Three Thousand Miles To You(66)

“I see what do you want to know about him?”

“What happened to him?”

“Doesn’t it say on the internet?”

“Not really, it just says that he had a falling out with the family and that he left.” Michael takes a deep breath and begins to talk.

“Chad is my older brother and he was the apple of my father’s eye. They would do everything together and Chad is the type who always wanted to impress my father. However, it was not until Chad turned thirty that my father made him head of the department,in which he worked, in the company. Chad did not like the fact that Adrian was around, and he did everything he could possibly to do to turn my father against him. The short story is Chad made my father choose and he told him that he would not choose, but Adrian was going nowhere. Chad then took matters into his own hands and left.”

“How long ago did he leave?”

“About five years ago, Adrian and I were twenty at the time and Adrian was in the process of getting his own company. Chad never had that type of success, he had always had my father to hand everything to him on a plate and Chad became jealous of Adrian. He began to do awful things to him.”

“What did he do?”

“He did all sorts of things, but he did however have one trick that he did on a regular basis.”

“What was it?” I say and Michael slightly rolls his eyes, I get the feeling he does not like to talk about this.

“He would wait till my father and Adrian went away on a business trip and order escorts to come to the room where my father was. He would always give Adrian’s name and try to pretend that he sent them. When Adrian found out he went crazy, but that was exactly the type of reaction Chad was looking for.”

“Have you ever seen him since?”

“No, he called me a few years ago and we were supposed to meet up, but that never happened.”

“How does your Dad feel about him? It must be hard having his son away?”

“Yes it was hard on my father at first, but Chad has done nothing but bad mouth my father since he went away. My father has had to move on from it, I think that Adrian carries around a lot of guilt over this. But my father doesn’t put any of the blame on Adrian.”

“Your father sounds like an amazing man,”

“He is.”

“I know that Adrian thinks highly of him.”

“Yes, Adrian and my father have this great bond. He took Adrian out care when he was a fourteen-year-old, messed-up child. Now he has shaped him into the man he is today, and I know that he can be a little controlling but that’s just who he is.”

“He is very controlling, but I know he is just doing it for my safety.”

“He loves you Alanna, more than anything.”

“I know he does and I feel the same way.” I see Michaels face change and he starts to say, “Adrian knows that if you were any other girl, than you would have ran a mile by now. But he knows that you never would and, that’s what has him hooked on you.”

“The thing that worries me is that the girl I used to be would.”

“You have changed then? You seem like this is all part of your life with Adrian and I can’t understand any other reason than love, for you to stick around.” Michael is actually giving me a complement. He is also giving off a sense of vulnerability right now, which has me alarmed. I think that possibly I have misunderstood him and that maybe he is actually a nice guy.

Michael and I talk for what seems like hours, he tells me about his life in London and his childhood, I feel ecstatic to hear about a happy one for a change. He talked to me about his friends and about the party nights, he has out in London. To my astonishment, he told me about his ex-girlfriend Louise. He said how she was too jealous of him and she did not get on with his family. She did not like Adrian, but Michael thought that she maybe just liked him too much and that she masked it by being awful to him. He said she had dark jet-black hair and not brown but black eyes, so from the first moment Adrian saw her he did not trust her. He had warned Michael to get away from her and he eventually did when he caught her cheating on him. He has not dated anyone since, with the exception of Katharine of course. Michael now says how bad he feels about hurting her, he said that she was one of the most beautiful girls he ever saw but she just was not right for him. I think of how that is impossible, Katharine is a lovely girl and anyone would be lucky to have her. I think of how she would feel if she knew I, was here living in a house with Michael. I try to shake of the feeling I get whenever I think about it. I am still processing the new information about Chad and I wonder why he could hate Adrian the way he does. Giving what Adrian has been through, I do not know how anyone could treat him like that. I think that possibly it is for the best that Chad is out of the picture. God only knows what he could do; jealousy is an evil thing that can take over a person, I could not go on if something were to happen to Adrian. All this time I am spending with Michael I am really getting to know the real him. He is not all about the sarcastic comments and the rude silent exterior; instead when he opens up about himself, he is a completely different person. A person that I can really relate to, a person who is had the same type of upbringing as me, therefore he understands me. He is different in so many ways to Adrian and not all of them bad. I see him in a different way to Adrian. I do not think that I could ever be with Michael, but I do know that I want him in my life. He brings out a different side to me, a side that I never knew I had. I was worried of how awkward this would be to live here with him, but now I cannot describe how wrong I was. Other than Adrian, there is no one I would rather be here with.