Page 112 of Blood & Lace
The strong stench of liquor hit the back of my throat and made me gag. "The fuck?—"
"You curse at your own mother now?" Mom walked around the table, her brows lowered and her lips turned down in a disapproving frown. "Last I checked, I was the one in labor with you for twenty hours. I don't think I went through all that pain for you to curse at me."
"Sorry, ma. I thought—" I shook my head. "Sorry."
Her shoulders relaxed as she took a seat. I could practically feel her picking me apart like any mother did. She was making mental notes, and I was bound to get the full rundown once she was ready.
"My poor Luci." She patted my cheek gently. "You shit the bed, didn't you?" The sympathy vanished from her tone.
I groaned looking anywhere but at her. "Who told you?"
"No one. Una madre lo sa sempre."She tapped her manicured nails on the table top slowly and methodically. "You look like shit. If I was Onyx, I'd run too."
My head snapped up, and I met her gaze.
"Oh, now you look at me." She reached over, grabbing my chin like when I was a boy. She turned my head from side to side. "You were always obsessive." She let me go and sat back in her seat. She looked out of place in the strip club, wearing pearl earrings and a baby blue dress. Her hair was mostly gray now; the silvery strands took over the black. It was pinned away from her face. "One look at you, and I can tell you're troubled. You used to go days without eating or sleeping simply because something had caught your full attention. Remember when you got that cat with that horrid name, and when he ran away, it took us weeks to get you to move."
"I found him later."
My mother nodded, catching the attention of one of the bartenders. A glass of wine was delivered in seconds. "That you did, but that's only after you finally told everyone what was happening.” She wiped the table down with a handful ofnapkins. “However, there were weeks of you bottling it up all by yourself and you achieved nothing. It wasn't until the entire family pitched in to help that you found him."
I hadn't told any of my siblings what happened between me and Onyx. I wasn't even sure where to begin. This was nothing like when I lost my cat. Onyx leaving me was so much worse.
She swirled the dark liquid around before taking a sip. "So how are you going to fix this?"
That wasn't possible. "I can't."
Ma leaned over the table, crooking her finger at me to come closer. I did. The moment I was in reach, she smacked the back of my head a lot harder than before.
"I didn't raise you to be a quitter."
I sucked in a breath between gritted teeth rubbing the back of my head. "It's not that easy, ma. I messed up badly."
"Then you better make the apology even bigger." She was making it sound so simple but it couldn't be. Right?
"He never wanted to marry me," I admitted. Saying it out loud turned my stomach. "I thought I could make him happy, but instead, I made him miserable."
Another smack to the head had me wincing. All those rings on her fingers hurt. I rubbed the back of my head, not really wanting another one. She wasn't holding back at all.
"Luci. Don't be such a—ah, what is the word? Figa."
"Ma—"
She fixed me with a glare I knew all too well that meant shut the hell up and listen. It was like being ten all over again. I sat up straighter, making sure to give her my full attention.
"You have no idea how many times your father has made me so angry I've left to go back to Italy to be with my parents."
He had?I couldn’t remember a time when my parents weren't madly in love. Throughout my childhood, my father had worshiped the ground my mother walked on. They’d never shiedaway from showing each other affection in front of any of us. I’d vowed to have the same kind of marriage when I got older.
"No one is perfect."
"Onyx is."
She huffed out a chuckle. "No, he isn't, and I can guarantee he knows that. If he shows you his flaws, will you run?"
"No."
She smiled at me as if I gave her the right answer. "Do you love him?'
