Emily's pov

I sit down across from him. Silent. Not wanting to disrupt his train of thought.

He sighs for the hundredth time today and parts his lips.

"It all started when I was four years old." He says, looking at the island infront of him.

"We-we were in the living room and she was reading me my favorite story, "The Three Little Pigs", and feeding me mashed potatoes." He continues.

"Everything was fine, we were happy and laughing, when all of a sudden a firm knock on the door stopped her." His hands start to shake.

"Her faced paled but she got up and rushed me into a closet in the laundry room upstairs and told me not to make any noises."

"I was four, I didn't get what was going on, but I understood that something was wrong by the look on her face, so I nodded."

"She kissed my forehead and told me she loved me before going downstairs and opening the door." His brows knitted together.

"I heard screaming coming from downstairs, a man's voice was shouting all kinds of things, but my vocabulary was limited at the time, so I only heard a few words here and there."

'"You still have that kid?!" A strong manly voice shouted from downstairs. "The papers are almost done!" I heard my mommy scream. I wanted to go down and protect my mommy but I knew she wouldn't like that." Axel continued in a low voice.

"After that man left, my mom came and got me out of the closet. We spent the rest of the night eating ice-cream and watching movies."

"Everything was fine, but then morning came and mom took me to a place that resembled my school. She left me there and told me that she would come back." His forehead creases and he grits his jaw.

I grab his hand in mine and give it an encouraging squeeze.

I this is extremely hard for him to talk about.

"It took her a week to come back. I didn't like it there at all, there were other kids like me there but they were all very mean. Anyway, she-" He stops and breathes a little.

"She came back and told me we were going to get on a plane and go somewhere really cold, but that it would be fun and we would have a better life."

"The next day we flew to London. When we got there she took me to this big house, it was beautiful, and when we entered, two little boys my age came rushing down the stairs and hugged my mom, calling her mommy."

Sadness clouded his features and all I wanted to do was hug him and make him feel better.

"Mommy told me that they were my brothers, and that daddy would be home any minute. I was shocked, I've never met daddy ever, I got so excited."

"A man with brown eyes and blonde hair came through the door a minute later. He didn't look anything like me. But he walked towards me and gave me a hug. I instantly liked daddy".

"The years went by and I lived in London with my family, I grew up there, that's how I have the accent."

"Life was way better there, I had fun and mom seemed different, happy, back in America I never saw mom as happy as she was in London.

"But turns out that the woman who came to pick me up that day wasn't my mommy." He says and clenches his fist.

"It was my mother's twin sister Olivia, who lived in London with her husband and 2 sons."

"My mom was in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend and accidentally got pregnant with me." He sighs.

"Her boyfriend was fine with keeping me at first, for a year or two but then didn't want to pay for anything and tried to convince her to give me up for adoption."

"My mom didn't want to do that, she wanted to keep me, I was her only son. She tried to hide me from him, and succeeded for a year, but then he found out."

"He was getting more and more violent and my mother feared that I would get caught up in that one day and get hurt."

"Her sister Olivia offered to adopt me. My mother agreed and they created a plan so that I wouldn't know that it wasn't my mother who came back."

"And it worked. I had no clue that the woman I loved and called mom wasn't my mother at all."

"Want to know the best part?" He asked and chuckled darkly.

"I only found this out a month ago." He clenches his teeth.

I gasp. "What? Why did the wait so long to tell you?" I ask.

"According to them they were waiting for my 18th birthday to tell me. How stupid is that? Just go and ruin the day a guy celebrates being a man." He growls.

"I'm so sorry Axel." I step off the stool and go hug his seated form from behind.

"Don't be. I don't need pitty." He spits. Yet relaxes into my touch.

"Well why did you come here? You said you were in London." I mumble in his chest.

His muscles tense up again.

"I got a hold of my grandmother who lived here, in America. I called her for answers, and asked if I could stay with her. She happily agreed and told me I could stay with her for as long as I liked, and that she would explain everything when I got there."

"Did she?" I ask. My head still resting in the crook of his neck.

"Yeah." He says in a shaky voice.

I want to ask more. Like what happened to his mom? How did his aunt Olivia react when he decided to leave? Who is Sophia?

But I know I shouldn't push it. He has already told me so much, more than I expected him to.

"Thank you Emily." He says, after a while of me standing there with my arms wrapped around his waist, my face in his neck, and him with his back facing me, eyes closed.

"For what?" I furrow my brows and raise my head.

He spins around in his stool to face me.

"For listening." He says, wraps his arms around my waist, and buries his head in my neck.