Page 5 of Rejected Heart

Instead, she focused on raising me. And considering we were broke, she had no choice but to put all her time, effort, and energy into providing for both of us.

Meredith Snow hid her pain well. But I guess I should have expected that at a time like this, her loneliness would get the better of her.

“We had each other.”

A small smile spread across her face. “Yes, we did. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

I returned the smile. Following a few beats of silence, I declared, “I’m going to call Carmen. She’ll probably be upset I didn’t reach out to her yesterday.”

“I’m sure you’ve had other things on your mind.”

“Yeah, like not knowing what the state of you was for hours,” I agreed.

Squeezing my hand, she said, “I wasn’t referring to you being worried about me.”

I didn’t need to ask her what she was referring to when she spoke in that tone. I already knew she was hinting at how I was handling being back in Landingwithout having planned for it. Though she’d supported me completely after I ended things with Liam, I knew it broke her heart.

In fact, I often wondered if that upset her more than it had when my dad left us. There was something about me calling it quits with Liam that impacted her in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

Not wanting her to believe the worst, I smiled brighter at her. “I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?”

I wasn’t going to tell her about my dream. “Yes. In fact, after I call Carmen and we talk to the doctor, I’m going to head over to the store.”

“What?”

“We’ll have to figure things out for when you are out of the hospital, but for now, the store shouldn’t be closed.”

Mom sighed. “Now I feel even worse.”

“But you know I’m not wrong.”

And I wasn’t.

My mom owned a consignment shop. She’d had it since I was little, and it had been the way in which we survived. While the store did well enough for her to pay her bills and put food on the table, she wasn’t living lavishly. Every day she wasn’t open, it impacted her ability to live.

So, I was going to have to take over the operation of the store in the meantime. It wasn’t like I hadn’t spent many days helping her out in the store when I was a kidand teenager. At least I wouldn’t be walking into some unknown situation now.

“Thank you, Layla. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

I lifted her hand in mine and kissed the back of it. “I feel the same.”

A matter of minutes later, her doctor had arrived. He assessed her pain, talked a bit about what we could expect in the coming weeks, and answered all our questions. My mom finally admitted she wasn’t going to be able to do this on her own.

Once the doctor left, we called Carmen. Suffice it to say, she nearly lost her mind when she learned about the accident my mom had been in yesterday morning.

I spent some time sitting with my mom, and once Carmen showed up, I took off to head into the store, doing it with the promise of returning later that night.

As I drove to the consignment shop, I replayed my morning with my mom in my head, attempting to juggle through everything we’d discussed with the doctor and trying to come up with a plan for after my mom was released in a couple of days.

Though there was a lot in front of us, I was grateful for the distraction the planning provided. Because I didn’t have to sit and recall the dream that I’d had last night and wonder about the man who’d been in it.

But that relief was short-lived.

Because no sooner had I arrived at the shop and parked, it smacked me in the face.

I’d walked up to the front door, pulling the keys out of my purse, when I heard, “Layla?”

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