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The tingle from the contact zigzagged to my heart. Being around him was lethal. We hadn’t done anything wrong unless lusting after your sister’s ex was a violation of the sister code.
We fell silent for a few minutes until Colton asked, “Does it come naturally?”
“What do you mean?” I twisted in my seat to face him.
“Your perpetual good mood, the way of looking at everything in a positive light, does that come naturally to you?”
I snorted. “God, no. I have to work at it. I start my day with yoga stretches, do a guided meditation because my brain is always spinning and easily distracted, and then I get ready for the day. I have these affirmations on my phone that I read, too.”
At his raised brow, I explained, “They’re these positive statements like I’m going to have a great day, or I bring light to everyone I interact with.”
“And reading those works?” he asked carefully.
“Reading, saying, and writing them helps. I try to avoid social media and the news, too. I want to know what’s going on in the world, but I don’t want to be weighed down by it.”
“Is there a reason why you do all those things?” He glanced over at me as if he was worried he’d offended me.
I shrugged, hoping he didn’t go too deep with his line of questions. “I told you I want to feel good.”
“Is it because of your past?”
I stiffened, the old familiar pit in my stomach forming. “What do you mean?”
“I know your childhood was a bit unstable.”
Hearing the truth from him was unsettling. I sighed, wanting to share with someone. When I came to live with adoptive parents permanently, I buried the past, shoving it aside when it threatened to rear its ugly head. “Not knowing where you were going to be living, or with whom, was upsetting. But that year we lived with my foster parents and then had to go back to our bio parents destroyed us a little inside. We became jaded. We’d seen love, and it was taken away. My bio parents hated my foster parents. Thought they were indoctrinating us with religion. Turning us against them.”
“Were they?”
“They surrounded us with love and attention. All things that we were missing. The first time my foster mom sat down with me and Delilah to play a game, we were shocked. We couldn’t fathom that an adult would sit and play with us. Our bio parents usually slept most of the day, and Delilah was responsible for getting us ready for school.”
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “I had no idea.”
My mouth dropped open in surprise. “Delilah never told you?”
“She didn’t talk about life before living with your adopted parents.”
“Huh.” Thinking back, neither of us spoke of it before. We were too afraid talking about it would burst our bubble, thrusting us back into our old reality. Neither of us wanted that.
Colton glanced over at me with regret. “Delilah was so put together all the time; my stupid, teenage brain assumed she was fine.”
“She had to be strong for both of us.”
“I should have suspected that.”
“I’m sure most teenage boys aren’t in tune with girls’ feelings, and what we went through was intense. Probably worse for my sister because she had to take care of me.”
“You were happy with your adoptive parents?”
“Oh yeah. We were just worried it wouldn’t last. The first time we lived with them was amazing. My parents were so threatened by them, they moved us to another county so we couldn’t go back. By then, they knew how the system worked and that my foster parents wanted to adopt us.”
“How did you end up with them in the end?”
“A year later, our parents called the social worker to come and get us. They wanted a night out. No responsibilities. This time, my parents were deeper into drugs, less interested in doing what they needed to get us back. The social worker knew about our foster parents wanting to adopt us. It took time, and we had to live with a different foster family until the adoption was finalized.”
“Your story has a happy ending.”
Then why did my gut feel heavy and twisted? “We love our adoptive parents.”
I wondered if we’d ever truly get over the wounds of our past. Delilah was carefully composed like Colton mentioned. I was struggling to stay positive and stop worrying about what could happen that would darken my world. Would I ever truly be happy?
