“Respect, love. Real love and the title Old Lady by his choice. I saw it in his eyes. He wanted to claim you, brand you, and keep you all to himself.” She huffs. “You never even wanted that.”
“I wanted Shadow and whatever came with him.”
“You want to know how I did it? I pretended to be you. I crept in, all shy and bumbling, begging him to keep the lights off while I altered my voice to a whisper. Oh, he fell all over himself making it good for you. Touching me with a tenderness I haven’t ever experienced since. Not even from him, the fucking bastard.” Her lower lip trembles.
“Why?”
“Because I could. Because I hate you as much as I love you.”
Her words are a knife to my heart. I can feel my emotions bleeding out of the metaphysical wound she’d inflicted as my psyche screams for relief. Too much all at once. I’m reeling from the attack. “You did this. All I ever wanted was to be your little sister. For you to be happy with me. One day, you just stopped being the Calla I looked to for protection, knowledge, and companionship. I could never figure out what I did.”
“You were born,” she replies coldly.
Tears distort my vision. “I’m done, Calla. I won’t play these games with you anymore. This is your problem. You deal with or don’t. Either way, I’m finished being stuck in the middle.”
She snickers. “Ask Dad. He’ll tell you a story I know you never heard before.”
I push away from the table and stand. “We’re done here.” I tune out her voice as I’m led away by a guard. This is me washing my hands. I’ll send someone else to keep her updated on Bolt’s progress if he doesn’t want to come, but I won’t personally be delivering any tidbits. The hate I witnessed in her heart makes me sick. This is not about competition gone awry. This is a malicious intent to hurt me out of some misguided sense of wrong.
I watched her change damn near overnight. How she could put that on anyone other than herself baffles me. Hearing her side of the story disgusts me. God, what he must’ve felt waking up to her and later finding out she was carrying his child. The betrayal burns. I’ve been kidding myself all this time thinking anything other than evil lives inside that woman. I won’t make the same mistake twice.
Stepping out into the sunlight, I am grateful for the heat that rolls over me, chasing away the chill set deep into my bones. I hurry to the car feeling like her malevolent stare is still trained on my back. One roadblock has been removed while a million more lie in wait to trip me up. The saddest part is the majority of them originate in my own skull.
It felt good riding with my boy. He was about ready for his own bike soon. I plan on saving it for his graduation present though. Despite all the adversity he faced growing up, he was a good kid. It wasn’t easy being associated with the club. We park in front of the local Whippy Dip place I always used to take him as a kid.
We walk over, and the blonde behind the counter bats her lashes at Bolt.
I can’t help but smirk. Like father like son.
“How can I help you today, sir?” she asks.
“Two scoops of vanilla in cake cones.” It’s a family tradition. We get the same thing every time.
“That’ll be six fifty.”
I hand her ten. “Keep the change.”
“Thank you.” She places the change in the tip cup, walks over to a sanitizer, gets a few pumps and begins to prepare our order.
I glance at Bolt, who’s all but preening like a peacock. I missed out on some crucial years. I’ll have to make sure he’s up to speed and knows all the important shit like wrap it up every time, no matter what she says. There will be women after him for his legacy. It’s amazing how fast time flies. Just yesterday, I was teaching this kid to ride a bike with no training wheels.
The teenaged girl returns with our cones, and I lead him over to a shaded table, facing the road. A comfortable silence falls as we eat. “How are you really doing, kid?” I finally ask.
He sighs. “I’m good. I mean, it’s a lot better with Aunt Blue. She gives a shit, you know? She makes sure there’s always clean clothes in the house, food to eat, and makes me get my shit done. Mom was like a ghost. I saw her half the time. I always had to remind her about the basic shit. It sucked, Dad. The past few years—I came to almost hate her.” He toys with the wrapper on his cone. “That’s fucked up, right? Feeling that way about the woman who carried you and birthed you.” Bolt shakes his head.
“You know what I think? It takes a hell of a lot more than DNA and the process of labor to make a mother. You’re mom is lost…a very lost woman, trying to find something. I could never figure out what she was searching for,” I admit with a shrug. “So, I just focused on you and me. Because no matter what, you had to be all right. I’d change her for you if I could. But nothing I’ve ever said or done has woken her up. It’s like she’s living in a dream world. Her reality is different than ours. I’m not excusing it,” I say quickly when his face wrinkles up, “I’m explaining it. She took a wrong turn and never got back on the path.”
“How is Aunt Blue so different?”
“That’s the twenty million dollar question,” I say.
Bolt shakes his head. “I guess it’s something I’ll never get. She used to talk about Aunt Blue like a dog until I told her I wouldn’t sit around and listen,” he whispers.
I frown. The thought fills me with anger. “She did what?”
He looks up at me with fear in his eyes.