bastard child of………”  I can’t tell her about my mother. I don’t want to talk about my mother. It hurts too much. Danny was the only one I ever told and he used it every time he could. Whenever he wanted or needed me to do something and I was not willing to go along with it, he would throw my mother leaving me back in my face. Always reminding me she left me there, alone and scared, never coming back for me.  He stayed, that’s what he would always tell me.  "I’m still here Dylan, I didn’t leave you like your mother did."  

Not my mother, I’m not talking about my mother. I’m done with her. She left me a long time ago. “………..He said you were just using me. That I was just another one of many. A conquest for you. I didn’t want to believe him. I shouldn’t have believed him.”

She’s just standing there looking down at me. The silence from her is speaking louder than anything she could have said to me. I can feel her glare piercing right through me, ripping my heart into pieces.

I force myself to look up at her.  Her eyes staring questionally back at mine.  She starts to speak, but then stops herself.  She seems confused.

I’m staring directly back into her eyes, hoping and praying with all my soul that she will not ask about my mother.  I beg her with my eyes, hoping they will convey what my mind is pleading.  Please, don’t ask me about my mother. Please don’t, Helena.  As far as I’m concerned my mother isn’t a part of us or a part of my life anymore. I want to just forget her. Please don’t ask about my mother.  Finally, she responds. Her voice full of hurt and tinged with anger.

“You believed him. As much as you didn’t WANT to and SHOULDN’T have, you believed him. You took my love for you and tossed it out like weeks old trash, because you BELIEVED HIM.”

Despite the anger and pain in her voice, a sudden wave of relief washes over me. Good, this is where she wants to go with this. If what Danny found out about her was true and there were so many women in his researched report for anyone not to believe it was true, then she’s not as innocent as she thinks in this whole mess. 

I stand up and face her eye to eye. I need to be on equal ground with her for this, if not emotionally, at least physically. I did a terrible thing to her, an unforgivable thing, I know this.  But, I need her to understand why.  The combination of what I was feeling for her and what I read in Danny’s compiled report of her past scared me.  I was so afraid that she would break my heart.  My heart, the one thing I kept so hidden and sheltered from anything or anyone that it was cold.  My heart was as cold as ice and stupidly I thought I needed to protect it from her, the one person I know now would never break it. 

I’m not going to back down.  She needs to understand. I need her to understand.  She wasn’t the only one who had her heart broken.

“Yes, I did. I did believe him. But, what was I supposed to think Helena? He had all this information. He showed it to me. I don’t know where he got it, but he had it and he showed it to me.”

“What, Dylan? What information could he possibly have that would make you do what you did?”