Page 62 of Daddy By Design

She punched my arm. “And you’re still ugly.” She glanced at me and the horror of what she said slackened her jaw. “I didn’t mean it. No.”

I looked back out at the water. “It’s okay. My face is mostly still the same, so that part didn’t change.”

“You know you were always the attractive older brother my friends were hot for. Shut your mouth.”

“Really?” I huffed out a laugh. “Had no idea.”

“Yeah, because you were too busy getting gone.”

I gripped my fingers tighter. “I know it. I couldn’t watch her throw her life away each day, Mace. Making excuses for him until Dad finally didn’t come home from one of those flop houses.”

“You think I wanted to?”

“I don’t know. You always made excuses for her.” The memories had marinated in my brain for so long, I wasn’t even sure anymore. All I’d been able to do was look forward and away from the hellscape our life had become. A junkie dad and a weak-willed mother were the only memories I had. No joy, no laughter, no Christmas mornings.

“She was weak, but she didn’t deserve you to abandon her too.”

I bowed my head. “She abandoned me first.”

Macy dragged in a sharp breath. “I guess that’s a fact too.”

“I don’t really want to hash out our shitty childhood. The past is the past, and there’s not much I can do about that anymore.”

“I suppose that’s another fact.” She stared out on the water. “You didn’t have to disappear on me though.”

“I thought you had something with Lou. He told me you guys were making a life, and I practically gave him my goddamn blessing.” Louis Glover had been my friend since we were kids. He’d always been a bit of an idiot, but I’d never believed he would actually hurt my sister.

He wasn’t exactly good enough for her, but he also wasn’t an absolute piece of shit.

Or so I’d believed.

“I thought we were. And then we weren’t.” She rested her chin on her knees. “You know the part that really sucked?”

“I wasn’t there?”

“No. That was just a bonus punch. It was losing Malcolm. Realizing that little boy hadn’t really been mine, no matter how much I’d wished it at the time.”

“Ah, Mace.” I wanted to reach over and touch her, but she was balled up tight inside herself. Just like when we were kids and I’d find her in her personal shell. “That little boy deserved far better than Lou and that skank.”

She laughed and I heard her hollow tears trapped in the ancient time-capsule sitting between us.

“You seem like you’re in a good place now.”

She sniffed. “I am. Somehow I ended up with a bonus kid one more time.” She settled her cheek against her arms and glanced at me. “You’d like Ash.”

“I thought her name was Dani?”

“How would you know?”

I shrugged. “I checked up on you guys.”

“And yet you couldn’t drop a line or a fucking letter so I could do the same?”

“Google works for both of us.”

She huffed out a breath. “Yeah, well, I only found pictures of you with actresses and influencers. I stopped looking at that bullshit.”

Not my art. Just the partying part.

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