Page 96 of Inked Temptation
Legacy
Leif
“Are you sure that you have everything packed? Your passport, all of your documents? Your itinerary? And you have that little router or wireless thingy so you can have easy access to the internet when you’re walking around in Europe, right?” Mom asked as she paced around the room.
I shook my head, and her eyes went wide.
“You don’t have that? Oh no. It’s okay. We can work through your carry-on together. We’ve got this.”
“Mom. I’m okay. I promise.”
Her eyes filled, and she quickly blinked tears away. “I love when you call me Mom. Seriously. This is the best. I’m so proud of you. And yet I feel like I’m going to throw up because this is crazy. You can’t leave us.”
“Mom.”
Sierra Montgomery wasn’t my biological mother. But she had raised me since I’d first shown up in her life. She had been the first person I saw when I moved to Denver, lost, seemingly orphaned, and sitting on the stoop of my father’s tattoo shop waiting for him to find me.
I had run from the authorities and other people watching me because I hadn’t wanted to stay with them. I’d wanted to go with the man my mother had called my father until I’d learned the truth. And in the end, she had willed me to him anyway, so I hadn’t even had to run from the authorities. I had just had to wait for them to contact him.
I had been too young to understand the legalities of everything, and yet I had run home to him. To a man who hadn’t known me for the first ten years of my life, because he hadn’t known I existed.
And now, as I looked up at the woman who had been by his side, I couldn’t help but hold out my arms.
My mother, maybe not the one who had given birth to me, but the woman who had raised me, wrapped her arms around my waist and let out a shaky breath.
“I love you so much, Leif. You’re my baby boy.” She pulled back and wiped her tears. “Okay,oneof my babies.”
“At least the youngest two aren’t bottle-fed anymore. So you’ll be fine with that. And I expect daily photos and progress of when they’re getting ready for their first day of preschool.”
I couldn’t believe I would miss that, but I needed to go. It was time for me to move out. I was twenty-one now. Old enough to drink in the United States, yet I was leaving the country to study abroad in Paris. I had gotten an internship with an art program there, and I was going to study art.
Art school here was working out well, and I loved being creative, but learning from a master in Paris and being outside of Denver for the first time in my life for longer than a weekend or a week’s vacation was going to be a new experience. At least, that’s what I kept having to tell myself.
My three siblings ran into the room, laughing. Okay, Colin ran in while Gideon and Jamie toddled. I went down to my knees and held them all close.
Colin was eight now and hugged me tight as the toddlers giggled into me.
I knew Gideon and Jamie understood I was leaving, but I didn’t know if they knew what leaving meant.
But I hoped that video calls and constant messaging would make it feel like I wasn’t that far from them. And that I wouldn’t be missing so much of their lives.
I didn’t like that I was leaving my family, but it would be nice to be somewhere where I wasn’t a Montgomery. Because we were vast, and I wanted to see who I was when no one knew the name.
My father walked in then, broad, big, muscled, inked, bearded, and with an eyebrow ring glinting under the light. He had been a baby when he’d had me and was still damn young, without a single gray hair in his beard or hair.
I wasn’t sure how he did it, and I knew he didn’t dye it at all. But he did not look his age. Neither did my mother. Hell, neither did my aunts or uncles or cousins. Everyone looked damn good, and I hoped that those Montgomery genes worked when it came to me.
I looked around then as I stood up, one kid on each leg as Colin wrapped his arm around my waist.
“I’m not going to be gone long. You’re going to hear from me every day.”
“You don’t have to video chat every day, but at least a text,” Dad said, and Mom scowled.
“Don’t tell him not to call us, Austin. I want to hear from our boy daily.”
“And we’re not going to smother him, Sierra,” he said softly as he held her close.
The love that they had nearly broke me.
