Chapter 18
676 Words
A couple of days later, things had finally begun to calm down. Amethyst wasn’t around as much, but that was because Jamie had found an apartment, so he wasn’t here either, although Isaiah was rarely home now, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out where he spent most of his time. But what Julian found odd was how Royal was still always at Luca’s. Isaiah never took him along, so he would stay cooped up in his room, previously the guest bedroom.
Julian had been sitting on the couch watching the new season of The Uncanny Counter when the door opened, and in came Ash, groaning. He crashed on the module sofa beside him and smiled at him. “Hey, kiddo, how was your day?”
“Fine. How was your work?”
“A b***h. I sent an email out telling everyone, their computers would need an update, right they should have done it yesterday before they went home, and of course, no one f*****g listened so when the new update went live, a lot of them couldn’t access t because they hadn’t updated it. So I had to go around and manually do it. Wankers, the lot of them.”
“I see you’ve been hanging around with Nathaniel,” he replied, smiling.
Ash ran a hand through Julian’s hair as he smiled at him. “I’m so proud of you, Julian.”
“What?” he asked, frowning
“I’m proud of you. You’ve done so well, and you’ve come so far. I am so proud to be able to call you my son.”
Julian nodded, unsure of what to do. “Can I ask you something?” he said, clenching his hands in front of him; it was something he had always wanted to know but had been too afraid to ask.
“Of course.”
“Why did you adopt me?”
“What?”
“At the orphanage, there were so many others, babies too. Why didn’t you adopt a baby or a toddler? Why me?”
Ash smiled as he continued running his hands through Julian’s hair. “We made a deal when Luca joined the police.”
“You did?”
“Yes. If any of us wanted kids, we would adopt the older children rather than the babies. Even if they were harder to help, it would help them in the long run.”
“What? Why?”
“Older children are often left because people want to raise babies. They want their children to call them mum and dad, which often isn’t the case with teenagers and older, just because they’ve done the hard part themselves. Luca said he encountered many of the older orphans who would be stealing because they had no food. Statistically, the older you are, the less likely you are to be adopted. We wanted a safe space for the older kids; that’s why all the kids that run around the houses now of them were adopted from the ages of 13-17. If we didn’t adopt, Luca would be raising twelve-odd kids by himself because the man cannot say no and has a heart of gold.”
“But,” Julian whispered. “I was broken. I might have been seventeen, but I was broken.”
“No, my sweet child. You weren’t broken, and f**k everyone who made you feel that way. Bubbles will be home soon, and I’ve texted Thea, too. We’re going to eat out, just the four of us. He’ll pick us up, and then we’ll grab Thea.”
“Why eat out?”
“Bubbles is too tired to cook, and I can’t cook to save my life, and neither of us wants to deal with the rest for today if I’m being honest.”
“Ash?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Kiddo. Go get dressed and let Silas know; he can’t come with us, though,” he added. “f**k them kids.”
~*~
- Writer
