I welcomed the dart of relief as he replied. “Yeah.”
Anticipation swirled around my head at the thought of Phoenix talking to me about what he had found out about his past. “OK.”
Stress lines decorated his forehead. I recognized stress well. During that part of my life when Nix and I were ripped apart, I had lived with it daily. To the point that it came as natural to me as breathing. I pushed away thoughts of Dalton and his cruel face.
And then he revealed the reason for his anxiety. “I know where my mother is, Harper.”
Fuck!
That admission made me sit up in my seat. “Really?” My brain was swamped with a thousand questions, all battling to get to the top and make their way to my mouth. A muscle that was currently hung wide open.
Nodding, he replied. “Yeah.”
After a moment’s pause, he explained. “And that’s where we’re going now.”
More questions fell onto the pile. “To meet your mom?”
Nix’s fingers had tightened on the wheel so much that his busted-up knuckles were white. The fact that one was badly grazed didn’t go unnoticed, but I knew it wasn’t the time to ask about that.
I stared at him in disbelief as he said. “Yeah. She’s agreed to meet with me.”
A surge offuck knew whatbubbled through my gut. I knew Nix and his mother were categorized as unfinished business in his head. He wanted to know why she had stopped the visits and walked away.
My chest had grown tight, and I dragged my fingers through my hair, needing something to do with my hands. I wanted to climb onto his lap and hug him. Not a good idea, considering we were now on the freeway doing sixty.
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Huge?”
Nix shot me a shy smile. It was cute and something you rarely saw, even the dimples he used to have reappeared. Blowing out a harsh breath, he answered. “Yep. It’s about as huge as it gets.”
He then filled me in on everything he had learned from his file about how his mother had left him and remarried. She now had a family of her own, a husband and a child, a boy who would be Phoenix’s half-brother. They lived in a fancy house upstate in a rural area of Barrington. He leaned across me and opened the glove box, pulling out the manila file and handing it to me.
I scanned my eyes over the papers, noting the address, Maple Avenue.
That sexual tension between us was put on hold, for the time being, and it felt like old times again as we spoke about what he could expect when he met his mother for the first time in years.
Nix said he wanted to know more about who his father had been. I asked if he had any intention of reaching out to his mother with a view to a future relationship with her, and he said no. He was firm about that, his tone suggesting that she was dead to him. He just wanted to know why she left. Phoenix believed that if there was a reason and it was valid, he could feel some closure and move on. I wasn’t so sure.
For me, it was so different. I couldn’t ask my father why he did what he did, as he was dead.
As Phoenix took the exit, I pushed back in my seat and prepared myself for the unexpected.
Whatever happened, I needed to be there for the boy I cared about the most in the entire world. A boy who was also the man I was falling for.
But most importantly, in that moment, he was my best friend and needed my supportwithoutany romantic strings to cloud the waters.
TWELVE
PHOENIX
Due to a traffic accident on the freeway, the journey took well over an hour, and my back and neck had started to ache. That didn’t surprise me, considering I felt so stiff in my seat, almost physically bracing myself for things to come.
Once I had pulled onto Maple Avenue, I felt a huge sense of relief, and my shoulders relaxed. In all honesty, during the drive over, I had considered turning around several times, but seeing my mother’s house again, I knew the window to change my mind had closed.
No turning back now. You are here for answers.
Yes, answers, but what then? I thought about what Harper had asked. Did I want a relationship with my mother now, after what she had done? Was that even possible? No, I wanted her to admit she was wrong for leaving me to my face. To set the record straight somehow. Hate was such an exhausting, decaying emotion. If I understood my mother’s reasoning for her actions, maybe I could at last forgive her? I was a grudge bearer, but not when a grudge was starting to rot my insides. I needed closure so I could move on with my life. And the person I wanted to do that with was sitting by my side.
“It’s a pretty neighborhood,” Harper declared brightly in a soft, sweet voice. God, I had missed that sound. I hadn’t heard it much since she’d lived with us. And whilst I enjoyed winding her up and seeing her prickly side, it was a relief to know that the old Harper was still in there. The girl who had been through unimaginable shit but still had the biggest heart and the purest soul.
