Chapter 25

Prism

I never wantedit to get out.

Never wanted people to know.

Nothing but a liability. If I could put him back, I would. An insult to my gene pool.

John McClaren, my father, was embarrassed and ashamed of me. He made it clear the second he realized I would never be the trophy son a man with political aspirations should have. Instead of putting the effort into trying to fix what he thought was broken, he used his anger and disappointment to break me further.

Now, fourteen years after being discarded, abandoned… removed from the family tree, I stood here, forced to claim my lineage even though I wasn’t good enough to be family. And I had to do it in front of people I managed to carve even a small place with.

Now they will abandon me too.

The look on Arsen’s face caused an agonizing burn inside me. As if I disappointed him, somehow betrayed him. Irritation sparked inside me. But I wasn’t sure if the anger I felt was directed at him or me.

He met me in the dark.Said things I let myself believe, words I’d been desperate for that burrowed deep into my heart, braiding into the fabric of my core. So yes, I was angry, but hurt smothered it, turning it into a secondary emotion.

I was stupid. I fell too fast. Got attached when I shouldn’t have.

I knew better, but one whisper from my onyx-eyed kryptonite and I was utterly defenseless.

Even as I tore myself down, part of me attempted to rally. I didn’t know!

I should have.

This was just another exampleofhow woefully pathetic I was at life. I should have put two and two together. They shared the same last name! Truth was I stayed as far away as humanly possible from politics, the news, and anything that might even bring up an echo of a memory of my parents. Hell, I wouldn’t even have come to this state for college, but Jess got a scholarship to Westbrook and it was at this school I could swim with my brother.

I’d become an expert at blocking out any kind of connection to politics. So much so that I hadn’t even thought about the potential link between Arsen and the senator seated alongside my… Him.

The three of us—me, my brother, and my sister—made a pact before we even left New York to come to Westbrook. No one would know. Ever. Besides, the McClarens weren’t my parents anymore. We just happened to have matching DNA. I had no doubt if my father could have scrubbed himself from my genetics, it would have already been done.

We managed for two years. Almost three. We lived as if they didn’t exist and kept the reasons I was kicked to the curb on the down low too. It was my choice. What I wanted. My family respected and upheld it.

One night in jail changed everything.

Coach learned about my disabilities (though, props to him for acting as if he didn’t know). Arsen whispered in my ear. I took the plunge and told my friends I was gay.

And now?

Now this fleabag of a lawyer dug around in my closet, unearthed the most ancient and painful of skeletons, and whipped them out for everyone to gawk at.

I felt like a pinata who’d taken one hit too many, and now I was ripped open, everything inside me spilling out all over the floor.

Bro. A trauma latte wasn’t going to fix this. Nothing could.

“I didn’t realize John had a child,” Senator Andrews, Arsen’s dad, deliberated.

He’s probably just like my father.

Now I understood why it was so easy for us to get out of the first arrest. Why hadn’t I asked more questions about that before?

“He doesn’t,” I replied. A reflex? Protection mechanism? Both.

The senator frowned. “I don’t understand. Are you or are you not John McClaren’s son?”

My stomach knotted. The few sips of coffee burned my esophagus, threatening to reappear.

Max’s boots thudded on the floor as he came closer. “Seems to me he’s just a biologic.”

I glanced at Max, grateful he understood. I’d heard him refer to his parents as his biologics on more than one occasion. Because to him, they weren’t his parents. They were sperm donors. Their biology created his, and that was the only connection they had.

“Yeah,” I told him. “But that was what you chose. I didn’t choose it. They did.”

Max’s jaw turned to stone, the muscles on the sides of his face jutting out with anger. “Then they didn’t deserve you.”

Oh, that pierced. It pierced a soft spot of me where my armor had fallen away. It was a simple thing to say. Maybe something contrived that he didn’t even fully mean. But it still meant something to me.

“What does that mean exactly?” Senator Andrews asked.

“He’s his kid, Bennett,” Niles replied. “But it was deeply buried. I had to use every connection I had to get to the truth.”

“Why would John hide the fact he has a son?” Senator Andrews murmured. He glanced at me, and I had to fight the urge to drop my eyes to the floor.

I refused. I would not. It was so hard my fingers trembled and my knees shook. Sweat prickled my forehead, and the back of my neck bristled. Even still, I kept my burning, unblinking eyes up and on the man.

“Are you a product of an affair?” he questioned. “Did he not know about you?”

I heard myself laugh. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I just laughed and laughed. And laughed. I laughed so much that tears dropped from the corners of my eyes, and I gasped for breath in between cackling.

“Matt.” Kruger spoke my name quietly, his voice gruff. His arm went around my shoulders and lifted, making me aware I’d been bent at the waist. “Come on, bro. That’s it. You don’t owe anyone an explanation.”

“Yes. He does,” Niles refuted.

Kruger made a sound and spun away. There was a grunt, then a loud groan, and a few chairs skittered across the floor. I looked up as Niles fell backward and several uniforms swarmed my brother.

