You have a hollowed out heart
But it's heavy in your chest

Chapter 29 ~ For the Love of a Son

Owen Bailey

Broken, bruised, and looking like a fate worse than death, anyone could imagine that I was incredibly hesitant about seeing my family. As soon as I stepped into the Slater household, I felt like an outsider and wanted nothing more than to not be there, but I knew I had to be. All of my worries had surrounded the thought of Lucifer harming Liam and my mother, so now that he was out of the picture, I needed to make things right with them–it was the least I could do after making them worry so much about me.

But after keeping them at arm's length for so long, it was hard to let them be close again.

"I thought we'd never see you!" my mother exclaimed as soon as she saw me on the other side of the threshold and rushed to get me into the kitchen. She was just seconds away from procuring ingredients to make a fancy feast for me, despite my constant resistance. "Pastor George has been offering to have us come to his house, you know, for a family prayer. Lord knows you need it."

I looked over my shoulder to look back at her and scoffed. "Paster George can suck–"

"Owen." My mother's eyes went cold and unfriendly.

"–the venom out of my cold, sinful heart," I finished with a grim smile.

"That's more like it!" She patted my shoulder in excitement just before she rushed over to the other side of the kitchen counter that seemed to divide the kitchen in half. Feeling like I didn't have much of a choice, I settled into one of the bar stools tucked beneath the island and faced her. "You know it's very nice to see you come around more often. Liam definitely appreciates it."

I stared up at her, studying her carefully just before I mustered up the courage to ask, "And you? Do you appreciate it?"

Her head shot up almost immediately; it was almost as though she hadn't expected me to ask such a question because she blinked several times in astonishment while wrinkles creased her forehead. "Of course, Owen," she said those words with a reassuring smile, as if there was a possibility that I would take them the wrong way, but I didn't believe them. It seemed like all my mother wanted to do was try to make me more like her, more like Liam, and less like me. That person would be easy for her to love, but even though she claimed she did, it was hard to believe that she would actually love and appreciate a fuck-up like me.

I played with my fingers for some time before saying, "Mom."

"Yes, Owen?"

"Why did you walk out on us?"

The question successfully managed to tear her attention from her current task of preparing dinner. She narrowed her gaze at me, as though I had offended her, but she tried to suppress the pain by forcing a smile. "I didn't walk out on you and your father, Owen. I was all over the place back then. I didn't know God, and—"

"So now that you supposedly know God, everything's just so fine and dandy?" I snapped, feeling suddenly enraged by her reasoning for leaving an eleven-year old boy alone with a drunk father. "My life's horrible. My life has been a fucking mess for the past ten years! And you..." My sentence broke off when I realized that my mother had been staring at me with a look that didn't hold as much concern as it should have, "...you don't even fucking care!"

"Language—"

"No, I don't give a fuck about my language! You left us because you didn't know how to love a man that was faithful to you! You were his world and you ruined his life—you ruined my life!"

As harsh as my words had been, it wasn't like I had said anything that didn't hold truth to it. Sure, my father holds some responsibility to his actions, but he had begun to spiral out of control when she left us. Instead of taking me with her to live the fabulous and godly life she claimed to have, she left me alone with that monster who, as a father, did nothing to help me grow. All he did was tear me down. Years of being emotionally tortured and belittled into thinking I was less led me to pursue a life of striving for less, and that never-ending cycle started with her–the real monster.

A tear escaped the corner of my mother's eye, and she did nothing more to salvage it but to squeeze her eyes tight. She raised a hand to her face as she gazed down at the linoleum floor beneath us and said nothing else. She was good at this, crying; it was what she did best. Whenever things got a little tough, she cried. It was as though it was her way of making things right again, especially since she knew she was the one who fucked everything up.

"Owen," she said in a breathless whisper. "I never ... I never meant to leave you. I wanted to take you with me, but your father, he—" She stopped speaking to let out a small whimper. "He threatened to do awful things to Billy if he didn't have things his way, you see. It was bad enough that I was leaving him, but you? He would've spiraled out of control, knowing him and how protective he is over what he thinks is rightfully his."

I watched her speak, in awe at how she could think that my father could get any worse. "He's already out of control, Mom. Trust me, I would know because he takes all of his anger out on me."

Her big green eyes flared with bewilderment almost as though what I was telling her couldn't possibly be true. "Everything I ever did was to protect you, Owen. If I had taken you, he would've done some very violent things to us, to our family. Leaving you seemed like the only way to keep him at bay. I hurt you, I know, but you're more than welcome to live with us, Owen. You've always been welcomed, but you wanted to stay with him."

