DONKEY: A Stepbrother Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel Charged!)

by Stephanie Brother

  “I love you, Isabella”, Philip said, tears choking the words in his throat.

  “Please, Philip, don’t leave me here, I’ll do anything, don’t leave me here. I’ll get better, I promise, I’ll get better.”

  Her words, the look she gave him, the fear he saw in eyes that had once lit up when they were together, those things stayed with Philip until the day that he died. They were there when he slept, they were there in the needy screams of their just born son, they were in every cupboard, in every room in every house he lived in, and they were in the mirror when he stared for hours at a time at the face he was slowly beginning not to recognize.

  Without Isabella, Philip had nothing.

  After six months, and still without a job or success with any of his many personal projects, Philip and Leighton had to move back in with his father. He had begun to visit Isabella regularly, but as the weeks passed, and Philip became more depressed looking at a woman that reminded him in every way of his Isabella but wasn’t, he decided to stop visiting at all. He couldn’t take it anymore. He could barely look after their son on his own, he was just able to scrape enough money together to get by, and every day that passed, he was losing himself more and more to drink and depression.

  Philip did the best he could for as long as he could, but like everyone, he had a point where he couldn’t help but crack. He loved Leighton with all of his heart, and where Isabella began to resent him for what she saw that he’d done to push them apart, and Philip could so easily have done the same, he didn’t blame the baby for anything that had happened. It wasn’t Leighton’s fault that his mother was sick. Isabella had an illness, and as difficult as it was to cope with and accept, Philip knew there was no-one to blame. It wasn’t for hate, or resentment he decided to give the boy up, it was for love. It was because he knew he would never be able to provide for him in the state he was in, he knew he’d never be able to protect him, and he worried he wouldn’t be able to give the boy all of the things he needed, and deserved, as he grew.

  There were times when Leighton’s screaming drove Philip to distraction. There were times where he would look at the boy and wish that things were different, but he never, ever stopped loving him. Philip had already lost the thing he loved most in the world, there was no way he would have volunteered for the second thing to be taken from him, unless he absolutely had to.

  Isabella’s parents wanted nothing to do with the boy. They thought the whole thing was Philip’s idea, and believed the pregnancy was what had eventually pushed their daughter over the edge. They couldn’t have cared less about what happened to him. The day after their daughter was incarcerated, they cut all ties with Philip and would have banished him from the hospital completely had they been legally able to do so. They couldn’t have been happier the day Philip decided to take that decision himself. Not once did they even want to look at Leighton. As far as they were concerned, the baby didn’t exist at all.

  Philip’s father was the only one who assisted Philip in any way over the first half a year of Leighton’s life, the pair of them as clueless as one another in how they ought to raise him, but it still wasn’t enough. Philip was twenty years old, and barely out of his youth himself. There were times when he wondered if the decision they made together was the right one, and would remember the day they made it happen, and how happy it made them both to think about a future that now no longer existed.

  Philip drank to cope. He drank to cope with Isabella’s schizophrenia, he drank to cope with the challenges of fatherhood, he drank to cope with the failures he faced in his professional life, and he drank because when he did so, he didn’t have to remember who he was. If Isabella hadn’t have been there when his mother died, he would have drunk then too. Now he needed her more than ever and she was gone.

  Philip’s father had to jimmy the door open with a crowbar. It had been a week since he’d heard from his son, and twice he’d passed by the apartment to knock without receiving a response. When he finally got into the apartment, and he saw Philip sprawled out across the living room floor, he thought his son was dead.

  Philip lacked the constitution for suicide, but had he been given the option in that moment, would have struggled for reasons to want to be stay alive. Leighton was screaming in his cot. It had been over forty eight hours since he’d last eaten, and there was piss and shit all over the sheets. Before Philip’s father rescued his grandson, he made sure his own son was alive by turning him over and shaking him violently. Philip moaned, wrestled free from his father’s grip, twisted to the side and puked all over the floor.

  “Your a fucking disgrace”, Pieter said to him. “A fucking disgrace.”

  Pieter knew his son was struggling, but he never knew it was this bad. Philip had become adept at hiding his true feelings, plus he would only contact his father if there was an emergency with his son. It had been a while since they’d last spoken, and Pieter would never had guessed that anything this serious would ever happen, despite the burden his son had been made to carry.

  Leighton was taken to the doctors and deemed to be in generally poor health. He was malnourished, dehydrated and underweight for his age. Philip was given almost exactly the same diagnosis, and then handed a prescription for antidepressants. None of them seemed at all concerned about Philip’s ability to look after his son, nor what had led them to the hospital in the first place. It seemed their intention was to treat the symptoms, not find a cure for the cause.

  Philip took a massive bollocking from his father, who decided that the time had come to think about an alternative for the boy. Philip was clearly in no state to look after him, and with his whole life ahead of him, Pieter reasoned that having a son without a mother to look after him, would do nothing but hold him back.

