Unbroken by Sienna Valentine Read Free Book Online Page A

in her chest as the accusation burned through her, but then she suddenly remembered what else they had found.  Immediately she could feel tears welling up in her eyes, the alcohol taking her on a roller coaster of emotions.  "Oh, Joel..." she sighed, but he was barely listening to her now as his own anger began to bubble to the surface. 
     
    "What do you mean, you looked them up?" he asked, the words falling from his mouth one at a time.
     
    "On the computer," she said.  Big tears were forming and she had to blink to hold them back.  "But we found something else out," she said.
     
    "What the fuck, Amber?  Who told you to go and look my past up?"
     
    "Joel, would you calm down for a minute?  You said they were dead.  I just wanted to find out the details so I could understand-"  She put her hand on his chest but he shook her off and pulled his legs up and off the couch.  Leaping to his feet he turned back and glared at her.
     
    "I never said they were dead!"
     
    "Yes you did, you told me that your parents had been gone for years."
     
    "Right.  Gone.  I never said dead.  They were gone from my life.  They might as well be dead.  They're dead to me.  But that still gives you no right-"
     
    "Joel, would you stop for a minute!" she said.  She reached out and grabbed his hand, giving it a squeeze.  "Listen, we found something else.  About your father."
     
    "I don't care, Amber," he said, pulling his hand away from hers.  "I fucking told you, they're dead to me.  I don't give a shit what you found out."
     
    Amber stared at Joel, the tears falling from her eyes freely now.  Something about her look gave him pause, his anger seeming to disperse slightly at her raw emotion.  "What?" he demanded.
     
    "Your father.  I'm sorry Joel.  He really is dead."
     
    She watched as his face became an emotionless mask, the color draining from it slightly.  His hands, which had been hanging loosely by his waist, slowly pulled themselves closed into tight fists. 
     
    Joel
    The news of his father hit Joel like a roundhouse kick to the head, momentarily making him forget his anger at Amber's betrayal of his privacy.  Darryl was dead?  He didn't believe it.
     
    "What are you talking about?" he asked slowly.  His body was rigid as he stood there, and he realized that his fists were clenched tightly at his sides.  He loosened them and took a deep breath to steady himself.  Amber was drunk, she probably didn't know what she was talking about.  How would she even know how to find his parents, anyway?
     
    Tears were falling from her eyes and she stepped forward again, now that he wasn't making fists, and grabbed one of his hands, pulling it close to her chest.  "Oh Joel, I'm so sorry.  I wasn't sure if you knew.  I know I shouldn't have been looking them up but Simon was saying that I didn't know anything about you and that he could just look them up quickly and-"
     
    "What did you find," he asked, cutting off her drunken rambling.  He was losing patience with her and he pulled his hand back. 
     
    She paused, looking down at the hand he had yanked away like it was a snake that had just struck her and retreated.  He instantly felt guilty but pushed that emotion aside.  She was the one who should feel guilty for betraying his trust.
     
    "Simon found his obituary in an old newspaper archive online.  At first I didn't know it if it was him, but it mentioned your mother Linda, by name.  But then they didn't say anything about you in it so we looked a little further and-"
     
    "How?" he snapped.  It surprised him more that there had been an obituary in the newspaper at all than the fact that he wasn't mentioned.  Then again, his mother always seemed to have some sick sense of devotion to that malicious fuck, so maybe that was her way of giving him a respectful send off.  He couldn't imagine who would have cared though, neither of them really had any close friends.
     
    "A car accident, he was... well, I