Love Thy Neighbor (Friend-Zoned)(78)

My blood boils and before I can control it, my mouth opens and hate flies out. “Oh no, mommy. You have no right to be here. How dare you come here?”

Her face becomes pained. Her eyes… Asher has her eyes. She opens her mouth to speak but I cut her off. I glare at her through narrowed eyes and tell her, “He is not your son. In order for him to be your son, you would’ve had to protect him at some point in your dismal life. But you didn’t. Did you?”

Her face crumbles, and I get a twisted sense of pleasure knowing that I’m hurting her. I spit, “Despite all the ugliness you helped put in his life, he survived. You know you helped put that ugliness there, don’t you?” Tears of rage pour down my face. I croak, “You stood there while your husband burnt holes into him, cut him like a piece of meat, beat him and broke his bones. You did nothing to stop that. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

She covers her mouth with her hand, closes her eyes and silently sobs.

I need to make her hurt. I want her heart to break.

I say quietly, “You can forget about him…because he forgot about you a long time ago. And I am not a hateful person, but I hate you and your husband both the same. If there is any justice in this world, his daddy will be shoveling shit in hell. You aren’t his mother. You are nothing. I am his family.”

I stop to take a good look at this woman. This awful, awful woman. I tell her, “Don’t ever come back here, Grace.” Then I turn on my heel and head back into my apartment.

Once inside, I rest my back on the door, cover my face in my hands and cry. Sliding down the door, I cry harder.

Sobs tear out of my throat and my heart breaks some more.

Come home, Ash.

***

God, whiskey tastes like ass.

Cringing as I take another sip, I really have no idea how he drank this shit almost every day of his adult life.

Sitting on my father’s grave, staring into it as if it’ll bring me some answers to the questions I don’t know how to ask, I wonder if he can see me right now.

My father is dead because of me.

I killed him without a bat of an eyelash.

He was a bad man.

It was a couple of months after I’d left that hell-hole. I took another route home, one closer to my old house. I guessed you could say I was curious to see how they’d been getting on without me. Secretly, I wanted them to be worse off. I wanted dad to realize that I wasn’t the shit thing in his life.

He was.

I climbed over the side gate, peeked through the kitchen window and froze at the sight before me.

He was wailing on mom. She looked like I used to. Black and blue. This was obviously not the first time she took a beating since I’d been gone.

My anger boiled into a rage and unable to stop myself, I went around the house to the back door and into the kitchen. I took hold of a ten-inch kitchen knife, tore my father off of my barely-conscious mother and reared my arm back before piercing the very center of his gut. I pushed that knife in as deep as I could.

It took longer than I expected it to, but I took pleasure watching him gurgle and gasp for breath. I saw the exact moment the light faded from his eyes.

Unsure what to do next, I called Ilia. He told me he’d take care of it and to come straight home.

My mom tried to hug me but I pushed her away. I told her someone would be there soon to clean up and that she needed to take care of herself. With only a nod, I left my mother with my father’s dead body and never looked back.

Ilia came home later than normal that night and came straight up to my room. He took the bag full of bloodied clothes I’d been wearing in one hand and searched my face. Just before he turned to leave, he told me in his heavily accented speech, “Turns out your mom knifed him in self-defense. She’s lucky to be alive, son.” Putting a hand on my shoulder, he said, “You did good, Asher. She needed you and you came to her. You are like the archangel Michael. The protector. I’m glad you’re a part of this family.”

Family.

I have one of those.

Coming to an epiphany, I tell my father’s headstone, “I’m nothing like you.”

I have to get home. I have to see my girl. I somehow have to fix what I f*cked up.

But before I do, there’s one stop I need to make.





Chapter Twenty-Five

Grace





I knock on the front door and hundreds of memories course through my brain at once.

It’s been a long time. I used to spend most of my summers here.

The front door opens and the short, plump woman asks, “Can I help you, son?”

Shorter than I remember, that’s for sure. Wearing thick coke bottle glasses, I can see her pretty green eyes peeking out from somewhere behind them. Her hair is in a neat bun at the back of her head. Smiling at the sound of her voice, I tell her, “Yeah, aunt Faith, you can help me.”

She gasps dramatically and holds onto the door frame for support. She leans closer and whispers, “Asher, baby? Is that you?”

“Yeah. It’s me,” I say, chuckling at her dramatics.

She blinks. Once, twice, three times.

Then she squeals and jumps up and down in excitement, her plump body jiggling with every jump. She yells, “Oh, sweet Jesus! Oh lordy lord! I prayed and prayed and prayed for you, baby.”

She jumps into my arms and smiling like an ass, I hug her tight. I missed my aunt. Pulling back a little, she places her hands on my forearms and says, “Let me get a look at you!”