The Kents

Ten

I inch away from our collision course, our foreheads pressed, I take a deep breath. He doesn't seem to find trouble breathing while I'm taking miserable lungfuls.

"Don't tell me it was a mistake." He cups my face and eyes me tentatively.

I shake my head with an unsure smile. Just bad timing I guess?

The spark was there, the ignition, the thrill, the lust, they were all present. I've fantasized it. This is by the farthest thing from a mistake.

"Wrong timing?" He stole a thought of my very own.

I nod.

"It's okay... I uh-got you something." He releases me and pulls something from his back pocket.

Letters...

"Are those my mother's?" I ask and my eyes instantly water on pronouncing this holy name.

"I'll leave you to it. And don't stay up here it gets cold." He hands me about ten to eleven letters and leaves.

I graze the sealed envelopes. They don't seem over-read. They're neatly torn, not crumbled, almost untouched.

I take a deep breath, open up the first one, and hope that whatever's in there would give me a fraction of clarity and put my mind at ease. And help me justify my position to Luke, and to the Kents, because they're my family now.

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Travis's POV:

"Luke?" I enter.

"In here." He calls from somewhere deeper in his room.

I walk further in and find him standing by the railing of his balcony.

"I won't be here for long Luke..." I say.

"Why's that?" He asks dryly.

"Come on man you know I'm here for you. Why do you still refuse to talk?!" I turn to face him but he doesn't move.

"True, until you were smitten by our sister." He says staring into oblivion.

"True, your sister." He said it himself. His sister. If he believes that, then things are already getting better.

"That's what the papers say. It stays that way." He throws my hopes out the window.

"Her mom lied." I tell him.

He throws me a nonchalant look.

"Luke she never knew he was trying to see her! She just knew that. From you."

"Do you know what that means? Her mom wrote those letter, lied to both your father and Emma. Her mom made him feel like crap. Not Emma!"

"She's just like you. She needed her father all along. Maybe even more than you did."

I tell him and with these last few words he throws me a tearful look but instantly swallows it back straining his jaw.

"You don't know that. We will never know the truth of that." He speaks.

"And what do you choose to do about that? Let the girl suffer, thinking she's hated and not welcomed? That's cruel."

"Yeah well you don't expect me to welcome her and go around calling her my sister!"

"I want you to do just that!" I interrupt him.

"Your father forgave her! Your father! Yet, you can't?!"