Thoughtful (Thoughtless, #1.5)(196)
“It seems that my mother was…enamored with my father’s best friend. So when dear old Dad had to leave town for several months…some family emergency thing back East…you can imagine his surprise, when he came back home to find his blushing bride pregnant.”
Kiera’s mouth fell open, and I could tell she’d instantly spotted the similarities to our own situation. I held my hands out to my sides and put on a sarcastic smile. “Surprise, honey.”
By the shock on Kiera’s face, she hadn’t suspected my dad wasn’t my real dad. Of course, no one did. That was our family’s greatest secret, and biggest shame, and it wasn’t something we openly discussed. With anyone. “What did your dad do?” she asked.
“Ahhh…Well, here is the part where my mother showed her true brilliance.” Calmly looking her in the eye, I told Kiera the exact excuse my mother had given my father. “She told him that she was raped while he was gone…and he believed her.”
Needless to say, hearing Mom’s chosen fable blew Kiera’s mind. Honestly, Mom’s tale blew my mind too, even after all this time. Her face paled, I could tell, even in this dim lighting, and I knew what she was thinking—What sort of person does that? I didn’t have a good answer for her very good question, but I knew the price I had paid for Mom’s deception: Dad had seen me as an abomination from the time of my conception. “He looked at me as the seed of a monster from day one. He hated me before I was even born.”
Kiera gave me a sympathetic kiss on the cheek, whispered she was sorry, then asked why my mom would do that. I shrugged. I’d asked myself that a few times too, and all I had ever been able to come up with was one thing: fear.
“She didn’t want to lose everything, I guess.” A cold laugh escaped me. “Once she played that card though, man, she committed to it. There’s even a police report somewhere, blaming some generic white guy. My birth certificate even says ‘John Doe’ under the ‘father.’ Dad wouldn’t claim me,” I told her in a whisper. Dad’s refusal to lie for my sake said a lot about how he really felt about me. Even though he’d dismissed me in person every day of my life, it was surprisingly painful to be formally rejected on a legally binding piece of paper.
“God, Kellan…And they told you all this?” Disbelief was as clear as the empathetic tears on her cheeks. Kiera couldn’t believe my mom would say such a thing, and she found it hard to believe my parents had let me know about such a horrific incident, real or imaginary.
“Repeatedly. It was practically my bedtime story. Good night, boy…by the way, you ruined our lives.” For as long as I could remember, I’d known about the rape. Why my parents had thought it important for a child to know that, I would never understand. But then again, they had done several things that I would never understand. Why couldn’t they have looked past everything and loved me anyway? Was I so awful?
More tears falling from her eyes, Kiera asked “How do you know about your…about the best friend?” I was glad she hadn’t said “father.” He wasn’t a dad to me, and he never would be…wherever the hell he was. I didn’t care what our DNA said, that man was nothing to me.
With a sigh of regret, I told her how my mother had made a bad situation even worse. “Mom. She told me the truth. I guess my…sperm donor dad…bagged out when she told him she was pregnant. She never saw him again. It broke her heart…and she hated me for it. I think she hated me more than Dad did.” It hurt to admit that, but I’d always suspected as much. While Dad took it out in physical ways, Mom was always distant. She never helped me when Dad was on one of his rampages. Over the years, she spent more and more time keeping busy outside of the house and said less and less to me. I think the scars I’d received from her had taken a lot longer to heal. If they ever really had.
Her touch full of compassion, Kiera held me and kissed me. It lightened my heart to have her near me while I dug up these old wounds. Some, I’d never really dealt with before. “You never told your father the truth?” she asked. “Maybe he would have been—”
I knew where she was going with that, but I cut her off. “He would never have believed me over her, Kiera. He hated me. I only would have gotten brutally hurt, and I generally tried to avoid that.” He would have chosen to believe Mom over me any day of the week. I could have had the paternity test in my f*cking hand, and he still would have said I was wrong. And in a way, I had displayed my true paternity to him every day…the truth of who my father really was was painted all over my face.
“He had to have known anyway,” I mused, after shooting down her suggestion.
“Why?” she asked, surprised.
Recalling old photographs I’d seen, I gave Kiera a sad smile. “I look just like Dad’s best friend…spitting image. Who knows, maybe that’s why he really hated me…Mom too.” The constant reminder of how I’d f*cked everything up for all three of them looked me in the mirror every day. And I knew for a fact that some of my parents’ cruelty toward me was purely because of my face. This face, which had gotten me so much attention over the years…had also brought me so much pain. There were times in my life when I would have done anything—anything—to not look the way I did.
Kiera’s face tightened in anger. So did her voice. “You were innocent. It wasn’t your fault.”