Our friends all pushed in front of him, blocking him from being seized.

“How dare you?” Niles shouted, voice nasally and high. Sitting up, he held a hand to his face. “I think my nose is broken!”

“You keep flapping your lips, and that ain’t all that’s gonna be,” Kruger spat.

“That was a threat!” Niles implored. “Everyone heard. I’m pressing charges.”

“My lawyers are coming,” Kruger retorted as if he had not one care in the world. “And they’re a hell of a lot better than you.”

“That’s enough.” Detective Paul stepped into the chaos. “You, you, and you,” he said, pointing at me, Arsen, and Kruger. “Into a cell.”

I took a moment to peek at Arsen, my boyfriend. Or was he now my ex? Could I even count him as an ex if we didn’t date very long?

I could never date someone linked to politics.

“Senator, I’ll speak with you and your lawyer in my office.” Detective Paul continued issuing orders. “Everyone else, get out.”

The doors swung open, and Coach rushed through. “I’m here! What’s—” His shoes squeaked against the floor with his abrupt stop. His eyes widened as he saw the entire crowd standing there. Reaching up to rub his stubbled jaw, he found Ryan in the group. “What’s all this, Walsh?”

“Thought the team might need you here, Coach,” Ryan replied.

Coach glanced around until landing on me. I hated he knew it was me that caused this drama. “Prism, are you okay, son?”

“Living the dream, Coach.” Look at that. I made a joke. Guess I wasn’t completely unhinged after all.

Yet.

“Out!” Detective Paul roared.

Instinctively, I looked to Arsen, hating that my brain was already hopelessly trained to seek him out when I was overwhelmed.

The second my attention landed on him, he was moving, weaving through the people between us until he was close enough that I could smell the stale beer staining the hoodie he wore. It made me look down at the black denim jacket, my stomach doing a little flip because it was like he was wrapped around me.

The urge to lean into him, press my face into his neck, and inhale while he used whatever magic only he had to soothe my frazzled system was overwhelming. How badly I wanted to soak up everything he was.

But I couldn’t. Not ever again.

Have you ever heard the saying, The eyes are the windows to the soul?

I didn’t know if that was true, but in that moment, I hoped it wasn’t because Arsen had already seen too much of my soul, and what would be visible now was a profound sadness I never wanted anyone else to ever see.

Lowering my lashes in an effort to conceal my windows, I whispered, “I told you we don’t fit.”

He grabbed my shoulders, shaking me hard enough that my lashes fluttered and I met his glimmering stare. “And I told you to show me the parts that don’t fit and I’ll saw them off so we do.”

“You didn’t mean that.” You said it without knowing all the information.

“Oh, baby. No truer words have ever been said.”

“And what if what doesn’t fit is in our DNA?”

His brief pause was like the stab of a knife. It barely dulled the pain when he said, “Not possible.”

“Star-crossed lovers, then.” I decided.

He gave me a stern look. “This is not Romeo and Juliet. We do not die at the end.”

“Maybe not,” I allowed. “But our families will keep us apart.”

The fingers gripping my shoulders pressed harder, and a secret part of me hoped there would be bruises so I could have a piece of him just a little bit longer.

I was not new to deep emotion or being overstimulated, overwhelmed, and lonely. But this welling sadness? The foreboding of goodbye to someone who, in such a short time, managed to kidnap me, body and soul… I wondered if I would ever get out from under it or if it would just be something else I would learn to live beneath.

“DNA is just a report card of the past,” Arsen said, his perfect voice alighting my nerve endings and making something inside me sing. “I’m not interested in your past, Matthew. Your future is what I’m after. Your future is what I will have.”

And there we stood—in the midst of arguing police officers, Elite bringing Coach up to speed, and Niles bleeding all over his heinous yellow tie—while my heart bled out inside my chest. While I slowly, quietly drowned in my own blood.

Across the room, I could feel Senator Andrews’s stare, and as much as I wanted to believe the things Arsen said, I’d used up my allotment of stupid for the rest of my life.

Tugging free of Arsen’s hands, I turned toward his father to answer his earlier question. To get this over with. “I was not a product of an affair. He’s known about me since birth.” I spoke quietly, resigned to the truth.

The chaos around us quieted, proving that even a soft voice could be strong.

“My mother is his wife.”

“You don’t have his last name,” Senator Andrews stated.

“Because he took it back,” I divulged.

Fingers slid into mine, and I glanced at my sister as she offered silent support. Ben stepped up to my other side, pressing our shoulders together. This was my family. These were the people not even my DNA could chase away.

“I wasn’t the son he wanted. I was difficult, different, too much work. I was angry, threw tantrums that later turned into aggressive outbursts. I didn’t learn fast enough, couldn’t be controlled, and punishment only made me worse.” So much worse. “The medication they tried to dull me with turned me into a zombie, and that was an embarrassment too. By the time I was six, he’d had enough and said I was dead weight to him and my mother and having a problem child like me would only keep him from the White House.”

