VOLKO

Chapter Four

I leaned against the closed dinner room door. My heart pounded in my chest. There was only one place to go, Jake would be riling from that interaction with Dean, and I knew he'd be stewing up there.

The walk to his room didn't take long, probably because all I could think about was how I'd calm Jake down. After knocking on his door for five minutes, I pushed it open to see Jake angrily shoved pieces of clothing into a bag.

Someone says something he doesn't like, and Jake decides to run away from home. The childish action would have been funny if it weren't so sad.

"What are you doing?" I said, acting astonished as though I hadn't seen him pull the exact same move three months ago after Robert flew back to America on urgent business. That night, Jake's temper had reached a record high when he'd discovered our father had taken Dean and not him.

"I'm leaving. Fuck this shit, I've got better things to be doing than be schooled by an absent father and his side kick." Jake kicked over the desk chair which got in his path.

Jake had a tendency to hit out. This being his go to strategy when things weren't going his way, a tantrum. They normally came in the form of a bag being packed as he made threats. Thankfully Jake had never pulled this stunt on me, however that didn't make watching them any easier.

The trick was a few sweet words.

"You can't go. Jake please stay." I stopped Jake from angrily pacing and held his hands in mine.

He really wasn't that hard to understand, perhaps that's why we got on so well. All Jake wanted was to feel loved and needed, like most people. When he didn't feel those things, he acted irrationally.

"Why? If you want to put up with their shit you can, but I don't need to. I've got a life in America that I want to get back to." Jake ripped his hands from mine and returned to packing.

"I want to get to know my dad." A simple truth that angered Jake further. I realised my mistake straight away. Jake was an insecure hot-head, two things which should never be mixed.

"Why? Why would you want to get to know such a shitty person?" Jake asked as if the notion was madness.

His tone suggested he didn't actually want an answer, so I sat, watching him try and fail to land any clothes successfully into the suitcase. He flung them so forcefully around they often missed it entirely and landed on the bed.

"I've known him my whole life and guess what? I wouldn't bother. When my mum died he didn't shed a single tear, didn't comfort me." No longer did Jake fling clothes around. He stood holding a yellow t-shirt, looking longingly at it.

I'd never experienced the death of a parent so I couldn't share in Jake's pain. That didn't stop me from seeing the raw emotion on his face, the tears just being kept at bay by his eyelids. Jake rarely talked about his mum but when he did, it often went hand and hand with Robert not being there for him.

Jake sat down heavily onto the bed, still holding the t-shirt.

"My mum struggled with her illness for five years before she died. That man didn't offer any support unless it came with a pay check. He's a user and you'll soon figure that out for yourself." Jake's face twisted into what I can only describe as a knowing smile.

"What'd you mean?" My voice seemed to bring Jake out of a place I couldn't go. He looked up at me blinking like he'd just woken up. I could see him tracking back over the words he'd spoken in his head. Something was off, I just didn't know what. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"Of course not. It's just a figure of speech." Jake spoke too quickly for it to be anything but a lie. The redness creeping up his neck confirmed my suspicions. Why he felt the need to lie was beyond me, but I decided to drop the matter. The events of today had taken any possible fight out of me. The only thing I wanted right now was a bed.