Author's Note: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." –Luke 12:34, Holy Bible, King James Version (KJV)
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this, except in the sense that love is ownership.
He should have known it was too good to be true.
Heath had been so happy with the Barkleys, happier than he'd ever been. He'd no longer needed to drift, to seek… he had arrived, been found.
The Barkleys had given him so much more than he could ever have asked for, so much more than he deserved. They had, in fact, given him everything he'd ever wanted: a place to belong, and people he belonged to.
…but, as it turned out, they weren't his.
And he could not stay where he didn't belong.
Nick hadn't understood, and Audra hadn't known what to say, Heath reckoned, any more than their would-be brother did himself.
Jarrod, Lord love him, had thought it was just the name. "If it's the name you're worried about, I can make that as legal as any birth certificate." If Heath's heart hadn't already been shattered, that would have broken it, that offer of a love and acceptance he had no right to.
If only it were that easy.
But it wasn't. He wished it were. He wished… but no amount of wishing on Heath's part could make him a part of this family he loved. He should go. Had to go.
Mother didn't agree, and she was angry, in her way as angry as Nick had been. "You can leave, Heath," she'd scolded hotly. "Oh, you can leave, but that won't change a thing, because no matter where you go, no matter what you do, no matter what you call yourself, you'll still be my son!"
"I'll always want to be," he replied.
Then he was gone.