Not about you

*Maverick*

My eyes transfix on the huge granite structure sprawling out in front of Tatum as she sits chatting as though there is someone there to listen. The air feels stale as my chest heaves up and down while I look closely at the names. Not the names I call them. No, here they seem so formal, so wrong.

“What the fuck—” I mutter, just staring at the smooth headstone forcing my body to remember to breathe.

Kiala.

Timothy.

Mason.

Not mom, not dad. Not little dude or Mase. But their formal names, the names everyone else calls them. Not me. But it’s still my family. Not Tatum’s, not anyone else’s, but mine. Yet here she is talking to them like they mean something more to her.

Like she has the right to visit them as her own. And she doesn’t. She has no fucking right to pretend like they mean something more to her. I don’t even see her move, yet somehow she is in front of me, drawing my attention as she reaches out and softly touches my bicep. I scan her face, trying to understand, tr