"Son," was all I could manage to get out of my mouth while I maneuvered across the freeway.
"Ris." He was being too different. Too guarded.
Neither one of us said anything for too long. Only the steady in and out of our breaths crossed the cellular connection. I was scared to ask, scared to desire the confirmation of the fear that had rooted itself into my stomach, and Sonny? Sonny was probably nervous about answering any more questions I had.
He knew. He knew that I had an idea.
As much as I genuinely didn't want to know, the question just kind of came out in a gasp. "Is there—?"
My brother, my beloved half-brother, sighed. "I'm sorry, Ris. I didn't know how to tell you."
Of course he wouldn't. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
"Lutold meabout it fucking forever ago. Your mom had been really sick back then, and you were just a kid—"
It felt like the blood instantly drained from my body. Back when my mom had been sick?
I must have made some sort of sound because Sonny let out a long line of colorful curse words that I wouldhave appreciated if I hadn't just found out that my father had more kids while he was still married to my dying mother.
That time I did hear the ugly choking sound that exploded out of my mouth.
"I'm sorry, Ris. I know I should've told you but I couldn't," he murmured, his voice straining. "I love you, kid. I love you so fucking much and you've been throughenough shitalready, I just couldn't do that to you."
For being the kind of person that cried whenever I felt anything slightly more than normal, later on, I could wonder why I didn't burst into tears at Sonny's words. At his explanation. His truth and lies. At my father's indiscretions and mistakes.
But in that moment, all I could focus on was the burning thatscorchedmy guts and throat. It was betrayal and jealousy and anger in its purest form.
"Talk to me," Sonny pleaded over the line, pulling me back from the insane thoughts going through my head.
I shouldn't be mad. I shouldn't feel anything.
But the problem was, that I did.
"Iris," he called out.
"Shit," I muttered into the phone, somehow managing to keep on the barely familiar drive toward Dex's place. "I just—I just can't wrap my head around it. How old...?"
He groaned, telling me that this definitely wasn't a conversation that was easy on him either. "I don't know for sure.I’m guessinglike ten, eleven."
That son of a friggin' whore.
Lava-like anger flared through my chest again. When I was fourteen, I'd been in the middle of radiation. My Mom had been getting weekly chemotherapy treatments that ravaged her. And what had that asshole been doing? Making babies? Babies that he apparently didn't take care of.
Another ugly choking noise sprang out of my throat no matter how hard I tried to repress it.
I mean, how the fuck could he have done that? Sure my parents were separated, but seriously?
"What’s wrong with him?" I gasped into the receiver.
"I don't know," Sonny replied, sounding way too glum. "He's fucked up in the head, kid."
He was fucked up in the head and he was a huge asshole. A monstrous asshole.
"I can't believe it." Because I could remember his face when he'd come down right before my mom died two years later. His face when he came into the hospital room to see her, was etched into my memory. There was no way he could have faked his devastation, but maybe that had been my problem.
I hadn't really thought about it. He'd been devastated for my mom. But I'd been in remission at the time of his visit and not once had he ever even made a peep about my arm. About my own situation. I'dcaughthim looking at the scarring from time to time, this man I wasn't sure what to think of, but he never said a word.
That reminder just refueled my resentment.
