Forgive Me Father For I Have Loved by Tiana Laveen Read Free Book Online Page A

fractured heart.
    Josh had been there for Dane, too. Though Dane’s childhood had been by all outward appearances good—damn near great—with a mom at all her children’s games and events, a father who showed up to open houses and PTA meetings and played ball with his boys in the backyard. Yet, there were still things , feelings...those deep, dark nightmares he’d suppressed and hadn’t told a soul about...except for Josh. The ones that caused him to sneak and drink in back of the bleachers, nursing his woes away until the morning, after which he’d feel a sense of shame that paled in comparison to his throbbing hangover. He wrestled with the newfound alcohol addiction, fought it whenever the ugliness came to the light. He did eventually win that daunting battle, stopped altogether, but the nasty, sticky crap that clogged his heart was still there in the morning, and the morning after that...
    It ate at him so badly, he’d lock himself in his room, pretending to be doing homework when in fact he was writing angry words across his math class notebook and listening to Black Sabbath on his old portable CD player, the headphones blasting so loudly that if the entire house collapsed, he wouldn’t have heard it or gave a damn. His mother discovered the CDs, worn and scratched with repeated wear, and threw them out, but the twisted lyrics still danced in his sordid, tortured mind for months, even years later. He couldn’t talk to her, to the woman with unfaltering faith who insisted that nothing unpleasant be discussed in her home, despite her role in the whole ordeal.
    Ugly emotions? Who had them? Surely not her sons and daughter and especially not Dane, her coveted ‘human heirloom’ child that was the spitting image of his grandfather. The man was even too good for a golden pedestal; she’d declared him a saint.
    Dane was the only one of his siblings to have a widow’s peak. He was also the only one to have dark sable hair that glowed in shades of gold, russet and tawny under bright light—an unusual shade, which many women seemed to take notice of with him, as with his grandfather. It was one of the things he recalled—the women and his mother going on and on about his mysteriously romantic looks...and his eyes—so blue, they said, you could swim in their vastness and declare them ocean-rich. And they told stories, said so much, crystal clear, forcing him to at times, not look life in the eye. Then, there was the matter of his tan; people were certain he’d been going to the tanning booth, baking himself to an ochre crisp. Jokes from even his closest associates never ceased. But no, it was all due to the strong Southern Italian blood surging through his veins.
    All in all, his mother said he appeared honest, and had actor good looks—but an even more attractive heart. She wanted him to be a person of moral character, an example of discipline, just like her very own father—a man held in high regard who, according to her, had run a strict but loving Catholic home.
    Dane’s thoughts drifted back to the here and now. Family was important, yet in the face of disease, illness and frailty, what did it matter? Fate showed neither allegiance nor concern in either direction and laughed at pity, turning away in disgust from the emotional display. Josh had a family—a wife, two twin daughters, Isabella and Abigail, and a newborn son, Leo—and now they all suffered from the cruelty of their father’s body and spirit’s lost resolve.
    Dane gripped his jacket and pulled it closed as the breeze picked up, giving him a chill. Sighing, he leaned forward, rocking his body, and stared down at the grass beneath his white and navy Reeboks. In the distance, a child laughed, and intelligible words floated on the air.
    Two men jogged past, their feet pounding the pavement as they each clutched their cellphone. After a few more moments, he convinced himself to stand, walk back to his hail beaten black Nissan Altima, go get a bite