Page 36 of Bound By Obsession

Avery and Meg huddle together at the top end of the table, Garrett and Axel doing the same opposite them. Dax and Huxley are on each of their sides, leaving a clear gap between them and me. Pulling his own chair back, Nixon lowers and rests an ankle over the opposite knee. For a moment, he doesn’t speak. In the bright overhead light, shadows of creases pull at his eyes and mouth showing how much he has aged in the past few months.

“There’s so much I need to tell you all but I’m afraid I can’t stay long. An extremely dangerous man is searching for Avery so I need to keep moving, to keep throwing him off her trail.”

“It sounds like your ghosts are catching up with you, Nixon.” My voice echoes against the walls, my use of his real name not going unnoticed by those present. They have no idea what I’ve discovered, but they will. I won’t let Nixon put his spin on what I now know.

“Wyatt, I need you to hear every word I’m about to say.” He focuses on me with every ounce of his attention, something he hasn’t gifted me with for an exceptionally long time. I nod for him to continue. “Cathy and I adopted you at four days old to cover up the fact we had twin girls. It’s a long story I don’t have time to dive into-” My laughter is a callous slap in his face, jarring him from the script he’s probably been rehearsing during our entire car ride.

“Why don’t we try that again?”

“Wyatt, what’s gotten into you?” Dax raises a brow. He might as well be addressing a stranger, and I suppose that’s what I am to all of them now. But they need to know this.

“Who, me? Oh nothing. I just thought this meeting was supposed to be worth the journey. At this rate, I might as well not have bothered coming.” Picking at my nails, I hide the true anxiety creeping through me. I could have stayed with Rachel, focusing on rebuilding a life where I’m not used as a pawn.

“Well since you’re so knowledgeable, why don’t you take the lead, Son?” Nixon challenges me. I see what he’s doing, provoking me into spilling all I know so he can lie his way out. I’m not fooled, but I’m not in the mood to play coy either. Jetlag is a bitch at the best of times.

“Fine. You didn’t adopt me, you stole me. My real father was your best friend and business partner. You blackmailed him into giving me up, forcing him to choose between his newborn son or his wife.”

“Is that true?” Avery gasps, her head whipping back to Nixon. I’m confused by the rigidness of her spine, acting as if she actually gives a shit about me. No one gives a shit about me anymore, except Rachel.

Nixon unhooks his ankle and leans back to steeple his fingers. This is the disapproving man I remember growing up with, the one who looks at my grazed knees as if it offended himthat I bled. Who only cared to address me in public. Nixon hasn’t been that man since Avery was brought back to the manor, which all makes perfect sense now.

“Ray Perelli was a crook. He made the wrong deals with the wrong kind of people. I did you a favor removing you from him and that scatterbrain wife of his. I don’t know what Cathy got out of being friends with such a ditsy woman.”

“Don’t you dare speak of Rachel that way! You have no idea how she’s suffered because of your mistakes!” I fly into a rage, standing and kicking my chair back against the wall. Huxley is before me in the next second, those dormant instincts flaring back to life.

“Hey man, it’s okay. I’ve got you,” Hux mutters into my ear, his large hands braced on my shoulders. It’s only his weakened state that holds me back from shoving against him, searching for a way to vent my frustration. “He’s not worth it.” I catch Hux’s serious stare. Has he been able to see Nixon’s true colors too? Grabbing my seat, I swivel it on one leg and plant myself on it backwards now. The backrest acts as a barrier.

“The Perelli’s are good people,” I grit through my clenched teeth. “It wasn’t just them you robbed of a son, but me of a loving family.” Nixon sighs, a dramatic fall of this chest which makes me tighten my fists by my sides. One of these days, I’m going to ensure Nixon feels the anguish I’ve been forced to live with. In my peripheral vision, a shadowy figure nods.

“We loved you Wyatt. Even when you made it impossible to.”

