Hollow Moon (BoyxBoy)

Chapter Nineteen

I am vaguely aware I'm being dragged out between two people. My arms drape over their shoulders as I force my legs to move, even in a half-conscious state. My left side is aching, almost in unison with my head as a headache spikes along my skull. Thoughts were scattering, trying so poorly to piece together everything from the last few minutes -or hours- I can't tell anymore. My sight was scuffed from the smoke and probably tears along with nauseating vertigo. My hearing not doing much better than a muffled roar aligned with intense ringing that seemed to intensify with the headache.

But between the dragging through smoke, fire, heat, and shattering glass, my invasive thoughts went to a place I would rather keep buried.

The last time I spoke with my Mother, when I announced that I would go to my Dad. And the look of relief that washed through her eyes. She quickly hid the emotion from her face, but I saw. I knew what it was. I was more surprised that it still hurt. That it still pricks at my heart. I knew her capacity to love me truly and unconditionally was fractured and never matched what she said. I overheard her conversations with others throughout my childhood when she thought I wasn't there or couldn't hear or thought I was too young to understand. But I knew.

I knew she cursed my father for her life. She was delayed from her life's goals because she was pregnant. With me. The fact that he could still pursue his lifework while she 'had to take care of me'. Which was only one of the myriads of lies that she fed me.

I didn't know until I was fifteen that she was hiding everything about my dad. Telling at best half-truths but only if it painted a villainous picture of him. The confrontation I hit her with was the last straw for both of us.

"You know your father never wanted you!" My mother's words were always lined with her French accent that she could never get rid of.

"I know he wanted me more than you ever have." I saw the threats she made at him about aborting me if he didn't provide support. Despite my mother being capable and becoming a veterinarian, she was so short-sighted in other aspects. Like her son figuring out how to contact his dad.

Oh and how my father more than provided support with her ever-vicious blackmail. He paid for her university loans, my school fees. Everything. All so he could get maybe a short phone call with me once every few months. Even those were strictly monitored by my mother who was more than ready to cut the conversations short and shallow.

My father was similar to my mother in the fact that he let her bully him into things. He was freakishly smart but so very foolish when it came to my mother's manipulations. He was one of those cases you hear about, graduating high school when he was twelve. He globally attended universities for shits and giggles through his early twenties and made the fatal mistake of attending the same university as my Mother. He was attending her university for animal sciences and Adeline du Randt battered her eyelashes at the naive South Korean exchange student who was hooked. She probably did like him in the start but from knowing her most of my life. She did not like playing second fiddle to anyone...so when my dad outshone her, she became spiteful and when she realised she was pregnant with me, she was outright petty.

I honestly do not know why she went along with keeping me. I think it was to hold it over my father but it was definitely not out of love for me. She eventually finished her qualifications and moved to a rural town in Australia, setting herself up her own practice and live the quiet picturesque life she seemed to have wanted. I was on the sidelines, helping out when she was short staffed and despite her narcissistic and insufferable personality, some idiot farmer fell in love with her. she actually loved the guy back. Or at least she claimed to when she walked down the aisle with him. She then proceeded to have two kids with him. But there was no room for me. She hated my existence as the 'stain' that smudges the ideal life she had painted for herself. So when my dad offered me a ticket to the moon. I took it. I couldn't face her or her reminding me that I was ruining her perfect life plan. I couldn't handle that when she faced my two little half-siblings that there was no animosity or regret in her eyes. That she could show them the unconditional love that she could never extend to me. I hated how it felt like I was the black sheep even though I don't hate them, I was intensely jealous of the love she so freely gave them. So rather than turn out like her, I left when I could.