Chapter 16 - Gen 3 - Kandice

by Chase Swan

I have a secret and I just don't know how to tell my wife.

My secret is eating away at me and I don't know for how much longer I can go on living this lie!!!!

Don't panic - I am more than happy with the life I am living, I love my wife and my daughter, it would kill me to lose either of them.

  It is not the life I am living it is what I have left behind that is the problem, and if I could go back and change it, I could put right the biggest mistake I have made and am ever likely to make in my life!!

The day that Lea was born was the day I started to wake up to what I had done and what I am, what I should be and what I should have done but didn't do!!

You would look at my family, The Strong family and think we were a very close knit bunch, bound by love - well you could not be more wrong!!!!  What we actually are is a family so tightly bound by our secrets and lies that we are bearly hanging on and holding it all together.  At first to save face, but now for the two hearts that would be broken if they ever found out the truth!!

Growing up as a child, me and Lex were inseparable, I had always looked up to him more than I ever did my Dad.  I hung on every word he said - but that was then, now it is so very different, we now hate each other with a passion and our family secrets and lies - are all my doing - nobody else's mine!!!!

I carry the scares of a beaten man, and why Candy has never made any remark about these tiny scars that cover my body from head to foot is beyond me!!!  But I don't know what I would tell her if she did ask, its not like I can tell her the truth.

The truth is that Lex not once but twice has beat me within inches of my life once with his fist and once with a knife, and in his eyes I deserved it and probably I did - the first time at least.

When Lex got married he had the perfect home and the perfect wife, and a brother who spent more time at his than at home, but neither of them seemed to mind my constant presents in there house.  Finally Suzana told me I may as well move in so I did.  I was still a teenager and not far away from becoming a young adult.  Funnily enough that was about the time I started hanging out with Candy, and sometimes used to go home after school with her.  Maybe if I had had some sense back then I would have got a girlfriend of my own age and none of the bad bits would have happened. 

The day I became a young adult was when all the trouble started.  Lex and Suzana had just had a baby, Lex was working long hours and Suzana well, I don't really know what started it or how it happened but I ended up in bed with my brothers wife.  The first time was a mistake, the second time an even bigger one because we fell asleep and that is how Lex found out!!  So you can imagine our relationship took a nose dive and I moved back in with Mom and Dad.

The first punch woke me up - Lex hanging over me as furious as hell,  I had not seen him for a while and was surprised it had taken him this long to punish me.  This was the first time that Lex beat me so bad he nearly killed me.  But he was not punishing me for sleeping with his wife he was punishing me for her second pregnancy - the baby was mine.  And there is my secret - I already have a child.

That is not so bad I can hear you thinking it - lots of people have children from previous relationships its not the fact that I have a child it is who the child is, and the fact that my child does not know who I really am and who she really is.  Neither does Lex's son!!

Suzana had my baby - a little girl, then just got up and left, disappeared leaving Lex with two children to look after his son and my daughter.  That is where my Mom and Dad stepped in, took over and ruined our lives even more.  Our children were now their children and they were to never know otherwise and truthfully they still don't know.  Evan is not my brother but my nephew..  Kayla is not my sister, she is my daughter.  As far as Evan and Kayla are concerned me and Lex are just their big brothers.  The farse was made even more believable when neither of the babies inherited their mothers black hair, they both inherited their grandmothers orange hair.

Me and Lex had to call a truce for their sakes, for the families sake for this farce to ever work.  We had just about managed to make it work then Candy walked into our life,  and it started all over again.  Only this time it was different - this time was purely an accident and even though Lex knows this still he blames me, I am just glad the rest of my family understand.  Lex had fallen in love with Kandice, and had not told a sole.  Then it was my turn I did not have the slightest clue that the woman I was sleeping with and falling in love with had been sleeping with my brother only days before.  It was Cory who put the pieces together after Lex told him about Kandice, I told him about Candy, nobody realising it was the same person, till Cory heard me call Kandice Candy.

I was actually at Candy's when Lex called me home - for the second beating of my life and this time he meant business because it wasn't his fists he used it was a knife.  And it was then that Candy's parents were brought into the web of lies.  Ironically it was Candy's mom's shift at the hospital when they took me there, she was the one that stitched me up put me back together and saved my life.

Back to my secret - Kayla - my daughter.  She is now a teenager and its breaking my heart that I have never been her Dad, like I should have been!!!

 I lived with her, everyday and it did used to eat at me then, but she was there and I was her favourite big brother, so it was not so bad having her round me every day, in my heart I knew the truth even if she didn't.   I felt the bond but it was not until Lea was born, that it got stronger and unbearable - having to move away from Kayla when I got married thats when the hole in my heart started getting wider and wider and the only way to fill the hole  is to stop living the lie.

To put things right - to tell the truth and to finally be her Dad, I would have to break hearts and tear my family apart - so what do I do - do what I feel I have to do or carry on living the lie??   Lex maybe happy to carry on denying the truth but I can't.

The biggest mistake I have made in my life was being her big brother and not her Dad like I should have been - that I am always going to regret!!  This is the lie I can not live with for much longer and this is the secret I have to tell my wife.

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Chapter 17
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Its amazing how story progression and a family tree can create a new story!!
I was a little shocked when Chase moved into the Swan household and I looked at this family tree!!
Here was me thinking Chases parents had had two more children when in fact  lex was married and had a child, and so did chase with the same woman.  The woman I can not find in the game and she does not appear in chases friends list it looks like she has gone awol.  The funniest part is that the game actually points out something is not what it seems when Chases parents have another baby and the game calls it Evan like lex's son - you can tell Evan 1 is Lex's son!!

soooooooooooo what do I do with this now????