Page 74 of Redemption
I can’t get mixed up with him again. I barely survived the last time. If I were to lose myself in him again—let myself feel the things I’ve buried—it would crush me. The essence of him is too much. When he’s around, he takes over all my senses, and all my common sense flees. Everything else dims, and that lack of awareness caused my downfall—not just mine but everyone around me. So yes, that kiss may have breathed air into my lungsfor the first time in six years, but it also reminded me why I stayed away.
“Are you mumbling to yourself?”
My heart jumps to my throat. Throwing my hand over my heart, I say, “What are you doing sneaking around the house?”
My mom is standing in the doorway to her office, a pen in her hand, and she’s looking at me like I’m a puzzle to fix.
I don’t like it. It creeps me out.
She tips her nose up in the air. “First, I do not sneak around my own home. Second, I’ve said your name three times now. You kept mumbling to yourself—something about Hayes. Though, I couldn’t quite understand what you were saying as you were a little irate.”
Her lips twitch as if she’s trying to hold back a laugh.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“Yes, well, I suppose you were distracted,” she says, smoothing out the nonexistent wrinkles on her shirt. I give her a quick nod, getting ready to bolt when she continues, “I was about to make a glass of tea. Would you like to join me, and perhaps we can talk about what has you in such a fuss?”
Her voice is hesitant, like she’s unsure if I will say yes or be offended because she asked. It causes my chest to tighten. Our mother-daughter relationship is broken—shattered from years of neglect—but she is slowly trying to pick up the pieces.
The least I can do is help.
“I would like that, Mom.”
Her nod is curt as she walks past me to the kitchen, and I follow. Usually, the place is swarming with staff, but today, it’s blissfully quiet.
My mom scurries around, pulling cups and tea bags from the cabinets, and I try not to look shell-shocked as I stand there watching.
“Close your mouth, darling.”
“I just didn’t know you knew where those things were.” My voice is teasing, a tone I’ve never used with my mom before, but it’s nice to be able to now.
She purses her lips and waves me off like I’m ridiculous, but that smile she’s trying to hide grows an inch wider. I can’t help but wonder at the way it makes her look younger and a little more like me. I’ve never thought we were anything alike, but with that half smile on her face, I can see it—the way our eyes wrinkle at the corner with our smile and the dimple that pokes in at the corner of her mouth.
She busies herself with finishing the tea, and when she’s finished putting it together, she places a cup in my hand and waves me over to the table.
Once we are both settled in our chairs, she looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to spill my guts to her—or at least the reason I came into the house in such a tizzy.
I spin the cup in my hand around and around, debating where to start or if I should at all. Things have been good between us since I’ve been home—awkward but good.
Hayes was always a topic that put more strain on our tumultuous relationship, so even though things between them have changed, I don’t know if I want to chance ruining the truce we have right now over a kiss that won’t matter later. Because that’s all it is—it’s all it can be, no matter how much it’s still seared onto my lips.
“Well,” Mom says, calmly lifting her cup to her lips, “are you going to explain why you were just cursing Hayes here to kingdom come?”
I don’t meet her eyes when I mumble into my tea, “I didn’t do that—”
Her laughter is light and contagious, the opposite of the woman I’ve always known. “Honey, God’s ears are burning fromthe way you came in here agitated. What did the poor man do to deserve that wrath of yours?”
“Kissed me.” The words are out so fast that they are a jumbled mess, but she must have understood what I said because her cup freezes halfway to her mouth. She sputters a minute, and it’s one time I’ve actually seen her flustered.
She coughs, and I wonder for a second if I need to get up and smack her on the back or something, but before I can, she recovers, wiping her mouth primly with the napkin in front of her. When she places it back down and asks, “Was it a nice kiss?” I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not in some strange dream.
The sting wakes me up and brings me back to this spot with my mom, a woman who, up until now, has been more of a stranger than a parent, but how much of that has been my fault?
I hadn’t tried to get to know her either. I was too busy being the disgruntled teenager to care.
“I mean—is that the point?”
“It might be,” she says, lifting one of her dainty shoulders, her features serious. “It depends on your answer.”
