Kiera didn’t follow me as I headed for my room, and I was grateful for the space. I just needed a minute to calm the fuck down. I paced near my bed, my hands clenching and unclenching. I really wanted to hit something, but what I really wanted to hit—who I really wanted to hit—wasn’t here. Kiera was wrong. I didn’t need to see him. What I needed was to never see him. Or hear from him. I needed to go back to that time when I had no idea where he was or if he was even alive. The ignorance had been bliss. I didn’t think about him, and he didn’t think about me. It had been a mutual agreement, one I was more than happy to keep honoring, but for some reason, that fucker got it into his head that I owed him something. But I didn’t owe him a fucking thing. If anything, he owed me, but all I wanted from him was for him to be gone.

Collapsing onto my bed, I dropped my head into my hands. Why couldn’t he just leave me the fuck alone? What had changed for him? No. It didn’t matter what had changed. He gave up his right to know me the minute he left me.

He left me. He hadn’t even waited for me to be born, he just…left me. He let them smack me around, tear me down…torture me…for years. He could have saved me, but he didn’t. He didn’t even try. He just…stopped thinking about me. Stopped caring. Or more accurately, he never started caring. I was nothing in his eyes. He’d let me become…nothing.

Lifting my head, I stared at a patched hole in my wall—an outlet for my rage back when I first saw this place, when I saw how my parents had tried to erase me. They’d never cared either. I remembered the day I’d called them after I’d run away, the day I’d let them know I was still alive…months after I’d left home.

Dad answered the phone. “Yes?”

“Hey…it’s me.” Silence met my ear. “Kellan,” I added, feeling like I needed to explain.

“Yes,” he said, his voice apathetic. “What do you want?”

“I just…I wanted to let you know…I’m okay.”

“All right,” he answered, still sounding almost…bored. I wished he would yell at me, call me names…that would have hurt so much less than his disinterest.

My throat tightened up, but I managed to tell him, “I’m living in L.A. This is my number if you want to reach me…” He was quiet after I rattled off the number, and I had no idea if he’d written it down. “Is Mom there?” I asked, my voice cracking just as much as my heart.