Page 165 of Toxic Temptation
“You wanted me to disapprove of her choice and convince her to stay away from this man?”
Waylen rubs the back of his head. “Well… yeah. Yeah, that’s kind of it. Sorta seems dumb when you put it like that.”
Mom clicks her tongue. “Love isn’t straightforward, Waylen. You fall for who you fall for and when you do, you fall forallof them. You don’t get to pick and choose the pieces you’d like, even if you find out later that the man you thought you married was an entirely different person in the end.”
My eyes snap to Mom’s face.
She aged so fast after Dad’s death. There are twice as many lines on her face as there were before. She looks frail now. Almost as though she’s wasting away.
Maybe that’s another reason I chose to focus on my career rather than my personal life. All my experience of love has taught me that it kills you faster than any medical condition ever could.
I’ve always known that my parents loved each other. Dad in the normal way, Mom, in the all-consuming,I’m devoted to my husbandkind of way.
This is the first time I’ve ever felt like there might be more to their love story than meets the eye.
“Mom, what do you mean?”
She looks down at her hands rather than at either one of us. “Just that people are complicated, sweetheart. Relationships are complicated. And sometimes, loving someone requires personal compromises.” She sighs, her shoulders slumping tiredly. “Waylen, we need ice cream for the peach cobbler I made. Go get some now, please.”
Waylen pushes himself off the counter, his eyes bouncing between us. He looks kind of relieved to be dismissed, surprisingly.
But as he passes behind me, he puts a hand on my shoulder and gives it a little squeeze. “Sorry about ratting you out. I’m just… worried.”
“I know,” I murmur in exhaustion. “Get me a pint of the chocolate espresso and we’ll call it even.”
With a chuckle and a nod, he leaves us alone in the kitchen.
Oddly, I no longer feel anxious or nervous. There’s a shy smile dancing across Mom’s face. “Tell me about him,” she says.
So I do. I tell her about the custody battle, about Yana’s abuse, about how Kovan’s hands shake when he looks at Luka’s scars. I tell her about the way he reads bedtime stories in a whole cast of different voices and how he lets Luka beat him at every board game.
When I finally stop talking, Mom’s eyes are soft with understanding. “You love him.”
“Ican’tlove him,” I croak. “He’s all wrong for me. His world is dangerous and violent and?—”
“That’s not why you’re scared, though.”
I stand abruptly, my chair scraping against the floor. “Of course that’s why I’m scared. Anyone would be terrified of the bad stuff.”
“Sit down, sweetheart.”
Something in her tone makes me obey.
“You’re not scared of hisworld,” she says gently. “You’re scared of loving someone you might lose.”
My chest tightens until I can barely breathe. “I’m a doctor,” I whisper. “My career is everything. I don’t have time for?—”
“Stop.” Mom reaches across the table and takes my hand. “You have time. Plenty of it. You’re just afraid to use it.”
“Can you blame me?” I ask. “Look what losing Dad did to you. You barely survived it.”
Mom is quiet for a long moment. “I didn’t want to survive it at first,” she admits. “But your father was the love of my life. Were we perfect? God, no. We fought about money and his hours at the hospital and whether to paint the guest room blue or yellow.” She smiles, but her eyes are distant. “And yet if I could go back knowing how it would end, I’d choose him again. Every single time.”
“You’d watch him die again?”
“His death was one day, Vesper. One terrible, awful day. But I had thirty-three years before that. Thirty-three years of morning coffee and terrible dad jokes and him falling asleep during every movie we watched.” Her grip tightens on my hand. “Don’t waste your years running from love because you’re afraid of one day of loss.”
Tears burn behind my eyes. Outside, I can hear Waylen’s car pulling into the driveway, the slam of his door, his footsteps on the front porch.
