Beneath His Darkness (Healing Hearts #3) Read online

  Why? I ask myself. Why am I acting like such a little bitch?

  I worry that once I see him; I won’t be able to stop myself from killing him. And I want his punishment to be slow and torturous. I want him to feel every ounce of pain I’ve ever felt. Our father left me—never even came to meet me as a baby. If he hadn’t left, I could have grown up with a man who loved me. Instead, I grew up with a lie. A goddamn lie that ruined my life.

  Pretty boy is living the golden life while I’m picking up the pieces of shit left of mine. He’s going to learn when life has just been handed to you, someone with more to lose can always swoop in and take yours away.

  Tucker may be the one on that stage tonight, but I’ve learned a thing or two about acting. Acting is a lie. It’s all about manipulation. You want the audience to believe something that isn’t true. Tonight, I’m going to become an actor myself.

  I’ve gotten very good at lying since he died. The constant throngs of family, friends, neighbors, and people just looking for gossip on how Gloria is doing, stopping by with casseroles, all think she and I have a wonderful, loving relationship. I dote on her, like a loving son should, but as soon as they’re gone, I make it clear that I despise her, that I’ll never forgive her for the slut she is. I don’t speak to her. In fact, it takes everything within me not to spit on her every time I see her.

  Channeling my anger toward Gloria makes it so I can walk into Tucker’s school without needing to hunt him down and pummel him into the ground. I take a breath and walk through the doors. I buy my ticket and walk to the auditorium. A part of me wants to sit as close to the front as I can to get the best view of him as possible, but I don’t do that. Instead, I stay in the back so I can observe.

  I let people flitter past me, happy families excited to see their children on stage, and resentment burns through me like acid. That should be me. I should be here with my family, watching my brother on this stage, but my brother took that life from me.

  Now, he’ll pay for being so needy.

  The lights flicker in the auditorium, signaling it’s almost show time. I let one more family walk past me and allow myself another glimpse of what my life should have been like had Tucker not been such a selfish brat, needing our father’s attention all to himself.

  Angry again, I walk about ten seats into the middle section of the auditorium. No one is sitting back here so I figure I can observe Tucker as intently as I want without anyone noticing whether I respond to the play or not.

  Right before the lights dim, a man sits a few seats over from me. I find myself irritated. With all of the other empty seats in the back, he decides to sit here. I look over, about to say something, when I freeze.

  It’s him.

  Sitting three seats over from me is Mikos Stavros. Gloria asked him for a picture in case I ever wanted to know what he looked like. It’s the only thing I give her credit for lately. I didn’t think I’d be able to recognize him if I saw him, but there’s no denying this is him.

  His jawline is defined and his dark eyes are almost as dark as his hair. His face rests in the same intense gaze he had in the picture. He’s not smiling and maybe that’s how I know it’s him. There’s a seriousness to him that’s familiar to me. It’s like he’s frozen in constant thought.

  I’ve held his picture next to my face in the mirror a thousand times. I’ve compared my face to his and cursed his picture over and over for leaving me behind, like he’d hear me. I wanted him to know I was thrown away by another man who was supposed to love me, too. Screaming at his picture never brings me the peace I wish for. But, here he sits, where I can easily scream at him now.

  Did he sit here because he knows who I am?

  That doesn’t appear to be the case. Why is he staring into his lap? And, why is he sitting all the way in the back when all the families are up in the front?

  There are so many things I want to ask him, but the lights dim and I lose my chance. I promise myself I’ll introduce myself to him when the lights come back on. Maybe coming here is my chance at having a family after all. Maybe I can leave Gloria behind and start a new life. Maybe I can make Mikos see that I’m a better son than Tucker.

  I watch the play, alternating between studying Tucker and my father. It’s so weird to be this close to him and him not knowing who I am. I want to move closer and tell him my name, see what his reaction will be. But, I’m too afraid.

  I can’t have another father reject me.

