Breaking the Rules [BoyxBoy]

22 | σℓ∂ ωαуѕ

I'll just keep changing these colors
I'm not in the same place that I was

Chapter 22 ~ Old Ways

Owen Bailey

I was five years old when my parents broke up.

It was such a long time ago, but I still remembered the day when my mother returned from work and told my father that she had cheated on him. At the time, I didn't know what that meant or why it had made my father so mad; all that my five-year old mind was able to process was that he told her to leave, and she never came back.

Dad was never the same after that. He turned to alcohol to make himself feel better, and he neglected me more and more each day. I remembered asking him where Mom had gone and when she was coming back, and his response was a blank stare and an irritated grunt, so my prepubescent self took that to mean that Mom went to a better place.

Of course, my assumption was proven wrong when my mother reached out to me when I was eleven years old. She wanted me to attend a family reunion with people from her side of the family. It took a lot of convincing to have my father let me go, but he was too concerned with where he was getting his next fix of alcohol to truly worry about me.

And that was when I met Liam.

My mother ushered me into the house that had been packed with family members that I had never seen before, aunts who claimed I had grown up so much, and grandparents who wanted to give me gifts even when I didn't even know who they were. She led me to the "play area" where all the little kids were, and then she tapped one of them on the shoulder.

"Owen, honey, this is your brother," she told me as she knelt down to the floor to be eye-level with me. My "brother" spun around to look at us, and when his turquoise eyes met mine, he ran up to me and hugged me like he hadn't seen me in years.

I stared down at the little boy, then flicked my eyes to my mother. "What is he doing? Get him to stop."

She sighed heavily. "Liam, why don't you introduce yourself?"

Liam pulled away from the hug and nodded. "I'm Liam, and I'm..." He held up six fingers, "...six years old! Mommy told me that you're my brother. I always wanted a brother! We can be best friends." His hand found mine, and he began to tug me along with him.

I glanced back at where my mother had been, but she was gone. "I don't want to be best friends," I spat at the boy as I ripped my hand away from his. "I don't even know you. You're not my brother."

Liam turned around and frowned at me. "But mommy says you're my brother."

I rolled my eyes. "Stop calling her that. She's my mom, not yours."

His frown deepened. "Why can't she be both of our mommies?"

I had prepared myself to respond with another reason why we couldn't be related, but I stopped myself once I realized how much this kid seemed to care about me without even knowing me. He was so eager to be my brother and my best friend without knowing a single thing about me. That kind of love was something I had never seen before, certainly not from my dad.