Tyler
I TRIED NOT to grunt as I shoved the wine rack aside, but it was fucking heavy.
With one last push, I had made enough space to open the door. Paris pushed her hot little body against mine and I rather liked the feeling of this together shit.
Nervousness struck when I gripped the knob and turned it. I opened it slowly in case anything was living in there, or dead. Bats. Rats. Skeletons.
Who the fuck knew.
Paris had stepped back, fearing the very same thing and I tried not to laugh.
A light turned on automatically as soon as I did. The string attached to the door had illuminated a long, narrow storage room filled with old boxes, old winery equipment, and even old bottles.
I motioned Paris to my side and together we stepped into the storage room. She took one side, I took the other, and we scanned the boxes slowly.
The thing was, they were labeled by years and nothing more descriptive, so chances were good this was going to take a while.
An hour passed of us flipping through old invoices and even recipes when I heaved another box off the top of a wine press and the bottom fell out. “Fuck,” I muttered.
As I crouched down to pick up the papers, my eyes scanned the heading. It read, “Employment Application for Housekeeper Position,” but what really caught my eye was the name, “Wilhelmina Madeline Fox Miller,” hand-written in the applicant square.
Miller.
That’s one surname she never added to her long moniker that I ever knew about.
Miller.
Common enough.
But I knew it wasn’t.
My entire body went taut.
“What is it?” Paris asked, getting on her knees beside me.
“I’m not sure,” I said tightly. “It looks like Wilhelmina worked for my grandparents here, at this house, before my grandmother died.” I drew in a deep breath as I kept scanning down the application, reading each question and every answer.
Unease prickled at my spine and truth stabbed at my gut.
There was a faint echo in my ear to put the fucking paper down, tear it up, shred it, burn it, anything, just don’t keep reading.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
I didn’t listen.
I never did.
My eyes shifted further down.
Requested position—live-in housekeeper.
Children—one.
Child’s name—Audrey.
The room spun and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Chaos swirled in the air and I struggled not to suffocate in it.
Paris placed her hand on my shoulder. “What is it, Tyler?”
I looked over at her and there was no missing the spark of fear in her green eyes. I tried to say it.
Once.
Twice.
“Tyler,” she pleaded. “Tell me.”
Finally I managed, “Audrey is Wilhelmina’s daughter.”
“Who’s Audrey?” she asked, confusion wrinkling her brow.
My heart felt like a rocket ready to launch. “The woman who gave birth to me.”
“Oh, God, Tyler.”
I dropped the piece of paper and bounded to my feet.
All the air was stolen from my lungs as they squeezed tight and I gasped for breath. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this information?”
I dared her to say bury it.
She rose to her feet and she was speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear a word she was saying.
“Tyler.”
I tried to focus on her. I really did, but all I felt was the deceit my family had covered up.
Fear spiraled in the depth of her eyes. I knew she saw the destruction slamming into me, howling like a beast to be freed. Spinning through the room on a destructive path. Looking for a way out.
It was who I was, after all.
Bad news.
Trouble.
My teeth ground as confusion battered my rib cage, my chest, my head, my entire being.
Running my hands down my face, I tried to rid the fucked up feeling that something just wasn’t right. Wherever Corky had been, so had trouble. It had been like that for the first seventeen years of my life. And I knew Corky had been here.
“Tyler.” Paris’s voice was soft, pleading.
I looked at her. Saw her. Wanted to crawl inside her and stay there forever, but the floor beneath my feet felt unsteady and I had to get out of there.
Stepping the first step wasn’t easy but the second and third were. And then I kept moving until I was out of that old storage room and back in the wine cellar.
She reached for me. “Tyler.”
The room spun all red and green. Her hair, her eyes, her voice. I wanted to focus on them. On her soothing touch. Knew she was the one truly real thing in my entire fucking life, but this was about Corky.
Corky.
Again.
And I just knew it couldn’t be good.
Audrey. Corky. Wilhelmina. And Tyler Justin Ryan Holiday, the first. They all knew, and not a single one of them told me.
There was a reason.
A bad one.
“Tyler, breathe, there has to be a reasonable explanation for this,” Paris tried to reassure me.
Through unfocused eyes, I looked at her.
Innocent.
Innocent through all the shit she’d been through, and me, I was the total opposite. Tainted. Damaged. Fucking ruined.
Corky had ruined me.
Had he ruined me more than I even knew?
I started pacing with my hands on my head. “I need to get out of here.”
Her expression turned grave. Her chest heaved as her tumultuous green eyes watched me like I was a caged animal. “Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know, but I need to get the fuck out of here,” I said again.
“You’re upset. You don’t need to get in a car that way. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
I shook my head.
“Then I’ll come with you.”
She was pleading.
Afraid almost.
I was moving before I even allowed myself to consider staying. Sickness roiled in my gut as I tore toward the stairs, taking them two at a time and ignoring her pleas. I had to be alone. To think. To figure out what the fuck my life was really all about.
Bolting into the kitchen, I nabbed my keys and wallet from the counter. I didn’t bother with a coat. I just pounded out the back door, taking all three steps at once.
Twilight was on the horizon, the sky filled with more colors than I cared to define. The land that surrounded me was a dormant corpse waiting for spring to come and make it whole again.
Waiting for me to make it right.
Me.
But why me?
It was all lies.
Lies.
Lies.
And more lies.
My entire fucking life was one big lie.
My step-grandmother turned step-mother for a day, known as my step-monster, was actually my real grandmother and no one ever bothered to tell me.
It would have been funny if wasn’t so fucking tragic.