“That’s done. I’m done. I get you have no interest in my life. That’s…well, it’s not fucking fine because you were supposed to be my parent, but I’m going to find a way to be okay with it because I’m an adult and I don’t want to keep living with this goddamned hole inside me.” I rub at my chest, at the ache that’s still there, but an ache I know is going to fade.
Because I’m building something better.
“The only thing I want to know,” I say, “is how you could do that to a kid.”
The room goes quiet, so quiet I can hear the soft whoosh of Blake’s oxygen.
“How, Mom?” I press when she doesn’t answer.
A shake of her head.
“How?” I ask again. “Just tell me ho?—”
“Because I didn’t want you!” she screams and I jerk back at the tone, at the words, at the utter hate in her eyes. “I didn’t want you and that bastard put you in me and you’re lucky I decided to keep you at all because I sure as hell didn’t have to!” She glares at my father. “But Frank said I should because the two of us couldn’t get pregnant, so it was a gift.” She sneers the last.
My head starts spinning and I have to dig my toes into the floor to keep myself upright.
“And then I did have my baby—my baby.” She looks at Blake, who’s gone even paler. “Not the one that monster forced in me, the one I was forced to keep…but mine, and he was sick, and I knew God was telling me that I needed to put all of my care into him, needed to love him with everything I am.”
Her eyes lock back onto mine and I brace.
But bracing doesn’t do me one lick of good.
“How could I do it, you ask?” She comes closer, jabbing her finger into my chest, the look in her eyes so cold a chill skates down my spine. “Because I hate you. And I always will. And I will never forgive you for being here, for being perfect when my baby is?—”
“Donna—”
But I don’t get a chance to process that my dad actually sounds like he’s paying attention for once, that his tone is sharp, that he finally succeeds in getting my mom to shut the fuck up.
Because Kylie gasps.
And Blake…
Fuck.
Well, I turn just in time to watch my brother have a seizure.
Forty-One
Ky
Hours later, sitting in the hospital’s waiting room, I glance over at Colt, still reeling from his mother’s words and at a complete and total loss as what to do.
His mother said…
God, she’d said.
So many awful things, but it’s the?—
I hate you. And I always will.
That continues running on repeat through my mind.
Those words had struck my heart like bullets, and they weren’t even directed at me.
Just…at the man I love.
Who’s standing in the corner with his hands braced on the wall.
