Chapter 15: Sid’s Breaking Point

Sid and Sydney had many differences, but the biggest was their opinion on their parents.

Their parents' love story wasn't one of romance—it was one of circumstance. There was once a woman named Marian, recently divorced with nothing left of her self-worth. Then came a man named Ken, whose only future was the next song he strummed on his guitar while sleeping on his sister's couch. The woman fell in love with the man who had no responsibilities, and the man fell in love with the woman who could be controlled.

She got pregnant. They got married. The man joined the military. The woman raised the kids.

What went unspoken were the hundreds of empty beer cans overflowing from the trash. The way alcohol twisted the husband's words into venom, how his love turned into cruel commands, how Marian learned to recognize the scent of perfume that wasn't hers. The accusations. The silence that followed. The way she would stare into the distance, weighing the life she had against the one she could have. The fear of leaving. The fear of staying.

In the end, she chose to leave.

But Ken would never let her go.

The separation was just another battlefield, only this time, the children were in the crossfire. Custody meetings turned into weapons. Words became knives, sharpened by resentment. Marian lived in constant anxiety, seeing Ken's shadow lurking in every corner of her mind. She kept her children close—too close—her grip so tight it left bruises neither Sid nor Sydney could see.

She was not innocent. She was not the villain. She was just a woman trying to survive, and in doing so, she suffocated the ones she loved most.

She became the nurse at their school, not for the job, but for the proximity. She monitored their every move, every scraped knee, every absent minute unaccounted for. When Sydney once asked about visiting their father, the air turned sharp. Marian's voice cracked like a whip, accusing them of wanting her to suffer, of being just like him.

Sydney saw both parents for what they were—manipulative, sick people who never should have had children. She wanted distance, permanent and unwavering.

Sid saw them differently. He saw two people trapped in their own way, broken and tired. He wanted them to heal, to be whole again. To be a family.

And that difference? That difference was a wound that never closed.

Fights between the twins were normal. Petty arguments, sarcastic jabs, harmless annoyance. But the real fights? The ones that left the walls dented and their throats raw? Those were always about their parents.

Sydney, vicious with her words, cutting into Sid with the precision of someone who knew exactly where it hurt.

Sid, silent until he wasn't, his anger a slow-building storm that always ended in destruction.

Erica hadn't needed an explanation. The signs were all over their childhood home. The patched holes in the walls. The splintered door frames. The quiet apologies that came too late.

Sid's temper resembled his father's, Erica thought.

What a shame.