Caged Birds ✔️

Chapter Thirty

Matt's P.O.V

I was invited to a hotel in Manhattan for twenty-four hours. I had minimal luggage and brought Noah and Ashley who were my only single friends at the time.

I remember that knock at the door like it was yesterday. Noah and Ashley were down stairs at the bar around nine or ten o'clock when I was about to leave for a night out. When I opened the door, I found my dad on the other side. I slammed the door on him then took a minute to think, after that minute, I opened the door to see his face again.

"Your mum told me that you were here" He started.

I will never understand why they still talk. She should hate him as much as I do but she doesn't — even to this day.

"What do you want?" I asked him.

"Can I come in?"

"No" I responded quickly.

"I came to talk" dad explained.

"About?"

"About you...I want to get to know my son" he admitted.

"Right" I slid my hands into the pockets of my jeans, "I don't think so"

"Excuse me?"

"When are you going to get it through your thick head?" I cried, shutting my hotel room door, taking our discussion to the hall, "I want nothing to do with you!"

"I'm still your dad"

"You've never been a father to me! Regular dads don't beat the mother of their kids! Regular dads don't get arrested in front their children!"

"Look that was a long time ago"

"No" I shook my head, "no, it wasn't...it really wasn't...maybe for you but for me it wasn't" I began walking away from him.

"If your mum can forgive me" he called out, "why can't you?"

His words lit a fire inside my stomach, a fire that would burn our relationship to the ground for good.

"Because I'm not her!" I turned around quickly to face him, pushing him against the wall, wrapping my hands around his neck "and I'm not you either"

Looking into his eyes was like looking into at my childhood reflection. He had fear in his eyes, he looked at me, like I would look at him, like a monster. I remembered this man doing the exact same thing that I was doing to him but to my mother, years prior.

"yes you are," he said as his face turned red from the lack of oxygen, my hands were still around his throat, squeezing the life out of him.

At that moment I knew that he was right, I became scared of myself so I instantly let go. Jimmy dropped to the floor like a sack of stones. He sat on the floor with his back up against the wall as I walked down the hall than entered the elevator. I pulled out my flask from my jacket pocket, drinking it quickly.

I wanted to be numb, I wanted to feel nothing— feeling nothing hurts a whole lot less then feeling everything, right?

"What's wrong?" Ashley asked me when the elevator doors opened.

"I just saw Jimmy" I clenched my jaw, avoiding eye contact as we walked side by side through the hotel bar. "I'm nothing like him...I can't be"

"No one said that you were" Ashley told me calmly.

"Hey man what's-" Noah approaches us with a glass of bourbon in his hand. I grabbed the glass quickly, guzzling it down. "Okay"

I loved the feeling of not being sober. The burning sensation in the back of my throat that warmed up my stomach, Simultaneously slowing down my overactive mind.