I usually liked silence. But not right now. The heavy attention that came with it was near suffocating. My ears burned so much I had to resist the urge to reach up and see if they were bleeding. A metallic flavor coated my tongue, and my skin itched like it was too tight for my body.

Keep going.

“They sent me to New York to live with my mother’s ex-stepmother. Pretty sure she was the only one who would take me, and my parents liked it because they weren’t related to her and wouldn’t have to see me. My father changed my last name to hers and then erased me from the family tree.”

“That man is so crooked if he swallowed a nail, he’d spit out a corkscrew,” Ben muttered. “Worst human to ever human in the history of humans.”

“Gram is really great, though,” Jess added.

I nodded. Gram was great. She took in a kid she wasn’t even related to, a kid with a shit ton of issues, but she never once acted like I was a burden. Her chicken recipes were terrible, though, but I ate them anyway. It was a small price to pay for everything she did for me.

I glanced at Elite because I couldn’t bring myself to look at the one I really wanted to see. The one whose reaction to all of this had the ability to break me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was embarrassed. Didn’t want anyone to know.”

Ryan shifted, about to speak up, but he was harshly interrupted by an abrupt, loud burst of sound akin to the popping of a balloon.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Niles stepped forward with a bloodied tissue clasped between two fingers as he banged his palms together. Blood smeared from beneath his swollen and already bruised nose and across his cheek. His eyes glittered with what I assumed was a mixture of anger and pain. Splatters of blood marred his yellow tie, and the collar of his once pristine dress shirt.

“Brava,” he said, still clapping. “That was quite a performance. I’d be moved if I didn’t know your father is equally good at drumming up empathy and fooling people.”

“Bro, the next time I punch you, you won’t get back up,” Kruger intoned.

Niles ignored him. “It’s a tremendously convenient story.”

“It’s not a story,” I snapped, irritation spiking. That had been damn hard to say. Telling an entire room that I am unworthy and unwanted. Revealing my biggest insecurity and secret pain. This was the reason I kept quiet about myself because this was the reaction I almost always got.

Disbelief. Skepticism. Outright scorn.

The only reason I’d bared my truth just now was to prove to Arsen that whatever was between us was impossible to keep. That I could never date anyone whose father was a carbon copy of mine.

“No?” Niles pondered. “Because to me, it seems like the perfect cover. With a heartbreaking tale like that, we wouldn’t possibly believe you could be working with your father to set up the senator’s son by making him look like a drug addict, thus creating ammunition for a smear campaign and tanking his chances of getting elected for another term.”

Utter shock jolted my body. “What? No.”

Niles preened, pacing a little in front of his captive audience, a true lawyer going in for the kill. “What a perfect opportunity to get back into your father’s good graces. To cozy up to Arsen under the guise of romantic interest so you could plant drugs in his car and get him arrested.”

Did this man have no limits? Not only outing my secrets but twisting them to use them against me. To make me sound just as heinous as my biologic.

Smirking, Niles asked, “Are you even actually gay?”

A choked sound ripped from my throat, burning me with its intensity.

Kruger turned to Jess. “I’m sorry, baby, but I’m not gonna be home tonight,” he said, giving her a little push toward our friends, cracking his knuckles, and then lunging at the lawyer.

The two officers who arrested us grabbed my brother and pulled him back, restraining his arms around his back.

Kruger turned his ire toward Arsen. “You’re seriously gonna stand there and let that lizard spew poison about him!”

This was really out of hand, especially in a police station. I couldn’t help but glance around, wondering what everyone else was thinking.

Someone across the room was eating popcorn.

Someone else was sipping water from the water cooler.

The custodian was sweeping the floor. The same spot he’d been sweeping when we got here.

I was entertainment. An in-the-flesh reality show playing live.

Bro, you better not be eating popcorn right now. Put it down.

Okay, honestly? I wasn’t really thinking about what everyone else was thinking. Just one person.

Dread made me nauseous. Insecurity made me shake. Ignoring the rapid and unrelenting twitching in my eyelid, I slowly looked up.

He was only a few feet away, but it felt like thousands of miles. Our stares met, and my heart tugged, a silent plea for my body to go to him. My fingers curled into my palms, nails scraping over the flesh to relieve the sudden itching in my hands.

I would never do this to you. My stare begged him to believe.

His eyes flickered but then went black once more, betrayal and anger the only thing I could find even as I desperately sought more.

“He’s the only one with motive and opportunity.” Niles pressed, his words far less aggressive than before. Probably because he also saw the look on Arsen’s face. “He set you up, Arsen. He planted those drugs in your car,” he taunted, shifting the evil gleam in his eyes to me. “It looks like your father was right after all. You are a liability because you couldn’t even do it right.”

His words were a vacuum, sucking all the oxygen out of the room, making my lungs shrivel. Your father was right. You’re a liability.

I scrambled for footing. For an anchor to keep me from completely caving in. My heart hurt. So much. I rubbed my chest, instinctively going to Arsen.

The look on his face halted my steps.

The world that had rearranged around him imploded.

He didn’t believe me.