Very Wicked Beginnings (Briarwood Academy 1.5)

But it isn’t.

Because no matter who people think you are, no one really knows what’s underneath. The real truth is I’m an irresponsible, self-centered fuck who puts his own needs before others.

Just ask my mother. I’ve let her down plenty of times.

LATER THAT NIGHT at home, I relaxed in bed, finishing up some homework for Honors Chemistry.

Dad poked his head through the doorway. Earlier, he’d picked me up from school and taken me to the physician’s office where I’d gotten the okay that all was well. Since then, we’d eaten a light dinner and watched some television together. Typical evening at our house.

He eased in the room, adjusting his wire-framed glasses. “Hey, I gotta run out for a late staff meeting with the team.” He owns part of the Dallas Mavericks, like a big part. “You gonna be okay to check in on your mom in a few? Make sure she’s good?”

At the mention of her name, I got tense. Sighing, I eased out of bed. “Yeah, sure. She sleeping?”

I had no idea what her evening had consisted of since she hadn’t come down for dinner. She did that a lot, stayed in her room to read or watch mindless television. I don’t know what the difference was between watching it alone or with us but apparently there was.

He rubbed his jaw, wearing a thoughtful expression. “She seems good. No need to rush or worry, okay?” He checked his watch. “I’ll be home around midnight.”

I nodded and watched him walk down the hall, wishing I could leave too. That I could get in my Porsche and drive all the way out of Dallas, away from all the darkness that permeated my existence here in Highland Park.

Because much like my mother, I was alive but barely living.

A couple of hours later, I finished my homework and went upstairs to her room. As the door creaked open, my mouth got dry, wondering if maybe I should have come in sooner to see her, but that was stupid.

She’d said she wouldn’t try to kill herself again. She’d promised me.

I eased over to her bed and found her safe and sound, lying curled up like a little girl. Long dark hair cascaded across her pillow and rested against honey-colored skin. My mother was Brazilian and beautiful—everyone said so. She’d met and married my father while they’d both been students at Baylor University, both of them in the business department. He had light brown hair with pale skin and freckles while she was petite and exotic. They were opposites in personality too. He was gregarious and fun and loved to talk. She, well, wasn’t. Not anymore.

He loved to tell the story of how they met. About how he fell in love with her as soon as she walked into his dorm room on his buddy’s arm. Yeah, my dad loved her so much he stole his friend’s girl. Oh, he’d had to work for it because apparently she’d played hard to get, but he’d eventually won her over with his charming personality and relentless pursuit. His motto was all’s fair in love when a drop-dead gorgeous Brazilian is involved. I smiled, picturing him wooing my mom. Begging her to go to dinner with him. Asking her to marry him.

That had been nearly twenty years ago, though, and now they didn’t even share the same bed. And I don’t think it was dad’s choice. I’d watch him look at her sometimes. Like she hung the fucking moon. Like she was his star in the sky. But she never gazed at him. Or me.

I leaned down and moved a wayward curl, brushing my lips against her cheek. She smelled good, and dammit if it didn’t make my whole body draw up in pain, remembering a time when she’d hug me and tell me she loved me. Rubbing my aching chest, I took a step back, putting distance between us, wanting to run out of that room.

Not wanting to face the reality of her sickness.

I just missed her. I missed her singing along with a song on the radio; I missed her coming to my football games; I missed the way we used to be.

But I got it. I understood. She was hurting, slouching around the house with this hopeless look on her face. And that expression paralyzed me, yet ripped me up inside. Because she was withering away right in front of us, and no matter what we said or did, she refused to come out of it.

Her diagnosis was severe depression. Not cancer. Not even close. Physically, I guess she was healthy, if you overlooked the twenty pounds she’d put on in the past four years.

She stirred, and I took another step closer to the door. I didn’t want her eyes to search the room and find mine. Because I knew what I’d see … blame. The same thing I saw every day when I looked at myself in the mirror.

Because her sickness was all my fault.

I HEADED BACK to my room for a shower.

As I stripped off my track pants and shirt, I checked out the tattoo Dad had taken me to get for my birthday this past year, the first of many tats I planned to get. This one was a long vine of twisting red roses, resting on my upper arm and curving back on my shoulder. Most of the roses were in full bloom while one—a black one—was closed up, a circle of thorns protecting it. I’d gotten that flower for my sister, Cara. I flexed my heavy bicep muscles, watching the flowers move around on my skin.

Like that dark bloom, Cara was dead. She’d been gone for four years, but not a day went by that I didn’t think of her snaggle-toothed smile and strawberry-scented hair. She’d been born eight years after me, a surprise baby. A tiny replica of my mother, she’d been adored by everyone.

And at that thought, a slice of pain cut into me, and I nearly doubled over on the sink. Shit, what a fuck-up I was.

Must not think about her, I told myself.