Page 89 of Sweetest Revenge

With a sigh, he reached out, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me onto his lap.

The hug Warren gave me wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t as cold and desolate as his facial expressions led me to believe. It was warm and comforting as he wrapped me in his smell.

No matter how hard I tried to remind myself of what he’d done, I found myself leaning into him. Burying my head into his shoulder and finally letting the tears that I had been holding back for eight years fall.

It isn’t fair. None of it.

His arms went around me, his hands on my back, rubbing soothing circles.

I hated it.

Hated that my mom hid the money from me.

Hated that I worked so hard for nothing.

Why me? Why did all of it have to happen to me? Why couldn’t I have just continued to live on with my life?

If what Warren said were true, there were a lot of other bad people out there. They deserved this to happen to them. Not me.

Fuck me, what a childish thought.

Most of all, I hated that the only person who could provide me the comfort I needed was the one who had taken down my father.

“Why?” I mumbled against his now-soaked shirt. He should have yelled at me for messing it up with my tears and snot, but he merely pulled me closer, not letting me go.

“Why did your mom hide the money? Or why did I tear down your father’s company?”

I sniffled and pulled back to look at him through my blurry vision. No. There was so much more to it than that. Something far more important.

“Why did you help us?”

For once, it looked like I finally caught Warren off guard.

“He was my friend,” he said. “Regardless of…”

“Of what?” I asked. “What did he do that made him so bad? That made you want to tear him down and throw him out just like you do all those other assholes? He was your friend.”

I gripped his shirt. My hands were shaking, fear of what he was going to say rampaging through my being.

Yell at me. Get angry. Something.

Please stop being so gentle.

He cast his eyes downward before meeting mine again, but this time they were hardened.

“Your father was the best man I knew,” he admitted. “When my father died drunk driving when I was nine years old, he was the person I went to. He hid me in your grandmother’s house for a whole month before I was sent off to the orphanage.”

My entire body seized. The orphanage? This was something I’d never known about Warren. My dad never mentioned it either.

Warren was private about his family life; no matter who tried, they couldn’t dig up anything without being slapped with a lawsuit.

“It wasn’t until I was rehomed with my adoptive father that we met again.”

“I thought he was your real father. The media never said… I never knew…”

The donation to the orphanage made sense now. It made my heart break for younger Warren.

“For all intents and purposes, he was my real father.” Warren smiled as he reminisced and took a deep breath. “He was so important to me. By the time your father and I met again, we were both in high school, and we got close. All the way up through college and into our early careers, I was by his side. Graduation. First apartments. He was there when my first business failed. I was there for his marriage, but once he had you…”

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