3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Lennon
The scent of coffee pulls me toward consciousness even though the claws of my dreams do everything they can to hold on.
“Wakey wakey, sleepy head.”
The surprisingly gentle voice of Veronica whispers next to my ear, pulling me back into the land of the living.
“Mmm, I’m awake…” I murmur, brushing sleep from my eyes.
Blinking them open, I force myself to focus, and a bleary Veronica comes into view.
I take the mug of liquid gold from her hands, letting the warmth seep into my palms as I silently beg the caffeine to help me become something that resembles that of a human and not a total corpse.
I know without looking in the mirror that I am a mess.
After spending hours sobbing last night, I can feel just how puffy my eyes are. At least one of the girls tended to my hair, braiding it back away from my face so it is one less thing for me to deal with, at least for right now.
Today means facing more emotions. Ones I don’t think I’m ready to uncover, but are inevitable.
My father’s documents.
Or rather, Patrick Gilmore’s documents.
Even thinking his name makes my chest tighten.
What the fuck do I call the man who raised me?
I mean, I know that, in a legal sense, he’s Patrick.
But how do I undo the life I’ve lived? Is it appropriate to call him my father after everything that’s happened because father doesn't seem like the right word anymore? According to Brett, I had four doting fathers. And I got to see a photo of them a few months ago. I remember tracing my fingertips over the faded image of my mother and the four men gathered around her hospital bed, each of them looking down at me with unmistakable love. Suddenly, every question I’d ever had about where I came from had an answer.
I may have been my mother’s daughter, but it was my father, Glen, who I got my eyes from. The shape of my face. My smile. Even the way my eyes soften when I laugh belonged to him long before they belonged to me.
It’s hard to miss someone you never got to meet.
And yet, I do.
A part of me longs for them. The people who should have been with me for every milestone. Birthdays, scraped knees, achievements. Every version of me they never had the chance to know.
“How are you feeling this morning?” Veronica asks, lowering herself onto the edge of my nest.
I shuffle back so I am able to lean against the mountain of pillows behind me. I sigh, unable to meet either of their eyes just yet.
I still feel raw. Humiliated. Flayed open, every emotion sitting just beneath the surface, threatening to spill free if I let my guard down for even a second.
But, it does feel somewhat manageable now.
“I am okay.”
It’s not the complete truth, but it also isn’t a lie either.
Because I will be okay. Losing people, both ones that are already six-feet under and those that are still breathing is bound to be a process.
I just didn’t think it would ever be something that I would have to deal with.
Especially not in this capacity. In fact, I can’t remember a time in my life before losing my fathe–Patrick, that I ever had to deal with anything other than the usual social politics of being a female Omega.
I suppose I had always lived a drama-free, happy life until then.
Until now. So maybe these feelings of grief are as overwhelming as they are because this is a first for me.
Does that make me lucky?
If I had known about my birth parents earlier, would I have processed them differently? What kind of life would I have lived if I had known the truth all along, and was forced to be raised by the man posing as my father anyway? Is this luck?
“If you need more time, we can always leave the boxes for another day. The last thing we need is a rabid Omega on our hands,” Bronte says, making me chuckle.
I place my hand over hers, giving it a slight squeeze. “I promise I’m fine. Well, enough to go through the files. If I don’t do it now, I never will.”
Maybe I should have taken the girls up on their offer to leave this for another day, because I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for this shit.
But, we’re here now and while every instinct is telling me to crawl back into my nest and let the world rot around me, I need to put my big girl panties on and face this head-on.
It’s the only way I will ever move forward.
It’s the only way I’ll find my way back to myself instead of letting a pain I never chose dictate the woman I become.
Boxes upon boxes sit stacked in my cramped living room, freshly delivered and towering around us, each of us with our own pile in front of ourselves, trying to find something—anything.
So far, there has been nothing of interest.
Bills from when I was a child, random medical reports from when Patrick was a star forward on the team and a few paper receipts for old fines from long before I was born.
I haven’t given up hope yet, though. There has to be more hidden amongst decades of paperwork than unpaid and paid bills. Somewhere in these boxes is an answer. A reason. Something that explains why.
I can’t ask the man responsible anymore. Not even my mother or fathers. Dead men tell no tales, after all.
Giving up on the box in front of me, I reach for the next in the stack I’d claimed. Nothing has been labeled, which only makes this job even more painstaking.
Cracking open the lid, I find the first frame.
I can’t stop the smile that tugs at my lips as a young girl, no more than six years old, with pigtails and her missing front teeth smiles back at me.
I’m dressed in the Cardinals’ colors, my hockey kit looking at least two sizes too big for my frame.
The uniforms had been made for young future Alphas and Betas.
Boys.
Not a petite future Omega like I was.
I remember this photo.
