“Momma, I hate to break it to you, but thisisme coming to my senses.”
I couldn’t account for my bravery, save for the man gripping my hand like he’d go to war for me.
“This is allyourfault,” she cried, pointing an accusatory finger at Ozzie.
“Don’t you dare point at him like that,” I warned. “Don’t you dare be rude to him. Nothing is his fault. Thereisno fault. This is just who I am. While you succeeded in helping me hide it from myself for all these years, you always told me that the truth will out. So. This is my honesty, this is my truth. You don’t have to like it; you just have to accept it.”
“I accept nothing.” Her eyes cut to Oz again.
I shifted to block him from her vitriol, but he whispered, “Don’t you worry about me.”
“I don’t,” I answered, no longer bothering to lower my voice. “I don’t worry about you, Oz. I just don’t want you to be a target the way I have been all my life.”
My mother ignored my words, or, more likely, didn’t hear them to begin with. Instead, she focused on Oz. “Youdid this. You groomed him, you saw his weakness, and you preyed on it.”
“Mrs. Walker, I’ll ask you not to treat me like I’m some sexual deviant who drew your innocent son into sin,” Oz responded, steady and strong. “What’s going on here is not sinful. It’s actually kind of amazing. For both of us.”
She took a step back as though his solid belief had physically struck her. Seeing that she wasn’t getting anywhere with anger, she switched tactics, fat tears falling down her cheeks. “Augustus, how could you break my heart like this?”
I answered her with the truth. “Momma, you broke your own heart. This is all you.”
“Well, this is me saying you are no longer part of our family. I hope you’re happy. I already lost your sister, and now you’ve made me childless.”
“No. If you are childless, that is on you. If you should change your mind, I love you and I’ll be here.”
It was horrible watching reality settle in, watching all her notions crumble into dust, watching her dreams of my future evaporate. She’d lost so much when Annalee died. I knew it had hurt her more than she’d ever let on, just like I knew that this would hurt, too. But, awful as it was, it was necessary.
It was hard not to feel like it was my fault, even though I knew it wasn’t.
She stepped backward, disappearing into the shadow of the hallway, and we heard her soft footsteps hurrying through my apartment. The metallic tumble of keys on the kitchen table. The ghostly way the door closed behind her. Even though I didn’t witness it with my eyes, I could see her grieved expression and her certainty that she was right and I was wrong.
In one of the psychology classes I took in college, we’d gotten into a discussion about how social media had been weaponized so that, with just a few sharp words, you could ruin somebody’s reputation. Hell, their entire life.
The professor, an older guy who was heavily involved in social media, had listened for a while, then shook his head. “An old adage applies, even though this is a seemingly new problem.In order to be truly happy, you must let people be wrong about you.You don’t have to correct the people who are wrong, because the only people who matter already know the truth. Those are the ones you gather around yourself. Don’t waste your time trying to make people understand and accept you, especially when they don’t give a damn about you.”
Falling to my side, I curled in on myself, wishing that confrontation could have gone differently. Wishing my family could see me for who I was. Wishing I’d somehow been able to make them proud instead of angry and afraid.
“Can I hold you?” Oz asked, pulling me out of my spiral. “I want to. I understand if you need to be alone, though.”
“Please don’t leave me alone,” I whispered. “Please tell me she didn’t scare you away.”
I knew before he even spoke where he stood, but I needed his reassurance, and he gave it immediately. “She couldn’t scare me away, Walker. Hell, I couldn’t stay away from you even if I wanted to.”
“I feel the same,” I said, burying my head in my hands. Oz curled around me. I didn’t know how I’d gone a whole life without this kind of affection.
“I’ll never understand your mother’s reaction,” he murmured. “I respect that she’s still grieving Annalee and always will. But that doesn’t give her the right to ignore your wishes and insist your dreams need to align with hers. You are allowed to be your own person. To hold family over your head, to make your acceptance contingent on compliance, isn’t fair. You don’t deserve to be treated like that.”
“I wish I had parents like yours,” I whispered.
“Well, I can’t change your parents, but maybe you can borrow mine for a while so you can see what family’s supposed to be like.”
Tears pooled in the inner corner of my eye and dripped onto my pillow. “Okay.”
CHAPTER22
ozzie
I pulled into Mom and Dad’s driveway with Walker leaned against my shoulder, snoring quietly. It was amazing, watching him sleep. You didn’t realize how much tension someone held in their expression until sleep smoothed it away. Walker looked so heartbreakingly young once the line between his brows disappeared.