"If I don't take care of him, Mom, no one will," I spat back at her. "You certainly won't."

She sucked in a breath and shut her eyes, letting a tear escape from beneath her closed lids. I had more to say to her–hell, I had twenty two years of hateful things to say to her, but before I could make out the words, Liam breezed into the kitchen and everything went silent.

"What's going on?" he asked, and it was clear to both of us that he had sensed there was something amiss in the atmosphere. He glanced over at me, a slight smile coming to his lips. "Owen, I didn't know you were coming over–hey, what happened to your face?" He reached out to try to touch my face, but I smacked his hand away.

I took one last look at my mother and sighed. "Look, I don't even know why I came here. Things don't change, and I have no idea why I expected them to." Pushing myself off the bar stool, I stormed my way out of the kitchen and out of the house that caused me so much heartache every time I walked in it.

This couldn't have been fair.

Yeah, I was a grade A asshole. Yeah, I screwed people over more than I count. Yeah, I did this to myself, but I never asked for any of this. This life of living on the streets, selling and doing drugs started with her. She left me with a monster who lowered my self-worth. How she could live with that was way beyond me.

"Hey!" I heard Liam's voice shout at an unbelievable volume, successfully making me stop my long strides to Trey's car. "I'm tired of you running out every time Mom hurts your feelings!"

I looked back at my brother, amazed that he had the balls to step to me like this. "Liam, I'm afraid I have to say that this is goodbye. No more visits, no more nothing. I need to focus on me now."

Even though we were quite a distance away from each other, I could tell that Liam had furrowed his brows in confusion. "So, you're just gonna walk out? You say you hate Mom for walking out on you, but you're doing the same thing to me! I care about you, Owen. Mom cares about you and even my dad cares about you. You have a family here, a family who's willing to do anything for you, yet you just keep walking away from us."

I felt my tongue poke the inside of my cheek and before I knew it, I was trudging up the driveway to grab onto Liam's shoulders to try to shake some sense into him. "No one cares about me, Liam. That's the way it's always been."

"No," he said, his teal-colored eyes darting back and forth. "You choose to believe that because you're so used to being alone. After all this, I'm convinced you want to be alone."

His words made my hands fall from his shoulders and to my sides. I stared back at him incredulously and shocked at how right he must've been. After going through what I did with Lucifer, it taught me something. It taught me that I had willingly chose this life and because I didn't want to be the only one suffering, I made sure that others suffered with me. I brought Raven, Jonah, Ake, and Matthew down with me; I tried bringing Trey down, too, and it was all because I didn't want to be alone.

And look where that got me.

The people that I cared about the most almost died because I didn't want to be alone.

If anything, now that I was free, I deserved to be alone. I deserved to only bring pain to myself and not to the ones I cared about.

"Yes, Liam, I want to be alone," I admitted. "Trouble follows me everywhere and I don't want to drag anyone else into my problems."

"We're family, Owen." A smile made its way onto his face, and I eagerly wanted to smack it off. "Your problems are my problems, too. That's the role that family plays. We get each other's unwanted baggage, whether we like it or not."

At a complete loss for words and with no strength left to argue, my shoulders fell in defeat and I let go of a bottle sigh.

"Now—" Liam stepped aside to give me full access to the front door, "—you're gonna walk back inside and eat Mom's attempt at food and tell me all about who did that to your face." Before I could respond, though, he shoved me past the threshold and followed suit, closing and locking the door behind him.

"I hate all of you," I spat in contempt.

"Of course, brother, of course."

________

a/n: Long time, no see! Yes, yes, I know. It's been a while. A lot of you know why I've been so absent on Wattpad and if you don't, I've created a book where I talk about my life in college thus far. So you guys will get all the tea. It's called Mean Girls (And Boys) and you can find it on my profile. I want to thank you guys for wishing me to get better. I really do appreciate it.

Now there's only one chapter left which will be less emotional in comparison to this one. I'm excited for it. I hope you guys are too, and I hope y'all are excited for The Only Exception because I am ridiculously excited for that! It's going to be a little more lighthearted as some of you have noticed the tone of these books have gotten darker. Mostly because I'm such a dark person now, but, anyway...

Enjoy! If you liked this chapter, give it a vote and a comment.

Until next time,
Lara <3