I had spent the entire summer at the camp the team ran for the children. Patrick had questioned whether it was actually something I wanted to participate in.
I was the only girl, far smaller than any of the other kids in attendance, but that didn’t take away any of my enthusiasm or knowledge of the game.
I outplayed children far older than me. I’d proven my worth time and time again during those months.
I had offers to join the team. Did I accept?
No. Understanding the game fascinated me far more than playing it ever did.
While the other kids chased the puck, I chased patterns, statistics and game plans.
Even then, I wanted to know why a play worked more than I wanted to be the one scoring the goal.
Placing the photo frame to the side, I reach for the next one in the pile.
Uncovering the frame, all the breath catches somewhere in my throat.
A gasp escapes me before I can stop it. I am younger in this photo.
One of my pigtails sits lopsided while the other droops against my shoulder, and every one of my baby teeth is still intact, making me no older than four… maybe five.
But it isn’t me that has me so caught off guard. It’s the little boy standing beside me. A little boy I’d somehow forgotten until this very moment. My thumb brushes over his tiny face as memories I’d buried begin surfacing one after another.
We met at the park my nanny used to take me to while Patrick was settling into his role as coach.
I remember noticing the split on his lip before anything else.
Even then, I knew enough to recognize that cuts were supposed to hurt, and something about seeing one on someone so quiet had broken my little heart.
I’d spent what felt like weeks trying to find out what had happened to him, pointing to his lip, miming questions with the dramatic enthusiasm only a child could manage.
He always answered me.
I just never understood a single word.
His language wasn’t one I’d ever heard before, yet, somehow that never stopped us from becoming inseparable.
Children don’t need a shared vocabulary to become friends.
We built entire worlds out of stick, bark and our own imaginations.
The park transformed into castles, pirate ships and enchanted forests depending on whichever game one of us invented first. The rules changed every five minutes, and neither of us ever cared enough to argue about them.
I’d have to watch him lead by example as there was no way of knowing otherwise.
Somehow, we always understood each other anyway.
I never learned his real name. So I gave him one of my own.
The memory tugs another loose.
I’d tripped while racing him toward the swings, my knees skidding across the rough concrete before I could catch myself.
I remember the sting more than the fall itself.
But I remember his reaction most of all.
The color drained from his face so quickly I thought he might be the one who’d been hurt.
His wide eyes locked onto the blood trickling down my knee, pure terror replacing the shy smile he usually reserved just for me.
At the time, I hadn’t understood it.
I thought he was frightened because I’d fallen.
Now I know better.
He wasn’t scared of the blood.
He was scared of what came after it.
He refused to leave my side while my nanny cleaned the scrape, his little fingers wrapping around my hand with surprising strength for a child, I had thought.
A low, almost imperceptible growl vibrated in his chest as she reached for me, so soft it barely sounded human.
He thought she was going to hurt me. Because that was what happened when he got hurt.
The realization settles heavily in my stomach, making it ache.
I wish my naive little self had understood what I was seeing.
I wish I’d recognized the bruises for what they were instead of believing his clumsy gestures about falling over.
I wish there had been something I could have done for that sweet little boy whose eyes only ever seemed to brighten when we were together.
Wherever life carried him, I hope he found peace.
I hope someone eventually saw what I couldn’t.
We never got to say goodbye. One afternoon he was there, waiting for me by our favorite swings with dirt on his knees and that same shy smile. The next, he simply wasn’t.
I waited for days.
Then weeks.
Every afternoon I’d watch the path he’d always wandered down whenever he was running late, convinced I’d see his familiar silhouette appear around the corner. It never did.
My fingertips drift across the glass, tracing the outlines of our much younger faces.
“I hope you’re okay,” I whisper so quietly the words barely exist. After one last lingering look, I place the frame upright on the coffee table. That one can stay.
Not because it’s important to the answers I’m searching for, but because it reminds me that hope can survive even when memories don’t.
That it doesn’t always have to be complicated.
Once upon a time, the world had been as simple as scraped knees and uneven pigtails.
Imaginary games with a little boy whose name I’ll never know.
My first real friend.
Funny how a single picture can make the years between then and now disappear.
One moment, I’m in my twenties, drowning beneath questions that can never truly be answered.
The next, I’m a kid again, believing everyone is exactly who they say they are.
Believing grown-ups always tell the truth.
That people who love you couldn’t possibly build your life on a foundation of lies.
The little boy who never spoke a language I could understand never lied to me once.
He didn’t have the words to explain the hurt he carried, but somehow his silence had been more honest than every answer I’d ever been given.
Than anyone in my life so far. He never pretended to be someone he wasn’t.
And if there is a way I can find the little girl staring back at me through that glass, the little girl who loved unconditionally, cared so deeply, trusted without fear.
Maybe I can finally give her the life she always believed was waiting for her.
I owe her that much.
To be truly happy.