Page 23 of Tell Me You Love Me

I’d know. I put that ink there with my own fucking hands.

“Bitsy brought him to us. I see no reason not to respect a dying woman’s wishes that her grandson learn how to fight.”

“Right.” He claps my shoulder and turns to pick up another log. “This is totally about Bitsy. Screwing with Alana is one thing. But messing with her kid is a line not even you would cross.”

“Like I said.” I watch them stride toward the porch and bicker all the way to the door, and though I know I’m going to hell for it, I wave when Alana’s fiery eyes swing back to mine. “I’m crossing no lines. I just wanna hang out with him sometimes. Get to know the kid she’d kill for.”

“Yeah. There’s no way that could go bad.” With a heaving grunt, he tosses a log into the back of the truck. “Stop staring and start helping. I wanna leave before the cops arrive.”

ROUND SEVEN

ALANA

“You took my son to their gym?” I shove my mother’s bedroom door open and find her standing at her window, her eyes on the yard and the twin boys she made damn sure to thrust back into my life. “Are you serious, Beatrice?”

Her fragility is extinguished by the taunting in her eyes, so when she slowly comes around and meets my stare, the sympathy I feel for the woman Iknowis hurting is gone, to be replaced with renewed anger.

“You had no right!”

“You will call me Mom,” she warns on a low growl. “Or Mother, when you’re feeling contemptuous. You won’t call me Beatrice. Ever.”

“I don’t give a single shit about names right now!” I stride across her room and glare out her window, only to find the Watkins boys exactly where I left them, but their eyes are up here, and her window is open.

Because, of course, they get to listen in on this drama.

Snarling, I grab the window and slam it down until it closes with a crash, then I yank her curtains across, too, to claim even a modicum of privacy.

“Youknowyou’re wrong.” I point in her face and fight every voice screaming in the back of my head that I’ll pay for it. “You know my history with them, Mom! And you knew damn well I wouldn’t approve, which is why you didn’t tell me.”

“It’s a gym.” Unfazed, she wanders to her dresser drawers and peruses her jewelry box for which pieces she’ll wear today. “Franklin runs fromcows that hardly move, is terrified of a rooster older than Noah himself, and trips on his feet at least a dozen times a day. He needs socialization, to meet his peers, an opportunity for structured exercise, and a lesson on how to use the very limbs attached to his body.”

“Mom!”

“He can’t walk more than five feet without falling on his face.” She chooses a heavy golden bangle and slips it over her hand. “It’s not like I’m sending him out to the Watkins property, Alana. That gym is a legitimate establishment. One of its kind, actually, and caters to most of the kids Franklin will meet once the new school year begins. He’s already at a disadvantage, seeing as he’ll be the only new student there, and this is his final year in elementary school. Signing him up for the summer will help in more ways than one.”

“And comes with the added bonus of pissing me off, right?” I throw my hand in the air. “You did this to assert your dominance and annoy me.”

“What was that thing you said to me so recently?” She selects a chunky necklace, busy with dangling crystals, and reaches back to fasten it around her neck. “Oh. Have you considered that this has nothing to do with you at all?” Her thin lips curl into a devious grin. “He liked his lesson, even if he would say otherwise, and Eliza Darling runs the kid classes anyway, not Tommy. If you stopped throwing a fit and actually asked a few questions, you could be better informed and less melodramatic on the matter.”

“Melodramatic?” Rage is like a living, vicious dragon breathing flames into my belly. “It is not melodramatic to not want my son spending time with a man who lacks filters or acool downbutton and boasts a giant friggin’ chip on his shoulder and a decade’s worth of rage bottled up that wascaused by me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Your insinuation that he would treat Franklin badly because he’s mad at you is ridiculous.”

“He is Tommy Watkins!” I roar. “And he is pissed. He has every right to be pissed! Worse, he’s had ten years to let his anger marinate. My son is not safe in that man’s company.”

“Ludicrous.” She moves to her makeup case next and selects a fiery red lipstick. “If you thought he was capable of hurting a child, no matter the temper bubbling under the surface, then you would never have given him even a second of your time.”

“You didn’twantme to give him a second of my time! You were responsible for ninety percent of all the fights he and I ever had because you insisted I leave him in the trash where—your words—he belonged,and I refused to do so. You couldn’t stand him being in my life, and you made that known every damn day we were together. But now you’re on his side?”

“He’s grown.” She talks around the O she makes with her lips, coloring them a bright red. “He’s matured. And believe it or not, but I’m allowed, and capable, to admit when I’m wrong.”

“No, Mother. You’re not capable, and this isn’t a change of heart, no matter how sneaky you think you’ve been. This is manipulation because you thrive on chaos and get a sick thrill out of watching everyone else scramble around, cleaning up the messes you’ve made.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion.” Infuriatingly calm, she sharpens the lines of red with her pinky nail. “Doesn’t make them right.”

“He isnotgoing back to that gym.” I have nothing to gain by remaining in this room and reverting to my fifteen-year-old self, bickering with my mother and turning my voice hoarse from the effort. Not when I remind myself I’m a grown woman now, and Franky is, in fact,mychild. My rules, no matter whose house we’re in.

I turn on my heels and swing her door open. “If you take him back there without my permission, we’re leaving. I will put my son in that car so fucking fast, your head will spin. And I assure you, if you undermine my parenting like this a second time, I’ll make sure you never see him again.”

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