Hiding My Heart

Chapter 39

Seven more days. Just Seven more days until my birthday, six more days until I let Preston claim me. And for the past three days I have been staring at the box once more. I had talked to Brayden to let me stay the weekend over and come home on Monday. I knew it was time to open the box and I didn't want to do that over at my house. I needed space from my mom and brother when I did that because I didn't know what I was about to see. 

Swallowing I gently pull the box over to me more. My heart pounds in my chest as I reach out oh so slowly and lift the lid. I find myself closing my eyes as I lift the other side, the box now wide open to look into. But I can't find myself doing that, instead I squeeze them shut and count backwards in my head, trying to calm my nerves.  

Slowly I open my eyes and take a peek down. Books, things in cases, things in envelopes, things buried under each other and a little dust were in the box.  

"Come on Dee, you can do this. You've been through one box before this." I mumble to myself as I reach in and grab the first thing I touch. 

It's a small metal case. Biting my lip I lift the lid and see a ring in it. It's silver and heavy in my hands, it looks like it's meant for a man and the design on the sides and the stone in the middle doesn't look girlie to me. Squinting I see the word Johnson carved in under the stone. A family ring? 

Setting it aside I grab something else, a book this time. I hesitate in opening it; do I really want to read another journal? But this is the box I have been seeking, the only box that mattered at the time, it holds on the answers for me. 

"Stop being a baby." I hiss at myself and crack open the book and to my surprise it's a photo album. 

A man that looks like my father stands behind a younger boy, his arm wrapped around a small pretty woman. Her hair is short and black, she was very pretty looking at the inscription I read. The Johnson Family year book. Phillip Johnson, Mary Johnson, and Joey Johnson. I inhale at this, so the man and his wife are my grandparents? The ones I have never met.  

Flipping the book over I see pictures of my father growing up, of his birthdays and first day of school. In all the pictures he's smiling, so are his parents. He looked like a normal boy who had a happy childhood. His father teaching him how to fish, to ride a bike, everything was here. But then as he got older there were pictures of him going to proms and dances with different women, the look in his eyes sad as he held the women close. His look changed; instead of the cute, innocent smile a rueful smirk lit his face. Gone were the prim and proper clothes as he downgraded to the player and bada_s style, his hair a mess and in some pictures he holds a beer in his hand or a cigarette in his mouth. This is the Joey my mother knew. Then the last pages of a dark wolf, with grey eyes just like my own. This must be his wolf. 

I look away and bite my lip hard. What happened to him? What made him go from having a happy family and having a great life to becoming the player? Was it because he hadn't found his mate when he was fourteen, and when he did find her she was sleeping around? Surely that would hurt anyone, look at Sasha and Brayden, I knew she felt pain when he was with Kelly. Was that why he did this to himself?  

I hated him at that moment for being so weak and pathetic. To change yourself just because he didn't find his mate. What would have happened if he found my mom sooner? Would he still hate me? Would he still have been abusive towards my family? I couldn't be sure because I didn't know what he was truly thinking at the time. 

Closing the book I shove it aside, I don't want to remember my father smiling. I don't want to see him change into the monster that I know him as. Grabbing the envelopes I see they are in my mother's handwriting, addressed to each of my siblings. Putting Brayden's and Natalie's to the side I grab mine and hold it gently in my hands. The envelopes look yellowed over time, as if they were written on a long time ago, a small thin layer of dust coated it.