Page 81 of False Start
I did not feelstrongmost days.
“You’re a catch,” she finished, and then she let out a long sigh and gave me a pointed look. “If only I knew just who you’d been caughtby.”
I swallowed, looking down at my fingernails. I had to stop my nervous habit of picking the polish off so I wouldn’t show up to this wedding looking like a nervous wreck.
“I’m with Kyle.”
I couldn’t look at the screen for a full ten seconds after I said it, and when I did, the mixture of shock and concern on my mother’s face made me drop my gaze again.
I waited for her to say something, maybe, “Kyle who?”
But she knew.
“I didn’t realize you two still spoke,” she finally said.
“We didn’t. Well, not until very recently, anyway. I took a house showing from one of the real estate apps I’m on and…” I looked at her. “He showed up.”
“I see.”
We were both silent for a pause, and then everything poured out of me — the way it always does with my mom. She’d been my best friend since I was a kid. Dad and I were never that close, especially because he was more married to his job than to my mother.
But with Mom and me, the words had always come easy. I went to her with everything — good, bad, and in-between.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I started. “But, for obvious reasons, I wasn’t sure how you would take it.”
“And how areyoutaking it?”
I let out a laugh, a sigh, and then shook my head with my eyes glossing over. “I feel like I woke up in the Twilight Zone.”
Mom was patient while I filled her in on everything, starting with the house showing and dinner. I told her about the deal he’d proposed after he’d seen the bruises on my arm, told her about shopping and the park with Sebastian and everything that had transpired in the last twenty-four hours.
Well — noteverything.
But by the time I finished speaking, her gaze had softened, and she was leaning in in the way that told me if I was there with her, she’d have a hand on my arm squeezing gently.
I looked a lot like her — same brown eyes, same button nose, same tired smile.
“It sounds like he’s grown up quite a bit.”
I nodded, but then frowned. “That’s what I don’t understand, Mom. Kyle has been so…strange.” I shook my head. “When we first reconnected, it was like he was mad atme, like itwas somehow me who was the bad guy in our situation. That changed after he saw what Marshall had done to me.”
“I want to walk right down the road and give him a piece of my mind for that.”
“You know it wouldn’t do any good,” I said on a sigh. “And you also know I can take care of myself. I have a plan.”
Mom’s mouth twisted to the side. She and Daddy had offered several times to use their savings and give Sebastian and me a fresh start somewhere new.
But I wanted to do this on my own.
Ineededto save myself.
“I asked him on the plane yesterday why he left,” I said, my voice a whisper now. “And he said he didn’t have a choice.”
My eyes found Mom’s, and though my hands were shaking, I knew I couldn’t back out now.
“Mom… what happened at the party that night?”
Her face went white when I asked.
