“You want to know what happened to me, Logan?” I stopped in front of him, close enough for him to feel my breath on his face. “I collapsed. I became a dead man walking. A dead man who couldn’t make sense of hisshitty life. I wanted to end it all, maybe crash my car or something. But then someone rescued me. Someone talked some sense into me, and I was able to move on,” I confessed explosively.
“I’m done with New York, with my family and my old friends and my old life. Because of your father…and mine.” I threw John a disdainful glance. He didn’t wince but only stared probingly into me like he was trying to see into my soul. Trying to see if there was something other than anger and bitterness in there.
“I was wrong, and I know that. I had planned to talk to you when it was all said and done. I decided that, after you graduated, I was going to sit you down and explain everything. I was afraid of how you’d react, Neil. You have your issues; your mental health is fragile. Introducing traumatic information like that was always going to be risky and—” John attempted to move closer to me. He was talking to me like I was his patient. I raised a hand to silence him.
“I trusted you,” I said, raising my voice. Chloe flinched and grabbed Logan’s arm. John just stared at me, though, ashamed but not afraid of my outburst. “I told you about myself. About my past. I told you about Selene. I thought you were different. I thought you were sincere, a man who was committed and who had good values. But, instead, I find out that you’re just the asshole who fucked my mother and left her alone and pregnant in the clutches of someone else. You disgust me.” My mouth twisted into a bitter scowl, and I looked disdainfully at him. I stepped back a few paces—I couldn’t bear to stand next to him.
“That’s not how it was,” he snapped back. “I did notfuckyour mother. Ilovedher. That’s very different,” he went on, advancing fearlessly on me. His strength and determination were commendable; I was not at all safe to approach at that moment. “I loved Mia with all that I was, but we could not be together. Her father forced her to marry William. I knew that she was pregnant with you, and right from the start, I wanted you. She was afraid and wasn’t sure she could go through with the pregnancy, and I was the one who encouraged her to keep the baby!” His eyes turned glassy. Every word was full of feeling and pain. I could feel it even if I couldn’t define it. “I thought about you every moment of the day. I asked Mia about you, abouteverything in your world. My life stopped making sense after the third of May…” He undid the cufflink of the button-down he wore underneath his suit and rolled up the cuff to show me something. “I got this tattoo to honor your birth. It’s your initials.” He turned his wrist over, showing me letters inscribed there, and I felt the blood drain from my face. I remembered it. I’d spotted it one time when we ran into each other at a bar. I’d even suggested he go and get the faded ink touched up.
I attempted to feign indifference as I looked back at his face. In the worried creases around his eyes and mouth, I saw the desperation of the father who didn’t know how to chisel through the concrete encasing his son’s heart. “I tattooed this on my body so that I could feel close to you every minute of every day. Every second. I wanted you to know how important you are to me, that my love for you is always there; it has never gone away. My blood runs in your veins; we are one and the same, Neil, and I can’t tell you how bitterly I regret not being there for you when William was hurting you, when Kimberly…”
I shook my head to stop him. I breathed raggedly, trying to control my rage. If John had been there, maybe I wouldn’t have been abused by that woman or beaten by my mother’s husband. I threw out one arm as if to break my fall. Logan instinctively reached to steady me, but he’d barely touched me before I stood up straight and stiff again.
“Don’t touch me. Get out of here. Leave,” I said, barely whispering. My head was starting to get fuzzy, and I was afraid I was going to explode. I couldn’t deal with my reality. Chloe and Logan’s presence only reminded me that William wasn’t really my father. John only made me think about the years I’d been fed lies.
My brain wasn’t ready to process it all. I was still too fragile—too broken.
“Neil, we came all the way to Chicago for you. Please. Chloe and I don’t deserve this treatment; all of this had nothing to do with us. We are still your brother and sister. We always will be.” Logan tried to reach for me again, but I pulled away and showed him my back, dragging my hands over my face and through my hair. I was on the edge of another meltdown, and with a bestial growl, I seized the pen holder from the desk and hurled it at the wall. I roared in fury.
“Get out!” I shouted with an anger that felt powerful enough to make the building shake. The tendons in my neck stuck out; my eyes were feverishly wide.
And all I felt inside was emptiness.
None of them could understand what it was like, watching your life fall to pieces and not being able to do a single thing about it.
My right hand shook, and I realized I was approaching the edge. I moved away from them and turned to stare out the big windows looking out on the adjacent skyscrapers.
“Get out,” I repeated, my voice rough from my recent outburst. I touched my forehead and found it slick with sweat. The pain was bad enough to break me in two, but I was stronger than it and I fought. Otherwise, I’d never be able to come back to life.
Eventually, the three of them did as I demanded.
I didn’t watch them go. I stood motionless, surrounded on all sides by my darkness, and listened to their footsteps recede further and further into the distance.
Finding out about John had been a trauma that I could not get over.
Maybe someday my love for my family—for my siblings—will rise up again but, for now…
I was in the dark.
Trapped in a prison of my own hate and repressed rage, and all I wanted to do was suffer there in silence.
23
“I am always here for you the way you have always been there for me.”
Megan
Jace the coffee boy was surprisingly incapable of making a drinkable cup of coffee.
Irritated, I got up and marched briskly out of my office. These high heels were super uncomfortable, but they did force me to adopt a different, more feminine posture.
I couldn’t wait to get home and sack out on the sofa.
I walked into the little break room where they kept the coffee machine—I needed a real cup, one that didn’t taste like dirt water. I nodded hello to a few coworkers who were there for the same purpose and began fixing myself a cup.
“Yeah, he is breathtakingly gorgeous,” one of the PAs giggled to her colleagues, tossing her thick blond hair over one shoulder.
I had never been the type to engage in water-cooler talk like that, at least not when I was on the clock.
