Page 42 of The Lies We Told Ourselves

My father rounded his desk, sitting in his seat with a sigh before opening the top drawer of his desk. He drew out a manilla file and dropped it onto his desk. It baffled me how a man who had been so successful in life could still live in an analog age. Or maybe it was just his dirty secrets that he preferred to hide away in his paper files.

“I have my man looking for him…”

“Don’t bother. We’ll do it ourselves.”

Gage would never come home if our parents were the ones making the offer. He needed to know that his brothers wanted him. That we didn’t blame him for the things our mother had dragged him into as a child.

My father sighed, leaning back in his chair. I could almost see the gears spinning as he tried to figure out how to use this to his advantage.

“Okay.” He held out the file for me, and I cautiously took it.

“Okay?” There was no way it would be this easy.

“Yes. I know I’ve been a terrible father. That I turned a blind eye to things that shouldn’t have happened. I should have beenmore present. I should have been stronger for you boys. I failed you.”

“Terrible things? The nights when she locked us in the stables for failing to achieve her impossible standards. The staff she fired for sneaking us food when she’d decreed that hunger would make our minds sharper. Are these the terrible things you’re only now regretting?”

My father went pale. There was no way he hadn’t known, even if that was the impression he wanted to give. He couldn’t have been so blind that he didn’t know what was happening in his own house.

“I’ve made so many mistakes that I don’t know how to make up for it,” he admitted.

“Sometimes there is no making up for the things you did in the past. Sometimes you just have to live with the consequences.”

I turned around to storm out of the house only to find my mother standing in the doorway, glaring at me like I was something that had been dragged in on the sole of a shoe—not one of hers, of course. She’d never stoop so low as to have that happen.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m saving my brothers from having to come to this place. But don’t worry, I’m leaving now.”

She didn’t move. Even at her barely five feet in height, she just stood there and looked down on me. I wasn’t above pushing past her, but there was a sick part of me that wanted to hear what she had to say. To hear the cutting remark she’d spit at me to prove that I’d done the right thing.

“Regina, everything he said…”

“I did to make themstronger,” she spat at my father. “Someone had to. We all knew you were too busy.”

I looked back at my father over my shoulder. He’d surged out of his seat and was bracing his hands on his desk. The glare he leveled at my mother actually made me frown.

There was no possible way he hadn’t known it all. Was there?

“Booker, we need to talk,” my father called after me as I took another step forward to leave.

My mother sneered at me. I knew I was her greatest disappointment, but I didn’t know when she’d started to hate me this much.

“Let him go,” she scoffed. “We don’t need his kind around here. Think of the property value, Jasper.” Then she laughed like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.

“Regina, for god’s sake,” my father snapped.

“There’s a reason why people take out the trash, dear. All it does if you keep it around is stink up the place.”

“Shut. Up!” My father bellowed so loudly that my mother’s mouth actually snapped shut with a click of her teeth.

Spinning on the spot, she stormed out of the room, leaving behind a cloud of Chanel that caught in the back of my throat, making me want to gag.

I was a step behind her, ready to put this place and the people in it behind me for as long as I could get away with.

“Booker, wait!” my father called after me. I heard his footsteps clacking on the marble floor behind me. I just didn’t want to stop and talk to him.

I had what I needed. There was nothing else left here for me.

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