Page 82 of Playing With Danger

My Valentine, so strong, so broken.

His perfect life torn apart by tragedy.

I wished I had my car here so I could go back to his childhood home and burn it to the ground. Of course, I’d get Mr. Malone to safety first. I might not like the man but I’d still save him even though he hadn’t saved his son.

My mother wasn’t loving or affectionate. But I knew in her way she did love me. She’d provided for me after my dad left. She hadn’t sank into a bottle or lost herself in the grief of losing the man she loved. And she had loved my father deeply. She’d tried to hide it, but as I got older it was obvious. Plus I’d found lots of pictures of them from before I was born and a few of all three of us. I’d never seen my mother look as happy as she had in those pictures. It sucked but not even with Nathan did she look that carefree and blissful. She looked like a woman madly in love. Then years later that man had abandoned her.

Now I understood.

Standing on the precipice of losing the man I loved, I got it.

How that would change a person. Shape their future. Kill important parts of you.

It was strange how my mother could hold me distant while smothering me at the same time. How she could be cold while at the same time showing me how much she cared. Admittedly her delivery sucked, but she truly wanted what was best for me. Happiness didn’t factor because she knew all too well happiness could be fleeting. There one day, gone the next. So instead she wanted to make sure I would never be unprepared for life.

But she didn’t teach me how to love.

And now I was questioning myself.

You fought for the people you loved, right?

You didn’t let them push you away, right?

I could love the pain away, right?

Gah!

I didn’t know what I was doing. I swiped my purse off the table, dug through it, tagged my phone, then plopped down on Valentine’s couch and called the only person I could.

“Yo,” Hayden greeted, out of breath.

Unwanted thoughts of him with Khloe made my lips curl in disgust.

“You busy?”

“I was, but I’m not now. What’s wrong?”

Gross!

“Never mind. I’ll?—”

“Sophie, I’m at the Hope Center playing ball. What’s wrong?”

“If you’re playing ball why’d you answer?”

“Because it’s you and I always answer when you call no matter what I’m doing. Correction, I almost always answer unless I’m otherwise pleasurably engaged. You know that. Stop evading and tell me what’s wrong.”

I don’t know what I did to deserve a best friend as good as Hayden but I was grateful. So grateful, I forgave Oakley for being such a monumental prick because he gave me this.

“Everything,” I admitted.

“Where are you?”

Now he sounded like he was huffing, which meant he was running so he could come to me.

But he couldn’t.

Not this time.

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