Drake pierced her with a cold glare. “That’s not what he said to me. Ever. All I heard from him was that I needed to keep my grades up and stay at school. Every time I turned around, he stopped me from coming home on holidays and at breaks. He’d arrange for me to stay in the campus dorms or with people I barely knew, and I hated him for it. I kept trying to call my mother, but she wouldn’t talk to me either. In one heartbeat, I was an orphan no one wanted, and I had no idea why my entire family had abandoned me and left me to the care of strangers.”
That would have been hard on anyone. The anguish in his eyes reminded her so much of Darling that it was all she could do not to pull him into her arms and hold him. “I’m sorry, Drake.”
He didn’t comment on her sympathy. Instead, he continued. “Then, on the very night when I was finally allowed back here during one of my semester breaks, my mother was arrested in front of me. Next thing I know, my brother confessed to the world that he was gay.”
“How old were you then?”
“Ten. I didn’t even know what gay meant. But I was quickly educated.” His gaze burned into hers and the agony there rivaled every bit of the pain that Darling carried. “You have no idea how bad it was. Arturo was so angry over it, that both Lise and I were rounded up and sent back to school that very night, still in our pajamas. Once people found out, which was pretty much immediately, the kids at school were merciless to me over it. All I heard from everyone was that it ran in the family, and that I would be or was already gay, too. From that day on, it was a constant fight against everyone I knew as I tried to prove to them that I wasn’t anything like Darling.”
Anger whipped through her. “Darling—”
He held his hand up to silence her defense of his brother. “Don’t go there. Again, you weren’t here in those days. You have no idea what I went through and you didn’t see or hear the things I did. And if all that wasn’t degrading enough, when I was thirteen, I was going to be honored at school for good merit and for maintaining the highest student body GPA for that year. Something I’d worked my ass off for. Night and day. Then what happens? The day before the ceremony, Darling gets caught screwing Senator Nylan, and that shit went instantly viral.”
Now it was her turn to feel sucker punched. “Excuse me?”
He nodded bitterly. “Oh yeah. There were pictures and videos of the two of them circulating everywhere. You couldn’t get away from it or miss it. Everyone knew about it. Because of Darling’s scandal and the fact my school didn’t want to even admit they had a Cruel on their roster, my award that I’d worked so hard for was yanked. I lost my position on the school team and in our student government. They put me on probation, and I was pulled from the regular residence hall and put in with the social rejects and delinquents. Meanwhile, Darling ended up in a mental institution over it.”
That was not the story Maris had told her. Did Maris not know or had he outright lied to her?
Drake continued with his angry tirade. “For years, Darling was in and out of them. Whenever I talked to my mother about it—which was only twice a year if I was lucky—all she’d say was that Darling had a lot of problems, and that Arturo was trying to help him with them. And I believed her. I had no reason not to. The only member of my family who called every week to check on me was Arturo, who told me that I was always welcome to come home anytime I wanted. He said that Darling had snapped after my father’s death and gone crazy. That he was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and that I shouldn’t waste my time worrying about him. I almost never heard from Darling and when I did, he was either drunk or high—I couldn’t tell which. But his words were always slurred, if not completely incoherent. All I could ever make out for sure was his insistence that I stay as far away from here as I could.”
Zarya rolled her eyes at his assumption. Most likely those conversations came while Darling was on pain medication for the beatings Arturo routinely gave him.
Or the meds they pumped into him whenever he was in an institution.
Drake laughed bitterly. “By the time I hit fifteen, I was basically psychotic from everything I’d been through. I couldn’t stand any of them. Not my mother, my sister, and definitely not my brother, whose every scandal rained down on my ass like a firestorm. I didn’t want to be in school anymore and deal with that shit, and I hated Darling in a way you can’t imagine. The handful of times I’d seen him over the years, he was either so effeminate or so terrified of his own shadow that he repulsed me. Every time I turned around, Lise would call saying Darling had tried to kill himself again. I prayed every night that his next attempt would not only be successful, but come sooner rather than later…”
Wanting to slap him for that last comment, Zarya gaped at another tidbit no one had mentioned. What else didn’t she know about Darling’s past?