Page 146 of Best Served Cold

“It’s all in His name.” I smiled wryly. “But yeah. I was already struggling, then she called and dumped all that on me. I know she’s not above lying or cheating to get her way, but I never thought she’d sabotage my future like that. That’s what broke me. I spent years thinking I wasn’t good enough and that my art sucks. But it was good enough. Is good enough. She destroyed my one happiness, the only escape I had growing up. The thing that was just mine.”

“That’s horrible. I’m sorry she did that.”

“Yeah, me too. You’d think realizing I like dick would be the thing to fuck me up, but it isn’t. I mean, it was a bit of a hard pill to swallow knowing I can never go home, but that place was never my home to begin with.”

“Sometimes you need to find your own family. Blood doesn’t mean shit if they don’t back it up with actions.”

“You and River have done that? Found your own family?” I asked tentatively.

I knew next to nothing about Zane’s life or background. Was that because he was a good listener, or because he didn’t want me to know?

He nodded and pushed his hair back in a gesture I was starting to recognize as a nervous one.

“Yeah. It took a long-ass time, but we found our people after losing everything.”

I bit my lip so I didn’t interrupt if he chose to elaborate.

“River and I…we…” He grunted out a frustrated noise. “I’m not good at this.”

“I know. But I want to listen if you can tell me.”

“We had everything. Upper middle-class parents, a nice house, yearly vacations, and all the extracurriculars we wanted.”

“Sounds nice,” I said, wincing at how cringe I was being.

“It was. But it didn’t last.” He put his guitar case on the coffee table and flipped it open. “Do you mind if I play something? It helps me focus.”

“Go for it.”

My eyes were glued to his hands as he strummed the strings a few times. A faraway look came over his face as he started to play, his fingers moving fluidly over the strings and fingerboard.

“We were twelve when Mom was diagnosed with ALS. It advanced quick. We lost her a year later.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“That was brutal. Watching her get worse and worse, waiting for it to happen. Knowing it was only a matter of time. We thought that was the hardest thing we’d ever have to live through. Two years later, Dad went out for a walk and never came home.”

He stared unblinkingly at the wall, his fingers playing a song I vaguely recognized.

“They said it was an accident, but we knew it wasn’t. He never got over losing Mom. He was so heartbroken he couldn’t see that we were right there, and we needed him.” He shook his head, finally blinking. He switched to a different song. Was that Melrose Avenue?

“Since we were still minors, we had to go live with our dad’s brother and his wife. Neither of them wanted kids, and we’d only seen them a handful of times, but they were willing to take us so we had to leave our house, city, friends, everything we’d ever known, to move here.”

“Were they good to you?”

He snort-laughed. “Fuck no. They didn’t beat us or anything, but I’m pretty sure that’s only because we could have squashed them without trying. They treated us like trash and blew through our parents’ money in less than three years.”

“What?”

“The trust our parents left us. We should have been set for life between their insurance payouts, their savings, and the sale of all their assets. But the terms of their will were murky and our aunt and uncle found loopholes to withdraw as much as they wanted and spend it on themselves. They bled us dry, made us pay for everything we used or consumed, and kicked us out at eighteen with nothing more than a bag of clothes and three hundred bucks in our bank account.”

“That’s…criminal.”

“Literally. But there’s nothing we can do because they covered their asses.”

“I’m sorry they did that to you.”

He shrugged, his fingers still moving over the strings.

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