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The man stopped in his tracks when he noticed me. “Lucas?”
My jaw tightened as I forced myself to respond. “Dad.”
Fuck, I hadn’t seen him in… I didn’t know how long. The only way we communicated these days was through my mother, and neither of us ever had much to say. Dad looked like he’d aged ten years since I’d seen him last. His gut was bigger than ever, and his hair had grayed.
His lips curled into a sneer. He obviously wasn’t happy to see me, either. “You should be ashamed of yourself after the way you treated your mother when the house burnt down! She deserves more respect.”
Goddess, here we went. I hadn’t even said two words, and he was already yelling at me.
“You’re one to talk about respect,” I mumbled.
“How dare talk to me like that?” he growled.
My heart seemed to shrink inside my chest, becoming smaller and smaller. Retreating inside myself was the only way I’d ever learned to protect myself from him. Wasn’t he embarrassed, yelling at me in front of all my friends? I didn’t get how he could do it. Hell, I was embarrassed for him.
Nadine pushed her way in front of me. “You call yourself a father, but you never—”
“Nad, stop,” I insisted. She was going to get herself hurt.
My father chuckled. “You need your girlfriend to stand up for you? Is that what it means to be Mortana? Perhaps if you’d been a Mentalist like your old man, you could fight your own battles.”
I grabbed Nadine’s arm and pushed her behind me. If Dad was going to go off on me, I didn’t want my friends getting caught in the crosshairs.
“It must be great, sitting in your cushy dorm with all your expenses paid on your fancy scholarship while your mom and I are struggling to get back on our feet,” Dad ranted. “You could’ve helped us move into our new apartment.”
“If you think of your son as nothing but free labor, then you’re not a father,” Nadine snapped.
My hand tightened around her wrist. Sticking up for me was only going to make it worse.
“You’re gonna question my worth as a father? No, no, no. Ask him why he chose to be such a shitty son,” Dad sneered. “Now he’s moved on to ruin your life, huh?”
“Maybe I was a shitty son because I got tired of being beat.” I shouldn’t have said it, but I needed to distract him from Nadine. I wasn’t going to let him talk to her the way he spoke to me.
“The only reason I turned to the bottle was because you and your brother were such huge disappointments,” he said. “I had dreams, but I never got to pursue them after you came along. I could’ve been a big wig executive at a fancy law firm. I would’ve had money.”
I would’ve snorted if I thought he wouldn’t hit me for it. Dad had no interests outside of alcohol and gambling. To think he’d ever make it as a lawyer was laughable.
“You should call your mother once in a while,” my dad added. “She’s been real sad lately. A good son would at least check up on her.”
Of course he was using my mother as a weapon against me. He always did. Despite that, I couldn’t respond. I took whatever blows he delivered, because I knew if I hit back, he’d hit back harder.
“Eric would’ve called,” my dad taunted as he shook his bag of liquor at me. “But he’s gone. Maybe if you weren’t sneaking around breaking into cemeteries that night, you could’ve been there to stop him.”
Something inside my chest broke at the mention of my brother. It took me back to times when Eric and I would hide in the closet to escape my father’s wrath—when his Mentalist powers would get out of control, and things would start spinning around the room. There was no talking my father down. The only way to save yourself was to let him run out of steam, until he eventually got tired of torturing you.
I feared the bottles of liquor would come flying out of his hands and hurt someone. All I wanted to do was run as far away from my father as possible, to never see him again… to disappear.
And that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t know how it happened. One second I was standing on the sidewalk in the middle of Octavia Falls, and the next, my stomach felt like it was spiraling outside my body. Flashes of color passed by my vision, then everything stopped.
My feet hit solid ground, and I regained my bearings. I looked around to see that I was standing on the lawn in front of Miriam Mansion.
How had I gotten there?
I spotted a couple headed toward their vehicle at the other end of the parking lot, but otherwise the yard was empty. No one had seen me suddenly appear.
What the hell had happened?
My phone buzzed, and I rushed to answer it.
