Caveman by V. Andrian

gives him an air of mischief I feel very privileged to come across.
    “What do you miss the most?”
    And I ruined it. His smile drops and he turns his head to the side. Oh, fuck me! Why do I let my mouth take control and ruin every fucking moment?
    He gets off the bed but, to my surprise, he doesn’t leave. Instead he slides down on the floor, propping his back to the side-wood and his arms on his bent knees.
    “I don’t know,” he says in a low whisper. “Not that I don’t miss anything. I just don’t know what to put first. Football, cold beer, pizza. People. Conversations. Cole and Victoria. I think those two are at the top. Waffles.”
    “Oh my God, yes! With warm chocolate and vanilla ice cream on top.”
    He laughs and leans his head back on the mattress. His hair brush the side of my calf. “You know what I miss the most? Potatoes. Baked, fried, mashed, I don’t care.”
    “Seriously?” I laugh. “I would have expected you to say sex.” I immediately freeze. Fuck me!
    I’m caught off guard when he chuckles. “Yeah, sex is definitely at the top.”
    I let out a quiet breath in relief and try to turn on my side. “Then why aren’t you going back? Why not come back with me? I don’t mean back to DC necessarily. I can tell your brother that you don’t want to be disturbed. That you don’t want to be found and you can start your life again somewhere else. Hell, you don’t even have to leave Alaska. Just… Have you ever thought about it?”
    “All the time,” he says in a soft exhale.
    “Then why not?” I know I shouldn’t push him but I can’t help but ask.
    He stays silent for a long moment and I think he’s not going to answer. I turn on my back again and stare at the ceiling in sadness. How I wish he would tell me. Not for my curiosity but for him. He needs to vent whatever he’s feeling.
    “You really want to know?”
    My heart starts beating faster. “I can’t even express how much I do.”
    He sighs. “Because the man I used to call a father destroyed me and threatened to do the same to my brother.”

Chapter Eight
    “Y our father did what?”
    I can’t put my mind around it. I knew that Chandler Sawyers had been a hateful person and had treated Damon very badly but to have destroyed him? How? There were no records of anything – financial or otherwise – showing something like that.
    He sighs again. “Chandler Sawyers had always been a cruel son of a bitch with me. I’m not saying it in exaggeration or to sound querulous. I’m just stating a truth. He would yell at me ever since I can remember and treat me like shit. My mother would always tell him to stop, to be nicer but he never was. Later I found out why.
    ”You see, I wasn’t their biological son. They told me when I was seven and it all made sense. Chandler and Hope couldn’t have children for years. When the doctor finally told them they couldn’t conceive, it nearly broke Hope. She is an amazing person and she deserved to be a mother. Chandler obviously felt the same because he was ready to do just about anything to give her a baby.
    ”I don’t exactly know the reason but they couldn’t adopt or they would have to wait a long time. But Chandler Sawyers was a man who would take whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. If the system didn’t give him a child immediately, he would do it himself.
    ”I don’t know how it got to Chandler’s ears but there was a woman working for him that got pregnant by mistake. To make a long story short, she didn’t want the baby and Chandler offered her a large amount of money to keep her from having an abortion. Instead, she was going to give birth to the baby and give it to him. Illegally. No papers, no waiting, no laws involved whatsoever except if it meant breaking them.
    ”She accepted and eight months later she had me.”
    ”Two years and a miracle after that, Hope – who by the way never knew about the terms under which I was “adopted” – had Cole. And, even