Page 51 of Darling Venom
He called him Terry, not Dad. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. Still better than Sperm Donor.
“Didn’t you?”
Tate frowned.
“A couple of years after Kellan’s mother died, Terry called me at four in the morning. Said raising a kid was above his pay grade. He just wasn’t made for the whole parenting gig. It was either him dropping Kellan off at my place or shipping him off to boarding school.
“I wasn’t close to Kellan—we’re half-brothers, over a decade apart in age—but I knew he was majorly hurting because of what happened with his mom. I was just starting out my residency, working insane hours. But I couldn’t let Terry dump this kid at some fancy-ass institute upstate.
“The next day, I broke the lease on my apartment, found the closest thing I could to a single-family house, and moved Kellan in. Our sperm donor dropped him off on my doorstep on his way to Miami to party with a European model who promised to suck his cock for a small role in one of his movie adaptations. Spoiler alert: she didn’t get the gig.”
His words cut me into ribbons of hurt, and my body folded like origami. I tried to cover up my cough by taking a sip of the disgusting coffee.
Kellan hadn’t known that.
“Why didn’t you explain this to Kellan?”
“Lies hurt. Truth slays. It would’ve destroyed him to learn the truth about his father.”
“If you weren’t the one who asked for him, then why did you file for full custody over Kellan?”
Tate stared at me like I was wearing a fruit bowl on my head, and something clicked.
Of course.
“I didn’t.”
“That’s what Kellan told me.”
“That’s what Terry told him.” If looks could kill, I’d be getting out of here in a body bag. Tate’s stare-game was no joke. “Terry’s always been a cop-out. Not that I wouldn’t have gotten custody had I needed to. As it happened, Terry never showed any interest in raising Kel.”
I wasn’t sure if he was telling me whatever he wanted me to hear to squeeze more information out of me or if this was his honest truth.
I knew Kellan wasn’t a liar. But I also knew Kellan had been a teenage boy hurting badly. He’d seen life through dark-tinted glasses, smeared by the consequences of being the child of two messed-up cultural icons.
“Kellan said you started monitoring his time with Terry.”
I pressed my lips together, but my resentment toward Tate started to dissolve like smoke. Everything he said made sense.
Why would a young, hungry doctor doing his residency be so hell-bent on winning custody over his half-brother, whom he barely knew? It made no sense.
“Did Kellan also mention Terry gave him pot and E?” Tate’s brewing-storm eyes turned a shade darker.
“No, he didn’t mention that.”
He ran his tongue over his bottom teeth. “Yeah. Didn’t think so.”
“There were rumors around school that Kellan was using drugs,” I admitted, ?
?but I never confronted him about it. I knew he’d cage in on me, and I didn’t want to lose him as a friend.”
“He got high frequently. The first thing I did when I got home from work every night was raid his room, bathroom, and kitchen to find his stash. I’d flush it down the drain. His toilet bowl saw more drugs than Ozzy Osbourne. I’d monitor his phone with apps and drive around the school after a double shift at the hospital, eyes bloodshot, just to see where he was.
“Worst part was, Terry helped him score. After I realized Kellan was paying Terry lunch money, I started sending him to school with prepackaged meals. Thought maybe if that parasite didn’t have the money incentive, he’d stop feeding his son drugs. The more I tried to help Kellan, the more he pushed me away.”
I hadn’t expected any of this. Learning how much Tate cared. How it wasn’t his fault.
I could see why Kellan had wanted to pin this on him. Being rejected by your only parent was a tougher pill to swallow than hating your control-freak half-brother you barely knew.
