Page 74 of Just Between Us

“Kai, are you all right?” My mother asks from across the table in the dining room that stretches into the lounge.

We’re having our weekly dinner, and I haven’t touched my plate. My fork hangs in the air.

“Huh? Yeah. Sorry, I'm just a bit distracted.”

Her brow furrows. “Is work okay?

I nod quickly. Dropping my fork. “Yeah. Everything is great. I’ve just been really busy. This project is picking up.”

It’s not a lie exactly. Work has been stressful.

You’ve been really happy these last few weeks. I thought you might have met someone.”

Of course, I was that obvious about it. “I did,” I swallow. “But it didn’t work out.”

She sighs quietly “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Do you want to tell me more about it?”

I don’t know how she would feel about my arrangement with two men but more than anything, I want her to tell me everything is going to be okay—that the hole in my heart won’t be there forever. That I’m not stupid for wanting to belong to them.

“Um,” I start. “We agreed on keeping things casual but then I developed feelings, and I only realised it when it was too late.” I suck in a breath, blinking away tears I haven’t cried since the night I ended things, but I feel them coming back and it’s all so overwhelming. “I knew it was never going to work out. They didn’t feel the same, so I ended things.”

My mother reaches her hand out and clutches mine across the table. Her hands are soft, and calmness washes over me at once. It’s the same way she held me when I was little–before the twins, before Kenny.

“If they didn’t make you feel loved or like you belong, then it isn’t worth it. You’re the most amazing person, Kai. The best son and brother anyone could ask for. You deserve to be loved completely and loudly. And you’ll find that one day.”

Tears dance in her eyes, and I smile. “You deserve that too, Mum.”

She laughs quietly. “I have that already from you, Zoe and Zara. I don’t need anything else.”

Between my father who walked out and Kenny, my mother wasn’t very lucky in love either, but she’s always carried herself so well. I’ve barely seen her cry.

“Thanks, Mum.”

She moves her hand back and sits back in her chair, her face suddenly very serious. “I asked you to come to dinner for a reason, actually.” She pulls down the sleeves of her cardigan. “It’s about Kenny.”

My stomach falls.

“He was released a few days ago.”

The back of my head feels hot. My scalp prickles and fear runs through me in a cold jolt. “W-what?”

She nods once. “They called me because I was still listed as his next of kin. I know you two didn’t get along much so I didn’t know how to tell you.”

Didn’t get along.

Right.

“But he isn’t here. He went to his mother’s up north.”

Those threatening messages I received months ago suddenly flood back into my mind. I had almost completely forgotten about them. A part of me almost believed they weren’t real, that it wasn’t him, but he knew he was getting released all along and he warned me he would come for me.

“But he still had a few more years on his sentence,” I say.

She nods. “He was released on good behaviour, and he helped the police on another case.”

I take in a sharp breath. She doesn’t know the truth. I never told her the truth about him. I never told her about his dangerous friends, his sharp hits and the trips to A&E, or about the things he would say to me.

She’s always believed I just didn’t like him because he isn’t my father, but a part of me was always afraid she would choose him over me, that she might send me away like he said she would if I complained. I know now that I was wrong, that she would have never done that, but I was young and terrified.

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