  It came down to a simple equation. If Philip could not look after him, then Leighton would have to go to someone who could. Pieter couldn’t possibly fill that role with a shop to run and no wife of his own now to speak of. Philip was a complete mess, and had to concentrate on getting his own life back on track. The boy would have to go, there was no doubt about it.

  In Brooklyn, in 1981, there were three orphanages, all of which were bursting at the seams with kids. Philip reluctantly called them all, and each one said they couldn’t possibly take him in. In the five boroughs that made up New York, across the seventeen orphanages that existed, only one said that they had space for new born babies and were happy to take him.

  Leighton was barely eight months old. One side of his family didn’t even want to admit that he existed, the other were unable to look after him. Philip carried the infant in his arms across the city, staying with him at the orphanage well into the night before he was finally able to let go. With Isabella it had been gradual, with Leighton much more sudden.

  “If you’re not ready”, one of the volunteers said.

  “Maybe it’s best if I hold him”, another one said, her arms held out passively.

  “His name is Leighton.” Philip wiped tears away from his cheeks with the back of his sleeve. “Leighton Tempest. Please don’t tell him I brought him here.”

  Philip handed his son over to a complete stranger, and would never be able to forgive himself for the rest of his life.

  All that existed to link them was Philip’s knowledge of what happened. No one else knew where he’d taken the boy, and all that the staff at the orphanage knew about him was the fake first name he had given them, the date he had arrived, and what he looked like in person. About the boy, all they had was a name. Leighton Tempest had a past that had just been erased, and a future that was about to be written.

  Ten years after…

  Chapter 21

  Philip never forgot that day. He never allowed himself to, and he never forgave himself. There were moments he wanted to change it all, go back and make it never happen, but he knew the impossibility of turning back the clock, and he was a stubborn man of conviction that felt like if he tried to change what he had done, he’d only serve
to ruin a life he’d allowed his son to have for himself. There was no question that Leighton was better off without him. There was no question that had he stayed with his Philip, he wouldn’t have turned into the boy he was now. He might not even have survived at all.

  Philip’s life had changed too. He’d turned himself around completely. He’d finally had success with one of his projects, and he’d made the million that he always promised Isabella he would. Buying the house that looked out onto the park seemed churlish without his childhood sweetheart there to enjoy it with him, and besides which, over the last decade, he’d grown tired of the city completely.

  He visited Isabella once a year on her birthday. It had taken a long time for him to get over what had happened to them, and once a year seemed like just about enough time for him to be able to cope with the journey back into their past. Isabella had her moments. She had good days and bad, happy moments and sad, but seemed content enough with the life that she had been forced to lead, and stable enough not to try and take it away from herself. Philip had moved her to a private facility, which offered almost resort like facilities, and it was a far cry from where she had begun. It wasn’t exactly the house over central park, nor indeed the flat they had shared in Coney Island, but it was the best that was available, and appreciated greatly by Isabella, even if she was unsure of the details of its provision.

  Isabella greeted him like an old friend. They talked about the past as though they were still living it, and every once in a while she would smile like she used to when he would juggle apples or try to impress her. She never once asked about Leighton, nor referred to the period of time they had spent living in Coney Island. It was as if that year never existed for her.

  Philip never fell out of love, even though he knew the person he loved was buried so deep inside this one, she might not have existed any more at all. It was a pain he had grown to deal with, like a birthmark or a distinguishing scar. It was something he knew would never fully go away.

  Kids began to filter out of the school, running into arms of waiting parents. It had taken Philip a long time, and a considerable amount of money to find out where he was, and as he waited patiently and watched, he felt like he could hardly breathe.

  It had been ten years since he’d seen him. A whole decade for the boy he gave up to grow older. The photo they’d given him made his heart leap. It was somehow everything he expected and nothing at all like it all at the same time. It was definitely their son, but somehow more than that. A life and personality of his own.

  For a while the kids kept coming, they found their waiting parent, shared a moment of conversation and went on their way, until there were fewer and fewer parents waiting, and fewer and fewer kids left to be collected. When all of the parents had gone, Philip thought he’d somehow missed him, until one last kid trudged slowly out of the school gates, shrugged his shoulders up into his neck against the biting cold and turned directly towards him.

  Philip’s heart skipped a beat and his skin went cold. There was no doubt about it, this was Leighton. This was his son.

  Leighton walked to the curb where Philip’s car had pulled in, peered at it with the curious interest a ten year old boy has in droves, and carried on up the street.

  Philip caught a breath, and then leaned forwards against the window, concentrating hard not to pass out.

  “Do you want me to follow him, Sir?” Philip’s driver asked him.

  “Take me home, Anthony”, was all he said, and while Leighton disappeared up the street, kicking autumn leaves as he went, Philip headed home to his Chesapeake estate, and the new family he’d somehow agreed to let share it with him.

