. She only realized she had fallen asleep when she heard the metal doors of the rooftop opening.
              A shirtless Derek came out, and his eyes found her before she could even think of moving. She waited for him to say hello, to smile teasingly like he always did, but Derek did none of those.
              The morning light was behind him, and she had to shade her eyes just to see his face clearly. He was even more beautiful now, sexier too, with his tousled hair, blue-gray eyes still drowsy and stubble on his chin.
              She wasn’t Diana Hepburn, and he wasn’t Anthony Carras, but oh God, what if they were worse?
              “What’s wrong?” He didn’t even come close, and it made her want to cry. Why did Derek Christopoulous