I turned my gaze toward the house, taking in the familiar yet distant silhouette against the dull evening sky.
After a moment of hesitation, I nodded. “Yeah.”
The second I stepped outside, a biting gust of cold wind hit me, wrapping around my skin like icy fingers.
“Jesus,” I murmured under my breath, the word barely escaping my lips.
I quickly reached back inside for Mysun, carefully unbuckling him from the car seat. I wanted to shield him from the cold as best as I could. As I lifted him, the chill in the air gently brushed against his cheeks, causing him to stir and blink drowsily.
“Aww,” I cooed softly, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead before gently wrapping him more securely in his thick, cream-colored blanket.
By then, Von had rounded the rear of the SUV.
“You’re shaking,” he noticed, his voice low and filled with concern.
“I’m cold,” I corrected, trying to downplay the tremor in my limbs.
“Mm-hmm,” he replied in a doubtful tone.
“I am.”
“That ain’t all it is,” Von said, refusing to leave well enough alone.
Unfortunately, he was right, though.
My hands felt stiff while adjusting Mysun’s little knit hat over his curls.
A mix of anxiety, anger, sadness, even curiosity flowed through me. I wanted my “parents” to be happy to see me, and that hope made me feel foolish and angry at myself for wanting something so trivial.
When Von pressed the doorbell, my heart immediately started pounding harder. The sound echoed inside, then floated away into silence. Moments later, I could hear footsteps approaching, each step amplifying my nervousness until finally, the door swung open.
There stood my adoptive father, Quincy, his posture stiff and eyes wide with surprise, frozen in place as if time had stopped between us.
For a second, neither of us spoke.
“Kyns…” he said at last, his voice a mixture of disbelief and something that felt almost tender.
His tone knocked the air out of me, rendering me breathless as a rush of emotions flooded through me. It wasn’t anger or coldness that I heard; it was simply... stunned.
He peered down at Mysun briefly before coming back to my face. I could tell instantly he missed me deeply. I recognized it in the way his shoulders tensed, the way his grip tightened around the edge of the door, and the way his mouth parted as if he had an avalanche of feelings and thoughts ready to spill out but found himself at a loss for words.
Just then, another voice floated from deeper inside the house, breaking the moment. “Honey, who’s—”
Footsteps approached rapidly, and soon my adoptive mother, Elaine appeared. The second her eyes landed on me a transformation swept over her face. It was a striking contrast to my Quincy’s reaction, nothing resembling shock or happiness painted on her features. Instead, her demeanor shifted to one of blatant disgust.
“Kynsleigh?” she repeated sharply, like my name tasted bitter in her mouth.
Quincy immediately looked uncomfortable. “Elaine—”
“No! Absolutely not!” she interrupted forcefully, stepping forward with an intensity that silenced him.
Elaine’s eyes narrowed as they dropped to Mysun, bundled protectively against my chest, and hardened further.
“You have some nerve showing up here!” she seethed, her voice laced with venom as she glared at me.
The vicious cold of the wind whipped around us, capturing the bitterness of the moment, but despite the chill, my body felt uncomfortably hot... painfully hot.
“We did everything for you!” she continued, her words sharp and accusatory, nearly choking on her own contempt. “Everything!You went to the best schools, wore the finest clothes, had endless opportunities that some children would kill for. We brought you into this home—our home—and tried to mold you into something respectable, only for you to end up pregnant with a bastard baby! And now you’re here for what exactly?”