  Every time I look at him, his eyes are glued to the stage. Pride wafts off him as he watches Tucker. I wonder if he could ever look at me that way. If I tell him who I am, would he come to my baseball games? Would he want to be a part of my life? I try not to hope, but I can’t stop myself. My father is barely out of arm’s reach from me.

  I have to force myself not to stare at him and face forward. I hate the way Tucker commands attention. I want him to be terrible, but he isn’t. He’s the opposite of terrible and it pisses me off. Not only does he have the life I want, but he’s talented and this crowd is fawning over him.

  My fingers dig painfully into my jeans as I try to control the rage building inside of me. I try to breathe deeply and tell myself I’ll have the first conversation with my father very shortly. It doesn’t calm my nerves, but it stops me from storming the stage and using my fists as battering rams against Tucker’s skull.

  I sit through the rest of the play without having the urge to inflict bodily harm on anyone. I may be making progress. After some time, maybe I’ll even learn to accept Tucker.

  But, not before I show our father his faults.

  The play ends and the cast bows together. In a minute, the lights will turn on. Knowing I’ll be able to introduce myself to my father has excitement coursing through me. I turn in my seat, ready to stand, as the cast takes their second bow. But Mikos is already walking away.

  I want to scream “No!” or “Stop!”, but I can’t make a scene. I simply watch him walk away, feeling my heart shatter all over again. I try to tell myself that maybe he’ll be in the lobby waiting, but something in my gut tells me he won’t.

  I always listen to my gut.

  Needing to calm down, I sit back in my seat and let a good portion of the auditorium clear out. I act like I’m studying the crowd, but I’m really practicing my lines. A good actor always knows his lines. Goddamn Tucker. This is his fault. He was here for him and I’m sure he left to go meet him. Once again, I’m left with no one.

  Not so many months ago, I had a mom and dad who loved me. Now, Nathan is gone and Gloria is someone I barely tolerate.

  Gloria.

  My near introduction to Mikos has me thinking back to the night Gloria told me the truth about him.

  Tears flow down her face, but I don’t care. She lied to me my whole life. She let me love him and now he’s dying and I can’t save him. After everything he’s done for me, I can’t do the one thing he needs from me.

  In this moment, I hate her for taking this from me.

  “Grant, please, let me explain.”

  “Explain what? You slept with another man. I have a father I know nothing about. He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know I exist.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” she whispers as more tears leak from her eyes.

  “What do you mean that’s not exactly true?”

  She shakes her head, like she’s trying to rid bad thoughts from her mind. I don’t know what she’s thinking about, but she can’t make a comment like that and then say nothing.

  “What the hell does that mean, Mom? Answer me!”

  “He does know about you, Grant. We ran into him once when you were very young. He saw your eyes and knew you were his. He forced me to get a paternity test. I begged him to leave us alone. I told him we had a loving family and asked him to go home to his family.”

  I’m trying to make sense of what she’s saying. His family? I have siblings? Not only did she keep me from my real father, she kept me from my siblings?

 
She’s still talking and I realize I stopped listening after she said ‘his family’. I need to know how this happened. As much as I want to be away from my mother, I need answers more.

  “Mom, stop. I don’t know what you’re saying right now.”

  She stops whatever babbling she was going on about and just stares at me. I hate that she looks so lost. I hate that I feel anything for her. She took my whole world away. I shouldn’t feel a damn thing for her.

  “I need to know.”

  “Know what, Grant?” Hope shines in her eyes and it spears me in my heart. I feel no hope for our relationship. I can’t find the words in this moment to tell her I don’t think I’ll ever forgive her.

  “How did this happen? I want the truth. Why is he not my dad?”

  I cringe at the words as they pass through my lips. She does, too, visibly paling.

  “Grant, you can ask me anything. Anything but that. Don’t ask me to tell you about that.”

  I wish I could, but I need to know. Somewhere in her head… in her heart, she has to understand why I need to know.

