CHAPTER TWO
Kalen
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Surprise, surprise, I think bitterly as I shake my head.
Dalton lets out a heavy sigh as he drops his arm from around my shoulders, and I begin to angrily chew the inside of my mouth.
“Anything in particular you want for dinner?” he asks me, trying to sound as cheerful as possible again.
Dalton is the light at the end of the tunnel. He does his best to keep a merry home, even though it’s been plunged into bitter resentment by an absentee mother, and so much fucking misplaced hate.
Seventeen years of anger directed toward a man we’ve never met, who seemingly has this iron grip around our mother’s heart. One that we haven’t been able to pry away, not even to get the slightest bit of at least some kind of affection from her.
“I’m not really hungry. I’m still chewing on the chip that seems to keep growing on both of our shoulders,” I state curtly.
“Pizza it is,” he says with a laugh as he gives me a nudge.
My brother is the only reason I get up in the mornings anymore. He does his best to give me all of the attention Hailey doesn’t, always gets excited when I do well on an exam, and is constantly looking for ways to keep us both busy and out of her way.
As if she even knows we exist.
I scratch my chin thoughtfully as we start down the street, headed toward home.
Home—a place where the heart is supposed to be, where one should feel the safest, happiest ... loved.
“Hey, did you hear what happened to Missy Danvers during gym class?” Dalton asks, desperate to break the silence between us.
I cast my brother a look, one full of the fake interest he’s so used to giving me himself, and shake my head.
With a grin, he begins to tell me all about how the homecoming queen fell flat on her face in front of the entire gym.
And the story keeps the melancholy silence at bay all the way home.
___
My eyes are on the upstairs window.
I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of her.
To see her normally wild eyes fixed on the world outside, continuously oblivious to the fact that her sons are home and are hoping for a sliver of attention.
Or at least, I am.
Dalton doesn’t seem to care anymore, though I think it’s just a façade because he still calls her Mom, whereas I address her by the name she was given at birth.
Because Hailey isn’t a mother.
She hasn’t been a mother since we entered kindergarten and were forced to learn how to take care of ourselves, while her obsession over seeing our father again grew like a malignant tumor with no signs of survival.
We’re the sons of Luke Greene.
We have to honor his name.
That was one of the last things I remember her ever saying to us with a clear head on her shoulders.
As I drop my backpack on the inside of the door and close it behind me, I’m left wondering the same thing I always have, ever since she made her last coherent babble.
Who the hell is Luke Greene?