Free Luckiest Bastard (Bastard #1.5) by J. L. Perry Page B

one final look at the only place I’ve ever called home. The place I’ve lived for the last seventeen years of my life. Sure it’s just a shitty old apartment block, but it’s my home. It’s all I’ve ever known. I’m fucking pissed they’re forcing me to leave here. I’ve been dreading this day. I hate that I’m going to have to live with that fuckwit my mum now calls her husband.
    Thank God it’s only for six months. That’s when I’ll be turning eighteen; finally becoming a legal adult. You can be sure as hell the first thing I do, is blow this godforsaken place. My mum has that cocksucker to look after her now. She doesn’t need me anymore.
    She started dating John Shepard six months ago. It was a whirlwind romance you could say. I guess she’s been alone since I was born, so I can’t really blame her for wanting a companion. It’s always been just the two of us. At first I kind of liked the idea of having a father figure around, but my hopes were soon dashed when I got to know Fuckwit. That’s my pet name for him. It suits him perfectly.
    I saw the difference in her when she’d come home from being out with him. She was happier. Lighter. Like she was floating or some shit. I liked seeing her like that. She deserved happiness.
    They’d been seeing each other for a few months before she brought him to the house to meet me. I was on my best behaviour the first time we met. I did it for her. He was very pleasant until she left the room for a few minutes to get us some drinks. The way he looked me up and down with disdain instantly had my suspicions rising. As time wore on, those looks turned into hateful remarks. In the beginning I’d done nothing to provoke them. I guess he just took a disliking to me for some reason. Maybe because I was a bastard. Who knows? I was used to rejection. I’d faced it my whole life.
    My mum’s love has always been unconditional. Even when I acted up, she still loved me, still cared. I’ll be forever grateful for that. She’s been through a lot with me over the years, but her feelings for me never wavered. Not once. I was nothing to Fuckwit, I guess. Just a thorn in his side. Someone standing in the way of him being with my mother.
    I was shattered when he proposed and she accepted, but I didn’t let her know that’s how I felt. I wasn’t about to burst her bubble. She deserved happiness after all the sacrifices she’d made for me over the years. I wasn’t about to stand in her way.
    The day he finally put the ring on her finger was the same day he made his true feelings for me be known. They had some lame-arse civil ceremony at the registry office. It was my mum’s first marriage. She deserved so much more than that. I didn’t even want to attend, but she wanted me there, so for her sake I had to grin and bear it.
    Afterwards, the three of us were heading to a nice restaurant for a celebratory lunch. Well, they were celebrating. I sure as hell wasn’t. My mum asked Fuckwit to stop off at the local patisserie so she could buy a nice cake to take with us. The minute she was out of the car he gave me a hateful look through the revision mirror.
    “I love your mother,” he told me. “But don’t think for a minute that any of that affection extends to you, because it doesn’t. In my eyes, you’re the unwelcomed part of the package.” I hate to admit it, but his hurtful words stung. It only served to make me feel even lower about myself.
    Why was I such a hard person to love?
    Before I get a chance to close the trunk, my stepfather leans out of the driver’s side window. “Hurry up, son .I haven’t got all day,” he sneers in a sarcastic tone. I swear he does shit like this to bait me. My head snaps in his direction.
    “I’m not your son. You best remember that, old man,” I retort, my eyes narrowing. “If you got off your arse and helped instead of sitting there barking orders at me all afternoon, we would’ve finished hours