  “I can’t. I need to know and I need to know now. I need you to tell me.” My words have turned pleading.

  She walks away from me and I feel my world fall more. She’s not going to tell me. I feel tears trying to force themselves out, but I can’t let them. If I cry now, I don’t know that I’ll be able to stop.

  “Meet me in the living room.”

  My head snaps up and I see her looking back at me over her shoulder. I don’t say anything, just head to the living room and sit down on the couch. After a minute or so, she walks in with glasses of water. It seems odd to me that she felt the need to grab drinks, but I don’t say anything about it. She places them on the end table and sits beside me.

  She sits silently, picking nonexistent lint off her pants. I want to tell her to get on with it, but truthfully, I’m scared of what she’s going to say. We sit in awkward silence for several minutes. I jump when she turns to look at me. Her eyes are misty, like she wants to cry, but she holds the tears back.

  “I want you to know, more than anything, I love your dad and always have. We wanted kids. Actually, we wanted lots of kids. We tried for a couple years and nothing was happening. I thought there must have been something wrong with me, so I went through a battery of tests without telling your dad. I found out I wasn’t the problem. I wasn’t the reason we couldn’t have kids. Your dad is such a big, tough guy. I knew it would devastate him to not be able to give me a child, but I could give him a child.”

  “Wait a minute,” I say, raising my hand to stop her from talking. “You find out that dad may not be able to have kids and you don’t even ask him to have tests done? You just go sleep with this other guy?”

  I watch as she takes several deep breaths. Instead of looking at me, she casts her eyes to her hands, watching as she wrings them together. Maybe my constant interrupting has pushed her beyond being able to talk to me? Rather than pushing her again, I sit quietly, without moving at all.

  “It was never as simple as just sleeping with another man, Grant,” she says.

  I want to believe her, with everything I am, but here I sit, proof that she did sleep with another man. Medical proof.

  “I was desperate. The man I loved and knew I would spend my life with would lose himself if he knew he couldn’t produce a child. Being a father meant everything to him. Everything. It wasn’t an easy choice for me to make, but I’d do it again to give him the joy he felt all these years having you.”

  My mouth gapes open. How can she say she would do it again? She destroyed me with this news today and I have no idea how my dad is going to react when he finds out.

  “I made the decision that when I traveled for work, I would look for a man who looked like your dad. Women know when to plan these things in our lives or close enough to that time. I had a couple failures.”

  “You were with my father more than once?” I didn’t mean to interrupt again, but I figured I was a one-night thing and then he walked away. I thought I wanted the truth, but this is all becoming far too real.

  “No. Mikos was only one night.”

  “But, you just said you had a couple failures.” Oh, shit. What she’s saying dawns on me as she sits quietly beside me, staring at the floor. Tears start falling down her cheeks and I know I should feel bad for my mother, but all I feel is rage.

  “There was more than one? You cheated on dad more than once? Why would you keep doing it when it wasn’t working? Maybe you should have started to think you were the broken one.” I’m screaming again and I can’t stop myself.

  “I wasn’t the broken one, Grant. And, I couldn’t stop until I gave your father what he wanted most. He wanted to be a dad. He talked about it all the time. I just wanted to make him happy. I wish you could have seen his face the day I told him I was pregnant.”

  “But I wasn’t his,” I spit in her face. “How could you let him think all these years I was?”

  “He needed you,” she says back gently.

  “What about my real father? Didn’t he need me? Didn’t he want me?”

  “Mikos is a good man. I think he would have been a part of your life if I hadn’t proven to him that you were living a good, happy life with Nathan and me. Besides, I didn’t want to split up his family. He had a beautiful wife and son. I couldn’t ask him to give any of that up when I took advantage of him at a time when he was too out of control to say no.”

  “What are you saying, Mom? I don’t understand what any of this means.” I feel like she’s talking in riddles.

