if it surprised me. But then, Adam was surprising.
In his own way, he was the type of man to take charge. Dominant. But I thought his time with Cain had changed him, tempered him.
Without his brother, he’d probably have been an unsalvageable asshole.
Instead, he knew what it was like to not be listened to. To be ignored. He knew what it was to be worthless and when to pick a fight.
Just as I did.
Two entirely different upbringings, one with wealth, one with poverty, one with family, and one with foster parents, and yet, we’d both learned the same lessons.
On the outside looking in, Anna and Robert appeared to be the perfect parents, and, in many ways, I guessed they looked like they were. But the reality was that they were only living breathing evidence that parents had a favorite child.
Shitty, but true, and it made me think, made me wonder if, when I had a kid or kids, I’d be the same. I wanted to promise myself, my unborn child or children, that I wouldn’t be like that. But maybe I would. I could only try to be different.
“Knowing Mom, she’ll have given Maria my flight times so that she can bombard me the second I land—”
“Anna still thinks you’re going to the U.S. straight after Tokyo?” I interrupted, surprised by that.
He shrugged. “I let her think it.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s on Maria’s side. She wants me to call off the divorce, but I won’t. It’s underway.”
“How is it? Maria’s Catholic, more than that, why would she want to give you up?”
“To spite me. She’s not exactly devout,” he drawled. “Her parents might be, but she isn’t. And I’m not that great a catch, Thea. I’m a pain in the ass, and I’ve been that way for years. But mostly, in the end, with her allowance, I’ll end up with alimony payments from her, especially if I win Freddie in the custody battle. She won’t want that—sharing her precious cash.”
“Do you think she’ll fight for Freddie?” She’d never seemed that interested in her son. As far as I could tell, the second he’d stopped being a toddler, Freddie had become boring, because she couldn’t dress him up like a doll. Couldn’t parade him in front of her friends and have them coo over how cute he was.
“She’ll have no choice, because Jose and Adela won’t let her not fight for him. They love him, even if she doesn’t.”
Christ, the tangled web of Adam’s life had me shaking my head.
“Yeah, I know,” he said dryly. “It’s a nightmare that’s brewing—”
“No wonder you want a vacation with me,” I retorted with a faint laugh. “Hell, anyone would.”
He shook his head, his eyes on mine as he replied, “I want a vacation with you because this is our time, Thea. You have to see that.”
“The curse—” I bit my lip. “My mother made me promise to cut you from my life the second I could for your sake and mine, Adam.”
“She had no right to do that,” he snapped, and when a passenger opposite us hissed for silence, he lowered his voice, ignored the intrusion, and spat, “She had no right to fuck with our lives like that.”
“She was saving you from yourself, and me from myself,” I reasoned.
“Why would she do that?”
“Because she said it was the one thing she could do for me as a mother, and that, as a mother, she’d ask from me. You weren’t there, Adam. You didn’t see her. She was cold, a little blank. A lot flat. Like every day was squeezing the life out of her.
“She was kind of interested in me, but I think she wanted to see—”
When I hesitated, he prompted, “What? What did she want to see?”
His voice had softened now, but I could see the spark of anger in his eyes. The large screen in front of us, mine showing the flight path and Adam’s showing South Park from when he’d fallen asleep, illuminated our faces, but I didn’t necessarily want him to see the despair on mine.
I wanted him here, more than I knew how to deal with. I wanted him on this vacation, I wanted this treat, just like I wanted the stack of pancakes in a minute.
Just a taste.
Just a stolen moment, a reward to get me through until the next time I had to purge him from my soul once more.
There would be a next time too. That I knew. We were magnets, attuned to each other, meant to