Page 128 of Vows We Never Made
I don’t care.
A man can make peace with that, but he can never undo the past.
“It’s nothing,” I clip, breaking her gaze. I’ve had a lot of practice with that line, yet when I rattle off with her, it feels likelying. “You keep wondering why I left? No big story there. Just some moody teenage drama. That dumb urge to get out in the world and find myself.”
“Teenage drama,” she repeats skeptically.
“Yeah. You know, the kind of shit every spoiled kid with a chip on his shoulder goes through.”
“Do you really think every rich kid hasdramathat chases them away for years? Margot said you didn’t come back once until last year.”
My face heats.
“Nothing ran me off, Hattie. I left for the military because I was fucked in the head. I needed a few drill sergeants screaming in my face and dangerous patrols to straighten me out. It was good for me.”
Her lips twist as she studies me.
“But you said you left the military because it wasn’t so good, right?”
Damn. I’m not normally this shitty a liar.
“I stayed too long. Wound up getting tangled up with private mercs I had no control over. Big difference. Part of me didn’t want to come back and face life without a uniform by then, I guess. You get used to a different life overseas. Doesn’t take long before it’s the only one you know. Army responsibility, I could hack. It was easier than coming back here, facing the music, taking over Gramps’ company, even though he begged me every damn time he wrote. And you know the rest. Eventually, I cracked. I came around. But it served its purpose all the same.”
She frowns, staring at the black water, gold flakes in ink from the lights of the yacht and the swirls of stars above.
“Okay,” she says.
She doesn’t push it, but it makes me feel like shit.
Yes, I’m frustrated, but it’s for her own good.
Certainly for mine.
I’m not ready to have Hattie Sage look at me differently.
What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, and it won’t explode in my face like a screaming rocket.
I hate that a tiny part of me feels like she deserves to know, if there were some way to tell her without opening the gates of hell.
But in six months, we’ll go our separate ways.
And if I have anything to say about it, we’ll split without her ever knowing she married a monster.
15
ALL THE COURAGE (HATTIE)
“So, I made a spreadsheet,” Mom tells me, tapping the tablet she brought with her to lunch.
Ah, here we go.
As far as Mom lunches go, this one has been surprisingly okay so far.
Not entirely insufferable.
She hasn’t pushed me to join her yoga classes ten times yet or scowled at me for grabbing a cup of clam chowder with my lobster salad.
Still, it’s Mom, and that means nothing stays unseen or uncomplicated. It’s never justnice.
