Hacking The Heart [Immortal Hearts #1] (#Wattys2016)

[20] - <i>love</you>

This part of our story travels back in time to Landon's 8th birthday, the day of the last 'happy' memory he shared with his mother, Lana Luxford.

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It was a beautiful Saturday morning, the sounds of a children's cartoon could be heard from the living room, and the smell of eggs roamed through the house rooting from the kitchen they were being cooked in. Lana, Landon's mother, hummed a tune from her teenage days that had randomly popped into her head.

"Landon, sweetie, breakfast!" Lana yelled from the kitchen. Soon after calling, she heard his footsteps come closer and closer until he finally came in under the arch that connected the living room to the large, granite-countered kitchen. "Happy birthday, baby!"

"Thanks, Mom." Landon pulled out a chair at the kitchen table before sitting with a slight, very faint blush.

"What," Lana smiled as she patted Landon's head and ruffled his hair up. "Are you embarrassed?"

"No." Landon looked away as Lana set the plate on the table. "It feels weird...that you're home on my birthday."

Lana brought her plate to the table and pulled out the chair closest to Landon's. Picking up the bottle of ketchup, she turned it upside down and let the thick, red substance fall as she moved it over her food in a circular motion. She then held it out towards Landon, silently asking him if he wanted any.

"Don't you like spending it with Grandma and Grandpa?" Lana asked.

"Grandma is mean..." Landon stabbed the fork into his food and ripped off a piece that was going to soon enter his hungry mouth. "I wish only Grandpa could come."

"Well, lucky for you, It's just us for today." Lana smiled. "Grandma and Grandpa's flight got delayed and they won't be here until tomorrow. So I was thinking that we could do something fun today, like going to the beach or something."

Landon looked up, surprised that his mom had offered to take him somewhere. It wasn't that Lana didn't want to take her son out, but rather, she couldn't. She was always working, barely able to pay the bills week to week. She had been working herself half to death, and was still barely able to keep her head above water.

Lana had thought about how she could make both of their lives easier, but there were obstacles at every turn; the biggest being Landon himself along with the distance from her workplace. While she thought about moving to a smaller home, possibly a two-bedroom apartment, anything open was either too expensive or too far away from a school for Landon and her job.

As far as Landon went, she had wanted him to at least finish elementary school before even thinking about moving, but even if she had wanted to move before then, she couldn't have. There was no way she could afford it, in both finances and distance. Secondly, Landon, to put it nicely, had always been an unsociable child who had a hard time making friends.

In the area they were living in, there were many children his age, and after a bit of sly, behind the scenes work, she had helped Landon finally get some friends. Kaylee, too be specific, was the one he had gotten along best with. Lana noticed that much, though she wasn't sure why he had gotten along better with a girl rather than one of the many boys that lived in the neighborhood.

"Really?" Landon perked up. "But don't you have to work?"

"I was talking to my boss and it just slipped out." Lana, as she spoke, spread the ketchup around her eggs using the fork in her left hand. "He said to take the day off, and he wouldn't take no for an answer."

Lana really had accidentally spoken of her son's birthday to her boss, and even after telling him that they really needed the money, he had said that he would give her full pay for taking the entire day off. Though she had paid vacation, she had used that up for Landon when he had gotten in trouble at school and couldn't find anyone to watch him on such short notice, which had been quite often.