Page 109 of Riot

She didn’t cry this time. She just nodded against me, arms wrapping around my waist like she was locking herself into a war she’d been waiting too long to fight.

I kissed the top of her head, tasting salt and wind and something like destiny. “

Let ‘em smile for the cameras now. Let ‘em toast at that open house. We gon’ see who’s left standing when the smoke clears.”

She stepped back, wiping her eyes one last time. I couldn’t let her down.

Chapter 37

ALLURE

I hadn’t stopped buzzing since the night Riot made love to me.

Everything felt heightened now. My skin was more sensitive to the wind brushing over it. My breath came easier, but my heart raced quicker. Even food tasted better. The sky looked bigger. It was like my body had finally learned something it had been aching to know all along. And now that it knew, it couldn’t forget it. I couldn’t forget him.

We’d made love again that morning, slow and deep, right there in the brownstone kitchen after I came down for coffee and found him shirtless, sweat on his temples and fire still in his eyes. We didn’t even make it to the couch. Just bent me over the counter and whispered my name like a prayer until I fell apart in his arms again.

Now, walking out the door felt heavier than I expected. Like I was leaving some part of me behind every time I stepped away from him.

“Text me when you get there,” he’d said, pulling me into a kiss that curled my toes and heated up places that didn’t need to be hot with me on my way to see my mother.

I kissed him back like it might be the last time, fingers brushing his jaw, heart tight in my chest. “I will.”

Then I was gone, stepping into the bright Manhattan afternoon, sunglasses hiding the emotion still lingering in my eyes.

Today wasn’t about Riot. It wasn’t about love or pleasure or the new life I was trying to build.

Today was about facing the past.

My mother had flown into the city and asked to meet at a hotel downtown. She didn’t say much over the phone, just that she was in town for a few days and wanted to see me. I didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t laid eyes on her since I was sixteen. Since the morning I disappeared.

I took the elevator to the fifteenth floor and walked the hallway slow, my heels echoing off the polished marble. My palms were damp. My heart rattled in my chest like it was trying to warn me.

When she opened the door, I froze.

She looked… older. Not old. But older. Her eyes were the same, warm brown, wide and expressive, but there were lines there now. A sadness that hadn’t been etched into them before. Her hair was shorter, styled in soft curls that framed her face. But when she saw me, all of that faded, and for a second, she was just my mother again.

“Allure,” she breathed, voice catching.

I stepped into her arms before I could think, before I could stop myself, and hugged her like I used to when I scraped my knee or had a bad dream. She held me close, tighter than I expected, her fingers pressing into my back like she didn’t want to let go.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered.

I swallowed the lump rising in my throat and pulled back. “I have so many questions.”

Her smile wobbled. “We’ll talk all about it. Let’s catch up,” she replied.

She stepped aside and motioned for me to come in. The suite was clean and expensive, the kind of place that said she hadn’t been struggling while I was gone.

We sat on the couch, and talked about my experience away and then I hit her with, “Why didn’t he come for me?”

Her lips thinned. “Allure, sweetheart… it was so long ago.”

“That’s not an answer.”

She folded her hands in her lap, eyes flicking away from mine. “Your father… he was devastated. We both were. We thought you were dead.”

“I wasn’t. I was alive. For ten years.”

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