The Monster (Boston Belles 3)

I believed him.

I knew she did, too.

“You’ll never see me again.” Cat’s voice rattled, like her throat was full of coins. “He is rotten to the core, Troy. That’s why you love him. You see yourself in him. His darkness calls to you.”

That was when I turned into a pillar of salt. Or at least that’s how it felt. I was afraid if someone touched me, I would shatter.

I could be like Troy.

I had darkness. And violence. And all the things that made him great.

I had the same hunger and disdain for the world and heart that was just that—a heart—with nothing much inside it.

I could turn a corner.

I could be something else.

I could be something, period.

That was a possibility I’d never considered before.

Cat left not long after. Then Troy and Sparrow talked. I heard Troy pour himself a drink. They discussed lawyers and what to tell Sailor. Sparrow suggested they send me to a Montessori school, whatever the heck that was. I tiptoed my way to bed, too tired to care about my own future. My knees knocked together, and I felt the beef jerky crawling up my throat. I made a pit stop in the bathroom and puked my guts out.

Orphan. A mistake. A monster.

I didn’t know how much time passed before they walked into my room.

I pretended to be asleep. I didn’t want to talk. All I wanted to do was to lie there with my eyes closed, scared that they’d decide they didn’t want me after all or that they were going to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.

I felt my bed dip as Sparrow sat on its edge. I had Boston Celtics green and white linen, a PlayStation, a TV, and a Bill Russell jersey hanging on my wall. My room was painted green and full of framed pictures of me with Troy, Sparrow, and Sailor at Disney, Universal, and in Hawaii.

My room back in Cat’s house was just a bed, a dresser, and a trash can.

No paint. No pictures. No nothing.

I never asked myself why.

Why the Brennans took me in.

Why I was a part of this fucked-up arrangement.

“We know you’re awake.” Troy’s whiskey breath fanned my hair over my eyes, making my nose twitch. “You’d be an idiot to fall asleep on a night like this, and my son is no idiot.”

I cracked my eyes open. His silhouette took up most of my room. Sparrow put her hand on my back, rubbing it in circles.

I didn’t shatter.

I released a breath.

I’m not a pillar of salt after all.

“Are you my real pops?” I blurted out but wasn’t brave enough to look at him when I asked. “Did you knock Cat up?”

I should’ve asked this long ago. It was the only thing that made sense. “You’d never give me the time of the day otherwise. You can’t let me hang out here just because Grandma Maria once scrubbed your toilets. Am I a bastard?”

“You’re not a bastard, and you’re not mine,” Troy said point-blank, averting his gaze to the window. The Boston skyline stretched out in front of him. All the things he owned and ruled. “Not biologically, anyway.”

“I’m a Greystone,” I insisted.

“No,” he hissed. “You’re a Brennan. Greystones don’t have the heart gene.”

I’d never heard about that gene. Then again, I skipped school most days in favor of smoking cigarettes outside bars and selling whatever it was I stole that day to help pay for my next meal.

“I ain’t perfect,” I sat up, glowering. “So if that’s what you want, some perfect yes-kid, kick me out now.”

“We don’t want you to be perfect.” Sparrow rubbed my back faster, harder. “We just want you to be ours. You are Samuel. A gift from God. In the Bible, Samuel was gifted to Hannah after years of praying. She thought she was barren. Do you know what barren means?”

“A woman who can’t have kids.” I shuddered. To have kids, you first had to make them, and I knew exactly how people went about making them—I caught Catalina practicing a bunch of times with her clients—and it was damn gross.

Sparrow nodded. “After Sailor was born, the doctors told me I couldn’t conceive again. Turned out, I didn’t have to. I have you. Your name means ‘The Lord Hears’ in Hebrew. Shma-el. God heard my prayers and surpassed my every expectation. You’re exquisite, Samuel.”

Exquisite. Ha. That was a word I’d use for a famous painting or some shit, not a nine-year-old ex cocaine addict, recovering alcoholic, who was an active smoker, and half the size of kids my age.

My childhood was such a bust, my innocence and I no longer shared a zip code, and if she thought a few home-cooked meals and some back rubs were going to change it, well, she was in for an unpleasant surprise.