  Chapter 22

  Over the next eight years, Philip watched Leighton grow up from afar. He attended sporting events, theatre productions, school outings, and parked up countless times at the school gates, far enough away not to be noticed, just to get a glimpse of him. His intention was always to present himself, or approach him and reveal who he was, but the longer he left it and the older Leighton became, the harder it was to do so.

  Alexis and her three daughters knew very little about Philip’s past life and nothing at all about his rediscovering of his estranged son, nor how much it tore him apart not to be able to make a connection with him. Alexis probably wouldn’t have given two shits, but Philip had no interest in revealing his secret daytime activities for fear she’d somehow scupper them, or even worse, have something over him she could use as a means of control. The kids were too young to understand, and didn’t need to know anyway.

  Philip had met Alexis at a charity event sponsored by one of his companies, and he’d been impressed enough by her balls-out attitude to want to meet her again. It was a whirlwind romance that saw them married only six months after they met. It hadn’t taken long for Philip to be convinced. Beyond an immediate mutual attraction they both found difficult to deny, they were both go-getters with a clear idea of what they wanted. It was only later on in the relationship that Philip began to realize that Alexis’s motivation came only from the money he was able to provide for her and not from love. It was an aspect they ended up both sharing.

  Also, approaching thirty, he felt like it was probably about time he thought seriously about settling down again. Since Isabella, he’d kept himself away from women for a long time, but with Alexis, he finally found someone he didn’t feel guilty about being with, and who he felt he had the potential to fall in love with and build the future he had always wanted. Alexis not only seemed keen, she came with a ready made family, baggage from an ill thought out marriage that had long since crumbled to dust. There was only one issue that Philip felt like he had to overcome. Alexis’s middle daughter, for reasons beyond Philip’s comprehension, shared his long lost love’s first name.

  He thought he was big enough not to let it bother him, but as the years passed, he began to resent the child simply for having the audacity to be called Isabella. To be alive where she was not, and to be here, living with him, in his house and under his roof, paid for by money he had fought hard to earn to provide for his Isabella, the real Isabella, without any understanding of how lucky this fake one was.

  Chapter 23

  Isabella rocked on her chair, tilting the thing back to balance on the rear two legs, while her knees wedged up against the table and held her steady. She was a cute girl, but hadn’t shown the focus or drive of her older sister, nor the intelligence of her younger. She was a disappointment to Philip, who felt like his hatred for her was easier to draw on than the hatred he felt for the other two. He’d not intended to hate them at all, but the more distant he felt from his own son, the more he resented having these three ‘hangers-on’ around. And to him, Isabella felt, at times, like a cruel joke.

  “Sit properly, Isabella”, Philip rebutted.

  Isabella did nothing but laugh. Resentment went both ways in this hackneyed family. All of the girls harbored a special kind of dislike for the man they never wanted to call father, who punished them for little other than looking at him the wrong way, who might have once been funny and charming but never seemed to be anything other than serious now, and who was quick to raise his hand and even quicker to close it before it came in contact with them. They might have lived in a big house, but they never once felt like they couldn’t have been better off without it. They complained voraciously to their mother, sometimes exaggerating the stories, sometimes not even needing to, but Alexis wouldn’t hear it. Her husband provided for them, and despite being over excessive sometimes in his idea of control, he was definitely a good man, and each of them had to do their duty and standby him.

  “Are you going to tell her?” In the absence of Isabella’s compliance, Philip directed his complaint to her mother.

  The man that he was becoming, would have shocked his Isabella to the core. It had happened so slowly over such a long time, it would have been impossible to see the change day by day, but now, he was nothing like he had been when they had grown up, or lived tog
ether in Coney Island.

  This Philip was full of hatred and bitterness, driven only by the desire to make money and be the best he could in his business. Losing Isabella had destroyed him and darkened his heart. Finding Alexis was an attempt to pull himself out again, and for a while it seemed like that would be the case, but it was the opposite that happened. What he mistook for love served only to sink him further. That bitterness and hatred for a world he saw take away his first love and his only son, and the fear that kept him from rectifying that, Philip channeled into an assault on his family that only served to separate and isolate himself even more.

  “Isabella, do as your father says.”

  “Why? And he’s not my father anyway.”

  Isabella smiled, fully aware she was pushing her luck. Pandora looked at Gracey, and Gracey, a face full of fear, looked at her stepfather.

  “Just do it”, Alexis snapped.

  She didn’t have time to either question him again, or move her knees out from under the table to position herself and her chair more appropriately. The rage had built up inside Philip so often, he knew it was coming before anyone else did. Isabella copped a slap across the back of the head that pushed her face forcefully into her plate and broke a wobbly front tooth.

  “Philip, fucking hell”, Alexis shouted, two of her daughters ghostly white with shock, the other a bloody and screaming mess. “You’ll pay for this”, she said, turning to him in shock herself. “you’ll fucking pay for this.”

  “Control your fucking children and I won’t need to do it myself”, Philip spat before pushing the table away and spending the rest of the evening in his office, his hands shaking from what he had done.