Before going into my class, I shouted to Hayley from across the hall, “Tell Ollie I said his looks have nothing on Cole.”
Her face blanched. “Cole? Like, the Cole Christian beat up a few months ago?”
I nodded. “Just tell him…and tell him I said to fuck off while he’s at it.”
Hayley let out a small laugh and shook her head before turning around and walking into her class. Over her shoulder, she shouted, “You two are exhausting.”
She had no idea.
Chapter Ten
Ollie
The color yellow was always meant to be welcoming—bright, happy, all things golden—but it had been my least favorite color for several years now. I scanned the four yellow walls in my parents?
? bedroom as I sat with my back against the door. This room used to be my favorite room in the house. It hadn’t changed at all. After my mom passed, no one dared to enter it, let alone change it. Christian could barely even walk past the door without bending over at the stomach with pain. The large king bed still sat in the middle, untouched. I wasn’t even sure if my dad slept in it when he was home—which wasn’t often—but it looked like it hadn’t been slept on once in the last five years.
It felt like razors were in my throat when I swallowed, looking at my mom’s vanity—the vanity that changed me entirely. My mother’s perfume still sat with the lid beside it, and if I tried hard enough, I bet I could smell her flowery scent. The brush that laid next to it still had her blonde strands running throughout, and her makeup was still spilled all over the place.
My eyes dipped to the now fully closed drawer that ran underneath the top, the one that was ajar a year ago. I still regret the day I pulled it open and started digging.
That moment defined everything in my life after, and it was a moment I had been replaying in my head every single hour on the dot after my argument with Piper.
I’ll tell your secret.
I grew angrier with each passing day. Yesterday, I tried to catch her in a lie in front of Hayley, and I knew I was toying with her, crossing over that invisible line of keeping my mouth shut like she wanted, but fuck, did I want to break her. I wanted to break her down until she told Hayley what was going on, or until she told me everything and let me help her. I was half ready to tell Christian what I’d found a year ago just so Piper couldn’t dangle it over my head and keep me at arm’s length, but I stopped myself at the last second.
She told you to stay out of it.
I knew what it was like wanting people to stay out of your business. It was why I was racing in the first place. I wanted to do my own shit and shut everything and everyone out. Sometimes it made me wonder if that was how my mom felt when she got wrapped up in drugs. Was she trying to escape something? Was she trying to deal with shit on her own instead of relying on my dad?
But he’s not your dad, Ollie.
My head dropped between my knees as I ran my hands through my hair. It was a hard pill to swallow. I’d known for a year now that Daniel Powell wasn’t my father, and yet, every time I’d said it, it cut fucking deep.
I wasn’t a Powell—not by blood, at least—and I struggled with that every single day since I’d found my birth certificate tucked away in my mother’s vanity like it was in hiding.
My father and I got along fine. I mean, he wasn’t home much, so we rarely talked, and Christian and I had pretty much fended for ourselves for the last five years, but my father didn’t act like I was the bastard child that I actually was. He pretty much treated Christian and me the same. He gave us an allotted amount in our bank account each month, checked in with our grades occasionally, and boom, that was the extent of it. He didn’t treat me like shit or favor Christian. He was just Dad. Except he wasn’t my fucking dad.
And I had no idea if he knew that. He wasn’t on my birth certificate. The only name listed was my mother’s. So, where was he when she was giving birth? With Christian? My brother and I were only eleven months apart—Irish twins—and it was truly hard to fathom that my mom went out and got pregnant only two months after Christian was born. It didn’t make any sense.
But what did make sense was when I looked into the mirror or at a picture with Christian and me side by side, we looked nothing alike. We shared the same firm jaw, but that was it. He looked like Dad, and I didn’t.
Since I was young, I’d been hearing how strong the Powell genes were, and yet, I didn’t have a single feature. How could my dad not see that? Did he just chalk it up to me taking after my mom? Or did he know and pretended like he didn’t?
When I’d first found the birth certificate, I knew there was more to my mother than Christian and I thought. And just a few months ago, we learned how our mother truly died. Apparently, there were a lot of buried lies and lurking secrets.
Our mother had an ugly past, one that Christian and I had only touched the tip of.
And maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe my dad knew I wasn't his biological son. Christian probably wouldn't look at me any differently, but would it fuck up the memory of our mother even further? Would he and Dad butt heads again?
A growl escaped my chest as I slowly raised my head.
The funny thing was that even though Piper pretended she didn’t know my secret and acted like she didn’t know who I was that night at the party a year ago, it was comforting that she did know. She grounded me. It felt like I had someone in my corner, someone to share all the little secrets with, but now that she threw it in my face and threatened to tell, I felt more alone than ever.
Part of me didn’t believe she’d tell Christian, knowing very well that it was too personal of a secret to fuck around with, but that was a gamble in itself. Piper was proving she wasn’t who I thought she was.
Yet, I still had my phone pulled out to text Brandon.