Tethered Hearts | ✓ | Books 1 & 2

Episode 48| Closed Minds Don't Open Doors

I swallowed a lump in my throat. "Was there...some kind miscarriage?"

"It's more complicated than that," he responded and we both went to the window seat. It was wide enough for us to sit on together without it feeling cramped. I didn't let go of his hand as he began explaining. "For any of this to make sense, I have to tell you about the issue we had with my parents – my dad in particular. He was raised in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan, which when he was growing up was a predominantly Irish-American neighborhood."

"You're Irish?" I questioned.

"Yeah, from my dad's side."

"Your last name isn't Irish though. Shouldn't it have an O with an apostrophe in it? Like O'Brien, O'Conner, O'Hara—"

"Well aren't you feeling stereotypical today."

"I'm kidding," I teased. "What was the issue with your dad?"

"For starters, he's always been a traditionally kind of person. Even their fucking marriage was traditional and stiff to the final vow. In the twenty years my parents were married, I don't think my mother loved him - not even a single day from those twenty years. She married him for status, and I could see how much she detested him. Despite that, she remarried him."

"Wait, I'm confused. Go back a bit."

"My parents were married and around the time I was middle school, they separated. They started seeing other people, and when I say they, I mean only my father. Nearly every guy in New York was aware of the number of threats they'd receive if they were spotted with my mom on a date. At his prime, my dad was one of the best contract killers on the east coast. He had ties with both the Irish and Italian mob," Bryce informed. "Anyway, this split led to my dad having his daughter Willow, my half-sister. Her mother and my dad didn't work out. Only two years after, my parents got remarried."

"Why would she go back to him if she was unpleased with their marriage? Maybe she loved him."

"I didn't say they got remarried willingly." He said with cold eyes. "I saw her get pressured into it myself and there's nothing worse in the world than to see your mother emotionally beaten down by a man who claimed to love her. She was afraid of him. Him getting sick in recent years at least stopped him from being as overbearing as he used to be. The way he treated my mother was the perfect handbook on how not to treat a woman I cared for in life."

"I'm getting off course though about my father." Bryce went on. "From day one, he didn't like anything about Julia. When we were friends, he didn't like her and he disliked her more when we began dating. Julia had problems of her own at home. In a sense, we found a way to function within our dysfunctional families. She had a substance abuse problem early on. Anything she could put her hands, she would use it. When money started missing at dad's place, he pointed his finger at her. I reassured him it wasn't – but even I knew that it was her. I paid him back eventually when I got a job."

"In the four month frame she got pregnant during our senior year," Bryce said, "she hadn't used any substances. Yet again, my dad claimed that someone had stolen from him. This time, it wasn't a twenty or fifty-dollar bill. It was a stash of drugs he had stored in the floorboard of the garage. I was one of the few people who knew about it, and naturally, he blamed me and nearly kicked my teeth in. By this time in his dishonorable criminal career, he had opted to leading the organized crime world with his own posy of goons. That same week when I announced a proposal to Julia, I overheard a call in his den. He had said Julia's name and described how he wanted a hit done on Julia and wanted her murder by the end of that month."

"Are you serious?" I gasped, baffled.

"Dead serious," he said gravely. "She was over five months clean and expecting a kid when he made that call. I knew she wouldn't have stolen that from him. When I heard that, I took action. I wasn't going to let him ruin my future because he had damaged my past. That was when I decided on doing something notably stupid." He drew in a long breath. "I stole fifteen grand from my dad. I knew his hiding spots and I knew all of his passcodes. I figured if we got to California and hid long enough, he would forget about us. I was dumb and only eighteen."