I stare at the bright sky, just staring, just looking for something that will never reveal itself to me.
What the hell am I doing here? Not just here, at this house. I feel like I was born to destroy people’s lives. I did it before I even came into the world. And I did it after.You were going to take all of that from me.
“Out of respect for Jonathan, I told him that I was going to an abortion clinic.”
I shut my eyes, and a hot tear slides down my cheek. I wipe it. Exhale. “I wish you went through with it,” I suddenly say. Because then I wouldn’t have to bear this pain. My face wouldn’t twist this way. Lily wouldn’t have spent her childhood in my broken house. Her mother would have loved her as much as she did her sisters. Ryke would have grown up with two parents instead of one. My existence ruined so many people, so many things. Life would have been easier without me.
“What?” Her velvety voice spikes.
“You heard me,” I say, no longer nice. “I wish you would have killed me.”
She pales. “You don’t mean that.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
She touches her lips for a moment, just staring at me. “Because…your father, he gave you everything.”
You have everything, Loren. Don’t be such an ungrateful little shit, Loren.
“Yeah,” I nod. “He gave me everything.” Before she can speak, I ask, “So what stopped you? Your parents? Some religious belief? Cold feet?”
“Jonathan stopped me,” she says. “He was furious with the idea of losing his child. We came to an agreement. I would have you, and then you would be his entirely. I would get the life I planned, and you’d grow up in luxury, something I wouldn’t have been able to give you on my own. I thought you would be happy.”
“Yeah, I’m still working on the happiness part.”
I wait for the flash of regret to fill her eyes, but it never comes. I’m the spoiled rotten heir, the one who drinks until he’s wasted. The one who went to rehab like it was some publicity stunt. And I have a sex addict girlfriend.
Emily quiets as a school bus rolls to the curb. The doors open and middle school kids dart out. A girl with my light brown hair and my nose adjusts her backpack, walking towards the house.
Emily forces a smile for her daughter. “Hi honey, can you go inside please?”
Her daughter squints at me, fixing her large round glasses on her nose. “Aren’t you Loren Hale?”
I hate that a middle school girl knows me. My face is all over the tabloids. Yesterday, they dissected a photograph of me leaving a restaurant hand-in-hand with Lily.
And then it hits me fully.
She’s my half-sister.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“And you’re at my house…? Do you know my mom?”
Emily waits impatiently for her daughter, about to interject, but I do her a favor and shut down her inquiry.
“Not really,” I say. “She’s a friend of my father’s.”
“Mom,” she whispers. “You know famous people?”
Emily shrugs, her shoulders stiff.
And then my eyes catch a pin on the strap of the girl’s jean backpack.Mutant&Proud.What are the odds? “You likeX-Men?”
“The cartoons,” she says. “X-Men: Evolution.”
“My girlfriend likes those too.”
“You mean your fiancée? I just read inCelebrity Crushthat you’re getting married.” She rocks on her feet and pushes her glasses further up her nose as they slide down. “Is it true?”
