Page 212 of Darling Venom
“I did him dirty, and we both know that.”
“You were struggling with your own demons.”
“That’s an excuse. I raised him in a hellscape. The fact that he lasted almost eighteen years is a damn miracle.”
“He still loved you.”
It was there. In the book. Proof Kellan didn’t harbor resentment for any of his family.
Not Christie.
Not Terry.
Not Tate.
“He grew up watching Christie and me snort more coke than the entire cast did in The Wolf of Wallstreet. Before The Imperfections released, when he needed new clothes, sports tuition, a stable fucking childhood, I couldn’t afford it because I spent all of Christie’s modeling fortune and my shitty advances on blow and booze. Did he ever tell you that? Oh, wait. He didn’t have to. It’s all in his book.”
“So is his love for you,” I insisted.
“Kellan had dreams, and goals, and desires. Things to live for. The kid made friends everywhere he went, wrote stories editors would drool over, ran home to Christie and me excited for the next day. His teachers all said he’d become something. Just a damn good kid all around. He used to have the brightest fucking future I’d ever seen, and I killed it. I killed him.”
“His mom died, and he spiraled.”
“I gave her the drugs.”
“Kellan knew it, and he didn’t resent you for it.”
“I left her there for Kel to find, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with the press. Because I plagiarized a book and I was so damn scared of any and all scrutiny.”
“It’s awful, what you did. There are amends to be made. But he forgave you. The words are there, inked in the pages forever.”
“Like I said. Too naïve for his own good.”
“You’re not giving your son enough credit. He has agency to make his own choices on whom to forgive.”
“Had. He had agency. Until I killed him, Charlotte. He needed me after his mom died, and I sent him away.”
“You were struggling with her death, too.”
Kellan noted it. In Darling Venom. That he never questioned Terry’s love for Christie again after he found him hands clasped, kneeling before his bed, begging for a higher power to take him, too.
“That wasn’t why I sent him to Tate.”
My head blew back like whiplash. “What?”
“I abandoned him because I couldn’t stand to look at him!”
I didn’t dare ask.
I felt like I’d stepped on glass, and if I moved, it would sink deeper into my skin and bleed me dry.
He must’ve taken my silence as backpedaling because coarse laughter ripped out of his throat. Broken, twisted, and pained. “You saw my sins in those pages, and you still think I’m worth a dime?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m not the one you hurt. That’s Kellan. His opinion is the one that’s relevant, and he thought you were worth idolizing. Worth forgiving. There’s something inside you Kellan liked and wanted for himself. I can’t tell you how to live your life, but if I knew Kellan thought of me like that, I’d find the thread of me he loved and honor him by using it to the fullest extent.”
“I’m a terrible father, Charlotte. I will die a terrible father. It’s too late.”
“It’s not. You still have Tate. Tate is alive and breathing.”
