Diary of a Runaway (BOOK #3)

A Hero-Complex

 Ava 

 

            William drove off without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror. He seemed so shaken up--so different from the usual voice of reason he tried to hold. And it all started with the discovery of Derek as his father.

            I fell back down to the front steps and stared off to where I'd last seen him in the front seat of his SUV. I reached over for the bottle of foul smelling liquid he'd been drinking and took another swig.

            "What happened?" a familiar voice spoke from behind me.

            I turned my head and saw Derek standing in the light of the foyer dressed in his usual casual attire. He glanced around the house as if someone else stood out here, like I wasn't sitting alone drinking centuries-old liquor.

            "Where's William?" he asked me.

            "He's gone," I told him, my voice not as calm as I would've liked. "He just went upped and left a few minutes ago. Didn't say anything about where he was going. Truthfully, I don't think he knew. He didn't seem like he was in the right place."

            Derek lowered himself beside me, taking the bottle of alcohol in his hands and staring down at it. "You think it's because of me."

            I sighed. "I know it's because of you."

            He stayed quiet for a minute, surely processing my words. Maybe even thinking about the last hundred years he avoided his son. He always thought he was protecting him--and I believed that. Just as Val kept secrets from me. Just as my own mother did...

            "Maybe I should've left when I had the chance," he whispered, seeming to be talking to himself more than me. "I shouldn't have come back to you all in the cabin. I just thought...I thought maybe one day, he would figure it out--no, that I would tell him. That things would be fine. He'd forgive me and we'd start over. Maybe not as father and son, but as friends."

            "It's hard to be friends with someone who lies to your face," I admitted coldly. "You expect a lot out of him. I understand, you're hurt. You told me how you felt about his mother, how much you loved her. A kind of love like that doesn't just die. You're fortunate enough to have a piece of her left behind--a piece of you."

            "That's the thing," Derek started. He looked so unsure. Like every word he said sounded wrong. "I know this. I've known William was mine before he was  born, but I never knew how to react to that. I never knew what to do. For so long, I wanted to step forward, to reveal myself. Even when he was just a boy--I remember seeing him run around town with the wrath of that man on his tail. I saw myself in my son and what he did. And...it scared me."

            I swallowed and glanced over at his face. He seemed so broken--even more so than the rest of us. After all, he'd lived hundreds of years. He lost the woman he loved and ran from his child because of his own fear. Now he sat full of guilt, full of missed opportunities, broken far beyond repair.

            "I wish I could tell you that it'll get better," I whispered through the thin air. "I wish I could tell that soon enough William will forgive you, but...I know how he feels. He feels abandoned, just like I do when it comes to my own mother and father. William and I have that common. We've both had people leave or throw us out of their lives. We both have issues with trusting people. It's not the fact that he doesn't believe you're sincerity, Derek, because I do, at least. I think it's more because he's spent his life feeling unwanted. You showing up years later saying that you knew all this time...it probably sounded less like relief to him and more like proof."