Page 105 of Poetry of Flowers

I liked the sound of that.

ChapterThirty-Five

KAYDEN

The house was even bigger than it had looked online.

I had given Autumn my credit card and told her to buy Tillie anything she looked at twice while I was gone. The two of them went clothes shopping, and I told Tillie I was going to take Theo to a music equipment store, and we would meet again in an hour for dinner. We had already spent the entire day together, so leaving her for an hour wasn’t a problem.

Theo drove with me, but I had to go inside alone. He would wait in the car.

I had been standing here for a total of five minutes already, going over what I was going to say again. He was the main reason why I was here today. When I got up this morning, I knew what to say. When I ate breakfast, I had practiced it in my head. But now my heartbeat was fast, and I was sweating more than normal, trying to get my breathing back to normal.

I stared at the doorbell with the name Bressett. If I had been born into a marriage, this would have been my family name. Kayden Bressett, however, didn’t sound natural in my ears nor did it look good on paper. I had tried.

“Can I help you?” a girl’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I turned around to look into a kind of distorting mirror.

She was the girl from Instagram.

Hope Bressett, my half-sister.

The sun was about to set, and her black hair shimmered orange in the light. Even though we looked pretty similar, our eyes were different, I had my mother’s green eyes, but Hope’s eyes were brown.

“Uh yes, I’m here to see Clark Bressett,” I explained, the lump in my throat hurt when I tried to talk, and every idiot could see how nervous I was.

“That’s my father, he’s probably in his office. I’ll show you.”

She sounded friendly. I watched her unlock the door and throw her bag on the floor. “You can come inside,” she laughed when she saw I was still standing glued to the doormat.

I took a deep breath and stepped inside. The open-plan living area was massive, with till ceilings and windows facing a neat garden on the other side.

“You’re pretty young for one of my father’s clients.” Hope observed as she kicked off her shoes and walked past me into their living room.

There were framed family photos everywhere. They looked so happy. I could have been raised here, if my mother hadn’t lied, I could have had a father who loved me. A father who wasn’t ashamed of my existence.

There is nothing about you that I could love.

Patrick’s voice still haunts me.

“Yeah, I’m here for my mom, she was a friend of your father when they were in high school, and she asked me to say hello. I’m here with school” I lied. She didn’t need to know who I was. I knew it would mess with her head if she knew I was her brother, sure did with mine.

“Oh, that’s lovely! That means you’re from Grand Lee, Washington, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I’m dying to visit, Dad talks so much about his life back then, but since my grandparents died, we never got a chance to see the town.” She talked a lot and fast.

“Grand Lee is a boring town, there is nothing fascinating there. We barely have any tourists.”

“Still, it would be so interesting to see where my dad grew up. By the way, I’m Hope.” She held out her hand for me and I took it.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Kayden Kidd.”

She looked at me like I just slapped her.

“How could I not see it! Of course, you are Kayden Kidd! I used to see you on TV and in magazines all the time,” Hope chatted on excitedly.

I was only in magazines because my father loved to show us off, more things to talk about meant more attention and money.

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