Ten (My Brothers Best Friend) (24 page)

My eyes open to find my Mom sitting next to my bed.

“Where are DJ and Leon?” I murmur.

“I sent them to go eat. DJ is just a child. He shouldn’t see his mother like this.”

“Dalton. Where is he?”

She straightens in the chair. “Why would he be here?” Her face scrunches up, showing all the age lines that decorate her skin. She looks old. When did that happen? She’s too skinny lately, which doesn’t suit her and makes her skin sag a little under her chin.

“I know what you did. What Dad and Jonah did to him, Mother.” I want to sound more disgusted. I want to be standing so I can poke my finger in her judgmental chest but I think I may break into a crumbled mess on the floor if I try to stand up. I’m physically and mentally worn out. Beaten and fragile.

“What has that boy been feeding you now?” she spits out with her hateful tongue.

“I don’t want you here.”

“Alex, I flew home from my honeymoon to be here for you.”

“I don’t care.” I try to shout but it hurts the stitches. “Did you even ask Leon what I’m doing here?” I ask, intrigued to know if she bothered to notice where she actually flew back to.

“I assumed it was to do with that hellish boy.”

I laugh and then wince in agony. “How can you still keep up this pretense? He did nothing wrong, Mother.”

She stands, slamming her handbag down on the foot of my bed.“He was sleeping with an underage teen!”

“I loved him, Mother. I still love him, and you and Dad helped take him away, not just from me, but from DJ.”

“He was a bad apple, Alex. Rotten from the seed.”

“No, that was your son, not Dalton.”

“He is a Moore, Alex. They are all poison.”

“My son is a Moore,” I remind her.

She huffs an exaggerated breath and turns her back on me. “You’re twisting my words.”

“Why do you hate them so much?”

Her body swings back around to face me. “What?”

“Why do you harbor such hate for them? What did they do that actually affected you?”

“They got your brother on to drugs. Dalton impregnated my underage daughter,” she says in disbelief, like she’s talking to an idiot.

“You had this thing about them way before that, Mom, and Jonah made his own bed. He was on drugs way before Dalton was even in the picture and you know it. You just refused to see it because maybe then you’d have to take responsibility.”

“You’re tired and in pain. You’re not thinking clearly. I’m going to go to the hotel and take a nap. I’ll be back later to collect DJ from Leon.”

“The hell you will.”

“What?”

“I don’t want him with you. I don’t want you here.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes I do.”

Snatching up her purse, she flees the room. I buzz for the nurse to tell her I’m in too much pain. I think I busted a stitch.

I
don’t know much about girly shit but I know girls like their own things when it comes to clothes and beauty products. Alex’s stuff was in the wreck and taken away with the car. I went to the mall and asked the sales assistants to fill bags with everything a woman would need and want. I didn’t like the way they looked at me, like I was some sort of hero. I’m not the fucking hero, I’m the reason she’s in the hospital. Lisa has issues because of me and it was my family who fucked up Alex’s brakes.

I paid with cash and took the bags to the hospital. I hate these places; they have the same cold atmosphere as prison - despair, hopelessness, and pain.

As I get to her floor, my feet halt when I see Mrs. Murphy walking towards me. She is coming straight at me and I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel or act. Looking me up and down, she comes to a stop a foot in front of me. She’s too fucking close. Her old woman perfume is invading my nose and making me want to sneeze.

Why do all older women wear lavender or vanilla scents?

“You son of a parasite,” she spits, surprising the hell out of me.
Son of a parasite?
That’s new. “I don’t know what you’ve been filling her head with but it won’t work.” She pushes one of her skinny fingers into my chest; the tip of her nail bites into the skin. “All you and that uncle of yours do is ruin lives. I won’t let Alex be your victim and if you think I’m going to let you near that boy, you have another thing coming.”

I’ve heard enough from her for one lifetime.

“How evil can you be? She’s your daughter, and to save your son you sacrificed her happiness. You made your own grandchild grow up fatherless.” I shove her finger away.

“He wouldn’t have survived prison.” She shakes her head.

Is she serious with that bullshit?

“So don’t matter about sending an innocent boy to jail instead?”

Her face screws up in a hateful sneer. “Let’s not kid ourselves, Dalton Moore. You were not innocent. Alex was sixteen, for God’s sake. God knows how long you had her warming your bed. You and your disgusting uncle probably passed her around like candy.”

I reach out, grabbing her around the throat, making her drop her purse and pull at my hand. I hear some gasps from people passing us.

“You disgusting old bitch. I loved her and waited until she was ready. I was going to marry her and do right by her. Where do your sick, perverted thoughts come from?” I force her away from me as I release her, and hold my hand up to the security coming my way. “It’s fine,” I tell them. “She was just leaving.”

“How did you get her to come back here?” she chokes out, rubbing at her neck dramatically.

I shake my head in bewilderment. “Her fucking Dad died! How can you not know this?”

She rocks back like I’ve hit her. “What?”

“Ma’am?” the security man asks. “Are you okay?”

She’s too flustered and shocked to answer them. She scrabbles to pick up her purse before she flees. How could she say such things about her own child?

The nurse is with Alex when I get to her room.

“Everything okay?” I ask, concerned that there are some bloody pads in a bowl.

“Just pulled a stitch. She’ll be fine.”

“My Mom is here.” Alex sighs, sounding exhausted.

“I brought you some things.” I hold up the bags and place them on the chair beside her bed.

“What’s in there?”

“Clothes, underwear, girly shit.” I smile and go to stand beside her so I can touch her and breathe her in.

The nurse pulls her gown closed and drags the covers back up her body. “You’re all set. Now don’t going busting anymore, okay?”

Alex nods and I thank her.

I sit down on the side of the bed and lean over to look in Alex’s eyes.

“We have a son.” I smile and tears fill her eyes.

“We have a son.”

“Leon seems like a good guy.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not like that.”

“But he wants it to be.”

“But I don’t.”

“Why?”

“W
hy?” he asks, and I’m not going to hide the truth. I’m sick of the lies and secrets. I’m scared to put myself out on display but I’m not hiding anymore. I’m not pretending I can live my life without loving him. It’s not possible and never will be.

“Because he isn’t you. I couldn’t move on. You made me happy in a way no one else ever could. You were always it for me, Dalton, even at ten years old I knew it was you. My soul mate. Why didn’t you return my letters?”

Pain flickers in his eyes hearing the sting in my voice. His head comes down and rests on my forehead.

“I didn’t read them. I needed to be someone new in there, Alex. You have no fucking idea of what it’s like inside those walls. The person I always promised myself, promised you I’d never be, emerged from inside me and took over.”

“And who is that?”

“My father. Maybe this was always my fate. You can’t escape the sins of the father, right?” He laughs mechanically, standing and throwing his hands into the air and then through his overgrown hair causing it to spike in all directions. His eyes are almost crystallized with the tears threatening to fall. He growls and shakes his head. “I’m not that boy you remember anymore.”

“You will always be that boy.” I swallow. “And I will always be that girl, missing you. I was haunting myself because a part of me died but couldn’t move on when you went away. My light dimmed and I hid it behind fake smiles. I put on my Mom face for our son, so he wouldn’t know that I wasn’t a whole person because my other half was taken and he never let me come see him. I felt physically weakened by not being near you. I know it doesn’t make sense.”