Page 50 of Darling Venom
With a side of heart attack if we don’t finish this soon.
“Americano. No sugar. No cream.”
I definitely took my coffee with both. But it felt wrong bothering him with mundane things like Sweet’N Low when we were about to have such a heavy conversation.
I sat in front of his recliner. Tate returned with a steaming cup of coffee and the barista’s number, which she’d scribbled on a leaflet. He placed the coffee in front of me and balled the digits, throwing them into the trash.
I rocked my right leg and avoided his gaze as he took his seat.
He cut right to the chase. “Were you ever going to come forward and tell me about him if we hadn’t met through Reagan?”
“Probably not,” I said honestly, remembering that he enjoyed my rebellious streak. “He wasn’t your biggest fan. I didn’t think you deserved it.”
He nodded, surprisingly mild about it. “What about my sperm donor? Was Kellan not fond of him, either?”
I shook my head, unsurprised he referred to his father by that nickname. “No. With Terry, I didn’t come forward because I decided he was an asshole all by myself. It was an executive decision.”
He almost smiled. Just a ghost of one.
“Let’s start from the beginning. How’d you guys know each other?”
“We met at St. Paul.” I cupped the mug of coffee in my hands, stealing its heat. “I met Kellan around February of eighth grade. We clicked.”
I’d decided last night, while tossing and turning in bed, to be selective about what I said to Tate. I wouldn’t lie, but I planned on bending the truth where appropriate.
It didn’t matter whether Tatum was an ass. If yesterday had proved anything, it was that he cared for Kellan. The man chased me down a subway.
“How’d you two meet?”
On the roof.
“In a classroom. He came there to…” End his life. “… think, and I came there for the same reason. We got to talking. We were both pretty down at the time. We weren’t expecting each other. I guess we forgot our armor in the hallway.”
I couldn’t tell him we’d met on the rooftop. Not when Kellan had taken his life there. Tate was smart. He would put two and two together and figure out the symbolism of it. My place in this.
But also, allowing Tate a deep-dive into Kellan’s life felt like an invasion of Kellan’s privacy. A betrayal of his trust.
It wasn’t like I could ask Kellan for permission to spill his deepest, darkest secrets, so I made the choice for him to share the least amount possible while still giving his brother closure.
“How bad was it? His depression?” Tate asked. The pain marring his face was so raw, it sucked the breath out of me.
“He wasn’t happy.” I took a sip of my coffee. It tasted like sewer water. Bitter and muddy. I put it down. “After we met that first time, we became friends. I would give him books to read, and he would give me short stories he wrote. He was a magnificent wordsmith.”
Tate stared at me like we were still at war.
Maybe we were.
“He hated me,” Tate said.
A statement.
Not a question.
I shrugged. It was not untrue.
Tate sat back, running a hand over his chiseled jaw. There was something very dark and decadent about him. Like if I unzipped his beautiful skin, his impossibly light-gray eyes, kissable mouth, and the body he’d worked so hard on, all I’d find was ice.
“He thought I tore him and Terry apart,” Tate said, more to himself than to me.
