Rose by Jill Marie Landis Read Free Book Online

unable to voice the bigotry and degradation he had faced, Kase returned to the chair behind his desk and stared at the scattered pages atop it.
    But knowing the reception Kase would have met in the East, Zach quickly pieced together his own story. “So you got into a few scrapes?”
    “It was more than a few. And the last one was in the law office where I worked.”
    “So Caleb told you the truth.”
    “Only after I forced him. I made him so damn mad he finally just blurted it all out.”
    It all came back to him, the inner turmoil, the seething fury he had felt as he sat in the library and refused to look up at Caleb. He knew his life would never change until he learned the truth about himself. His anger was stoked by fear of not knowing who or what he was, how he came to exist. Why couldn’t he control himself?
    In a rush of anger, Kase stood and faced Caleb toe to toe. “I’m not you, dammit! I never will be, because I’ll never know who I really am. How can I when I’ve never gotten the truth out of you or my mother?”
    Caleb had blanched. “What are you saying?”
    “I don’t see things the way you do. I don’t fit in here and I never will.”
    “You don’t want to.”
    “Not bad enough to be stepped on, to turn the other cheek time and time again,” Kase had shouted.
    “Have you ever tried?” Caleb shouted back.
    “Do you really think I could? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’ve never tried to see my side or what trying to fit into this life is doing to me.”
    “Kase ...” Caleb had reached out to him, put a hand on his shoulder, but Kase hit it away.
    “I’m not like you. Maybe, just maybe, I’m like him. I’m like the man you and my mother could never bring yourselves to explain. That’s what you think, isn’t it?” Kase stepped close, backing Caleb toward the fireplace.
    Caleb’s expression became one of dark denial. “Never.”
    “Who was he?” Kase pressed.
    “Forget it.”
    “Why? What are you hiding? Tell me!”
    “I can’t.”
    Kase reached out and grasped Caleb by the shoulders. “Who the hell was he? Who the hell am I?” he cried out.
    Caleb shook him off. “All right,” his eyes flashed with fury, “you want to know? Your father was a renegade Sioux who raped your mother and left her for dead.”
    As if he had taken a physical blow to the midsection, Kase tensed and stepped away. “Why didn’t you tell me before now? Were you truly afraid I was like him?” he whispered.
    Caleb shook his head, his eyes awash with unshed tears. “Never. I never thought that of you. Does it really matter so much that we wanted to keep this from you?”
    “Yes, dammit, it matters. It explains a hell of a lot. My father was a savage, a murderer. He is the reason my mother has been forced to live in shame all these years. And I am, too.”
    Caleb’s sad expression then darkened with a hint of returning anger.
    “What do you mean, all these years ?”
    “If it hadn’t been for me, her entire life could have been different. She could have lived a normal life, married a—” All too aware of what he had been about to say, Kase had become silent once again.
    But in a tone as emotionless as a stone, Caleb had finished for him: “She could have married a white man. Is that what you were about to say?”
    At the sound of a gasp from the open doorway, both men turned in unison and saw Analisa clinging to the door frame with one hand while she pressed the other against the base of her throat. Eyes wide with horror, she stood in stunned disbelief.
    “Caleb? What is this?” Her gaze lingered on her husband an instant before she turned to Kase. “Kase? Wat is er aan de hand? What is going on?” Barely audible, her words reached him.
    Kase turned away from Caleb, took a lingering look at his mother, and knew a blinding hurt that ached so badly, welled up from the depths of his soul with such ferocity, that he thought he might retch from the pain. He could not speak as he fought to control