Page 24 of I Was Always Yours (RCA: Royal Crown Academy)

It’d become suffocating to live there, my mum’s grief colliding with my dad’s cold standoffishness at every turn.

It was made worse by the fact that I was a physical reminder of Astor everywhere I went. I’d made her cry on more than one occasion when I’d walked into a room and she’d mistakenly thought I was him, even with our physical differences.

Overnight, I’d become a pro at compartmentalizing my life and at forcing Sixtine completely out of it.

Which is why, when I found myself sneaking to one of the walls that separated our properties on the day she left and peeking over it, I blamed it on simple curiosity and not something else.

I’d caught a glimpse of her as the car drove away.

She’d been looking back at her house through the rearview window, a wistful look on her face. One of her parents must have said something to her because she turned back towards the front with a smile on her face and that was that.

One final look and she was gone forever.

Or so I thought.

For the next two years, I went through life like everything was normal. I eventually returned to school, two months after Astor’s death. I went to my classes, went up the ranks in judo, read hundreds of books, and learned to live without my brother.

But the reality is that more times than not, I came home to a mean drunk mother who couldn’t get out of bed and an absent father who wasn’t interested in anything to do with me.

I’d changed, my heart now a barren wasteland where nothing could take root and grow, the landscape completely desolate.

Every day was just another flimsy card added to the fragile house of cards that was my life, and I went through it blindly, with no care in the world.

In that time, I’d managed to not think of her, to completely block her out, although the victory felt hollow. I felt like my mind was a snow globe and while the positive was I was keeping her out, thoughts of her were constantly knocking on the exterior glass, distracting me with their noise and begging to be let in.

Unlike breathing,notthinking about her wasn’t a part of my involuntary nervous system. Every day I had to make a conscious effort to not let thoughts of her in.

Until one day, I was unceremoniously forced to face the thought of her when I overheard my dad on the phone in his study.

“They said they’d put it to a vote. Can I count on your support, Tellier?”

My ears perked as I recognized Sixtine’s last name. I stopped in my tracks and quietly crept up to the open door. Out of sheer boredom I’d started listening in on some of my father’s calls in the last few months and his name had never come up before.

My father listens quietly for a couple minutes and then adds, “Alright, I’ll meet you in Hong Kong on Sunday. I have shipments coming through there that could use my inspection.”

I’ve gotten good at not displaying any outward sign of emotion, but my eyebrow twitches at that. If he’s going to Hong Kong to see her father, he might see her.

Not that I want to see her, the thought makes me shake with anger, but there’s a judo competition there next week that I could compete in.

I tell myself that I should, that it’ll help me get to the next rank quicker.

The next day, once our housekeeper officially breaks the news to me that my father is leaving this weekend, I go up to his study.

He doesn’t look up from his computer as I walk in.

“Speak.”

“I’m coming with you to Hong Kong. I signed up for a judo competition there next week.”

He looks up at me, his hands pausing on the keyboard.

“No, you’ll get in the way of business.”

“You won’t see me. You won’t have to eat with me, take me anywhere or even acknowledge that I’m there. Just let me get on the plane.”

He looks back down at the computer and starts typing again, not speaking for long minutes. I stay still in front of him, not looking away from his face.

“I don’t want to hear from you.”

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