Page 107 of Falling Embers
I bit my lip. “You know, the house will be empty when we get home. We won’t have to pick up Birdie and Sage from their friend’s house for almost an hour.”
“Stop, seriously. Talk about anything but that.”
I burst out laughing.
“You’re a witch. You know that, right?”
I twisted in my seat. “But you love me for it.”
He gave me a quick kiss. “I do.”
There were a few hoots and hollers. Calder glared at anyone making the sounds. I stood, tugging his hand. “Come on, let’s go home.”
“Thank, God.”
We made our way out of the station as the next shift settled in. Calder’s pace was a little quicker than normal.
“You in a hurry?” I asked.
“Damn straight,” he shot back, beeping his locks. “I want you home and naked.”
Heat began to simmer low in my belly. “Sounds like a good plan to me.”
Calder made the short drive in half the time it usually took. We were climbing out of his SUV when a familiar truck came to a screeching halt in front of Calder’s house, Hayes’ SUV hot on its heels.
My mother slammed her door and stalked towards Calder and me.
Hayes jumped out of his SUV. “Mom, you need to dial it back a notch.”
She held out her phone to me, her arm trembling. “This is what you’ve been blowing off your family to do? Some reckless stunts that could get you killed?”
A still of the jump I’d made off the cliff showed on the screen. I remembered the high I’d gotten as I sailed through the air. How free I’d felt. Then I focused on my mother’s face, splotches of red on her cheeks and neck.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Don’t you ‘hi, Mom’me. I want an explanation.”
I glanced at Hayes, who looked poised to pull our mother back as if he were worried she might strike. Is that what we’d come to? Why? Because I couldn’t play by her rules?
I looked back at the woman who had raised me. I did my best to keep my voice calm and even. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“The hell, you don’t. I want to know why you would put me through this. How you could be so selfish.”
It was the familiar refrain. I was selfish and cruel for simply wanting to live my life the way I wanted. As her voice rose, so did the pressure in my chest. “It has nothing to do with you! It’s me. What I want. I’m not going to apologize for doing something that makes me happy.”
“But it’s fine that it could destroy your family if something happened to you? How can you see it that way? We’d be ruined. You know what it was like when we almost lost Shiloh. You know that it almost killed me. Why would you do this?”
“People die every day. Heart attack. Stroke. Car accident. Freak happenstance. I’m not going to stop living in hopes it will makeyoufeel safer. I can’t live my life for you, Mom, and you shouldn’t want me to.”
Calder’s hand came down on my shoulder. “Okay, let’s all take a breath. No one wants to say something they’ll regret.”
My mom’s gaze shot to him. “You couldn’t have possibly known about this. You wouldn’t have put Birdie and Sage at risk that way. You wouldn’t have put yourself at risk.”
Calder’s jaw hardened as his hand dropped from my shoulder.
The anger inside me turned up a notch. She didn’t get to do this. Try to turn the people in my corner against me. “At risk of what? Being loved and cared for?”
“At risk of losing you! You’re putting yourself in danger for no good reason.”