“You used me.” I spit back. The tension between us hardens, so much to be said but it’s all redundant. I will never be able to understand and I will never forgive him.

“Sorry, ‘scuse me,” Garrett raises his hand like a school child. “Can we just hit the rewind button for a second? Before you started robbing cribs, if you please.” A flutter of warmth hits me unexpectedly as Garrett shoots me a sly wink. Nixon isn’tamused but when he glances upon his precious, innocent Avery, his expression softens.

“Cathy was having an affair,” he begins, oblivious to the fact we already know this. Huxley showed me the diary, it’s detailed in undisputable black and white. “And she fell pregnant with twins. I knew they couldn’t be mine because I have…fertility issues,” he clears his throat. I snort, reveling in his embarrassment.

“Maybe it was the world’s way of telling you nothing good would come of being a father.” My response is ignored, his entire focus on the two girls huddled together at his end of the table.

Nixon continues to speak, detailing how he and Cathy were looking into adoption when she broke the news. How she begged him to stay with her, that she’d break it off with the other man. Freddie Walters, Nixon called him. There are many things to be said about Cathy, but nothing tops her need to maintain her public appearance. I’ve heard the rest of the story from Ray, how Freddie became obsessive, impulsive. How he threatened to take the girls if Cathy wouldn’t be with him.

The longer Nixon speaks, the quieter his voice becomes in my ears. A white noise takes over as I follow his eyeline to the girls and back. The shadow lingering around me makes the connection at the same time I do, dragging itself closer to the pair.

Two sets of blue eyes look ahead, varying in shade beneath perfectly arched eyebrows. Side on together, their profiles are identical, button noses smeared with light freckles above full lips that they are both biting subconsciously. Wearing matching hoodies and leggings, only the colors differing like the long hair upon their oval shaped heads, the truth of their genetics is so clear I can’t believe I’ve never seen it before. My stomach plummets.

“-Cathy had trouble breastfeeding, she could only handle one baby at a time. She was with a night nurse when Walters made his move. He only found Avery asleep in the crib and stole her from us that night. We didn’t know what to do, so the best idea we could come up with was to hide our other daughter with a woman we’d met at the infertility clinic.”

Nixon briefly closes his eyes, the picture of guilt and sorrow. What a fantastic act. “It took us ten years and hundreds of private investigators to track down Walters. He may be insane, but he knows how to keep a low profile. As soon as we found out his location, we drove sixteen hours to bring you home,” Nixon’s voice cracks, his hand outstretched to rest on Avery’s. “You were right there, so frail and skinny, darting out in the road. We almost hit you with our car.”

I return to the present, my heart too tight to beat properly. I can’t listen to these twisted versions of the truth that make Nixon sound so innocent. He leaves out the part where neither he nor Cathy couldn’t risk their precious reputations, so they decided to trick her deranged lover by sending their best friends to prison on bogus fraud charges and claim the right to their baby. I bite the inside of my cheeks at the thought of Ray and Rachel’s pain, their devastation at losing me. And what do any of us even have to show for it now?

Dax has inched closer to Avery, her hand now hanging low in his. Her other arm is wrapped around her best friend, clinging onto her for support.

“Okay,” Avery nods, absorbing every word. “So who is she - my twin? Is she in danger too?” My head pulls forward on its own accord, my ears pricked. I want to hear him say it. Keeping his head low, avoiding all eye contact, Nixon’s answer travels across the table on a low breath.

“It’s Meg,” Nixon confirms. I knew it was coming, but I still feel like a sledgehammer has barreled through my chest. She’sbeen right here, under our noses the entire time. The brunette herself looks like she’s about to vomit. I almost pity her, having been a bystander to Avery’s pain to now being thrust into the center of it. It’s shit finding out your mom isn’t really your mom and nothing you believed is true.

Avery’s face has tilted, her expression lost to me by a mass of blonde hair. “I- I don’t understand.”

---