Page 156 of Everything That Kills Me
Thomas nodded.
“I love you too,” Jack said quietly. “Not in the same way obviously, but when I thought you were dead…” He let out a shaky exhalation.
Thomas stared at him steadily.
“Are you my birth father?” Jack asked.
When Thomas didn’t say anything, Jack ploughed on. “You took care of me, taught me, clothed and fed me. Made me see the difference between right and wrong, which wasn’t always easy. You stopped me…”
“Going to the dark side?” Thomas lifted one eyebrow.
“If I had a lightsaber, I’d hit you with it, Darth Vader.”
Thomas chuckled.
“You kept me human. You didn’t let me become a monster.”
“But in sending you to school, I put you on a collision course with Zeph.”
“Don’t you dare regret it.”
“No point in regrets.”
“I remember what you told me to forget,” Jack said. “My name, where I come from, where I lived, what that house was like, what they were like and what they did.”
Thomas tensed slightly.
“My mother was an addict. I understand more now than I did then. She might have been pretty and kind once upon a time, but she became too dependent on him to think about anything other than where her next fix was coming from. He should have looked after her and he didn’t. But she liked her life.”
“She was pretty and kind once upon a time.”
And there it was. Jack didn’t blink.
“I worked at the British Embassy in Moscow. She thought she’d caught me in a honey-trap, but I was, in reality, catching her. Yana was the daughter of someone very important in the Russian government. She was beautiful. Smart and cheeky. A bit of a rebel. I fell a little in love with her, as much as I’m capable. Though not in love enough. I used her. She found out who I was and threatened me, told me she was pregnant with my child.”
Jack’s heart was pounding.
“I thought it was a lie. First, that there was a child. Second, that it was mine. I was sent back to the UK and I resigned. Changed my career. Then, years later, a contract came up in St Petersburg and I thought I’d… Well, I’m not entirely sure what I planned but I saw you being beaten with a stick while she watched in a drug-fuelled daze and did nothing. Unacceptable whether you were my child or not.”
“Were they dead before you set fire to the house?”
Thomas nodded.
“Did you do a DNA test?”
“Back in the UK.”
“And?”
“Are you sure you want to be told, knowing what I’ve done?”
“Would you want to be my father, knowing what I’ve done?” Jack huffed. “You don’t need to tell me the result. You’ve been all the father I could have ever wanted. Nothing changes that.”
“I… I could have been better. I should have been better.”
It wasn’t often that Jack saw Thomas emotional.
“I didn’t look at the DNA results,” Thomas said. “It didn’t matter. You were my son. The longer you were with me, knowing what I’d put you through, I thought it would be worse if I knew you were mine. But after you almost died in France, I looked. If you’d needed a kidney, part of my liver, my heart…”