  “Mikos was upset the night I met him. He drank himself into oblivion. He had no idea what was going on or what happened between us. I took advantage of the situation to get what I wanted. I wanted you and I got you. That’s all that mattered to me. I didn’t care what it would do to him if I ever ran into him again. I never thought about the kind of life he had. I honestly never thought I’d see him again.”

  I don’t recognize the woman sitting beside me. When did she become a monster?

  “He had a son who he belonged with. You were with us and we loved you. That’s all that mattered. I talked to him and he agreed to let us raise you and went back to his family. I do have a picture of him, though. I asked for it in case you ever found out about him.”

  “I have a brother.” The words squeak past my lips. “Do you know about him?”

  I vaguely hear her tell me his name is Tucker. She tells me she’s talked to Mikos a few times over the years and that he’s filled her in on how Tucker has grown. It sounds like he loves him very much. Nowhere in this conversation does she say that my father asked how I was doing. Apparently, only Tucker matters.

  Now, the rage I feel has doubled.

  My mother betrayed me. She took away my ability to save my dad and Tucker took all the love our father could have for the two of us. Even my mother talks about him like he’s the second coming of Christ. Her smile as she tells me of her talks with Mikos, about this other son of his, turns my heart to stone.

  Tucker has taken everything. He lived the good life. He still is. That will change. I’ll see to it.

  That was the night I stopped calling Gloria mom. She told me the rest of the story about her exploits of cheating on Nathan while I sat there in shock. She even drugged one of the guys. It was more than I could take, more than I ever should have had to take.

  Everything changed for me that night. I lost my mother. I found out I had a brother and learned I despised him without ever meeting him. I feared what the knowledge of Nathan finding out the truth would do. Guess I was right to fear that.

  Once I feel calm enough, I grab the notebook I had placed on the seat beside me and head for the lobby. I stand against the wall, waiting for the cast to walk out. I watch people milling about. Families hold flowers, students chat, and faculty watch for anyone getting out of line. It’s all so normal. I miss normal. It wasn’t that long ago that that was my life.

  A c
ommotion on my right pulls me out of my turbulent thoughts. The cast is pouring into the hallway and Tucker is immersed in the group. Everyone is staring at him adoringly. It makes me sick. Does no one see him for the leech he is?

  I watch him smile at his mass of mindless minions, all following his every move, waiting to see what he’ll do or say next. Christ, they act like he’s already famous. He high fives a few guys, gives hugs to some of the girls, and waves his goodbye. The crowd parts and lets him walk through.

  This is my chance.

  I head him off at the exit. “Tucker, my name is Ray Hoffman. I’m doing an article for the Tribune. Would you mind if I ask you a couple questions?”

  He stops and stretches his hand out to me. It catches me off guard, but I take his hand in mine and give it a firm shake. I have to work extra hard not to crush his hand or pull him off balance while I throw my other hand out and punch him in the face. Everything about touching him feels wrong. My skin crawls and I want to scrub my whole body clean from the contact.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Ray. You’re doing an article on the play? I’m surprised anyone cares about a high school play.” He shrugs his shoulders, but I’m sure it’s an act. He wants his name plastered everywhere.

  “Well, there’s talk that you’re the next big thing.”

  “Yeah right,” he huffs.

  “Seriously. I hear you’re headed to L.A. soon. It’s all the talk across several towns around here. Everyone is saying you’re going to put Kansas on the map for something other than that famous line from The Wizard of Oz. You’re a movie star in the making.”

  “I don’t know about all that, but I am heading to L.A. It’s time for a change.”

  “Running away from all the ladies?”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” he says sarcastically. I really don’t like him. “No, I just don’t fit in this town. Too many people that I rub the wrong way.”

  He rubs me the wrong way.

  “I find that hard to believe. I saw the throngs of adorers when you walked into the hallway. It seems like everyone loves you.”

  He laughs, and I don’t mean a small chuckle. I’m not sure why he found that so funny. Does he think it’s humorous to have people idolize him? He’s a bigger dick than I thought.