I’m angry, fucking furious at her for what she’s saying, but most of all, I’m angry at myself for never seeing the type of woman my mama could be. “Then we won’t be,” I say, once and for all done with this family and the hate they bring. “I will take her and my child and stay as far away from you and your toxic mind.”
“How dare you! I’m your?—”
I grab her hand as she tries to slap me across my face. My fingers tighten around her wrist, but I take a deep breath and let her go. “You’re nothing to me if you can’t accept that this is what I want. I saw you do it to Bailey and Brynn and did nothing. I won’t stand for it any longer.”
“Jase,” Indigo says, exiting the house and joining us on the front porch. The fucking nerve of this woman to keep showing up where she’s not welcome or wanted. How pathetic can she be to try so hard when I clearly want nothing to do with her? “Don’t be mad at your mama, she’s just trying to protect you,” she says smoothly, alligator tears in her eyes. “You’re being unfair to her, and to me. You know what we had. What we could still have.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, my blood running hot as I try to breathe, but everything burns. “Indigo, enough,” I shout,making them both flinch in response. “I don’t want you, and frankly it’s so incredibly sad that you don’t get that. I’m with Monroe. End of fucking story.”
Mama’s mouth pinches into a tight line while Indigo’s eyes narrow, but it isn’t until I hear the deep, rough voice of my father that I understand why. Fucking perfect.
My father stands by the door, arms folded, his gaze shadowed by the large garland hanging above the archway. He and I haven't had a decent conversation in months. He’s been absent when I needed him, and when he was present, he was nothing but cold and demanding.
Still, he jerks his chin, looking from the two women and then back to me. “Walk with me.”
Every instinct screams at me to ignore him. But I follow, if only to get away from Mama and Indigo’s twin stares I can’t fucking stand to look at any longer.
We stop by the old oak tree at the edge of the yard, one my sisters and I attached an old tire swing to when we were kids that still hangs today, and turns to me. He hands me the flask he’s tucked into his coat pocket, but I shake my head in refusal, so he opens it and takes a swig himself.
“You’re right to be angry at your mama,” he says quietly. “She’s scheming with Indigo, and it’s so pathetic how that girl is using her. You have every right to be mad at me too. I gave your mama reasons not to trust. To doubt, to hate the Bishop family as much as I did.”
I cross my arms. “You mean the affair, or your love child? Or maybe both?”
His jaw tightens. “It went on too long. I thought I could have both—my family, and the woman I thought I loved. The Bishop women are dangerous—addictive even. I lost more than I gained, and if there’s one thing I regret, it’s that I didn’t stop before I broke everything.”
I stare at him, unsure if this is supposed to be an apology or a warning. My father is powerful, wealthy and influential. He’s been the long-standing mayor of Crossroads, re-elected countless times because of the good he’s done for this town, but half of its residents fear him more than they respect him.
I’ll be the first to admit he’s been involved in some illegal dealings over the years, it’s why I distanced myself from his business. Though it wasn’t until I discovered what he’d done to Nash and Bailey that I distanced myself completely. When I found out about his affair and the child he had with Delia Bishop, my mind immediately thought of Monroe. It was a week after we’d spent the night together, and I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of what that could have meant.
When I don’t answer, he continues, placing a hand on my shoulder as he speaks. “Don’t make my mistake, son,” he says. “If you love Monroe, you fight for her. You choose her every time. I ruined things for your sisters, and I’m paying for it. My little girls won’t even look at me.” He laughs it off, but I know it’s killing him inside to have lost them.
For once, I don’t have a smart remark, because for all his flaws, my father’s right about one thing. I’m not him, and I won’t lose Monroe by acting like him.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Monroe
The moment the door clicks shut behind the last King family member to leave, I can finally breathe. My muscles relax, and once again I can feel my lungs filling and releasing oxygen at a normal pace. Tossing my shoes off, I lean against the kitchen island, every muscle in my body buzzing with a mix of exhaustion and adrenaline. My cheeks are hot, my lips twitching from the polite smiles I forced all night, and my mind is fried from answering every one of Magnolia's questions laced with judgment.
The woman is relentless, and when she's made up her mind about someone, there’s no changing it. Unfortunately for me, she’s decided that I’m not good enough for her son. Problem is, I’m starting to think she’s right.
“You okay?” Jase asks as he leans against the archway, watching me with a look that says he sensed every crack in my composure tonight and is wondering how the hell I'm still standing.
I’m wondering the same thing.
“I survived,” I joke, though I’m not technically kidding.
Dinner was a nightmare and had nothing to do with the delicious meal spent hours putting together, or the fact her estranged children were in attendance, filling the air with such a thick and suffocating tension. All of that wasn’t the worst part. It was the way she watched my every move. The way my fingers locked with Jase when I felt uneasy by something she asked. How every forkful of food everyone took was a simple swirl on her plate, practically refusing to touch what I’d prepared.
Every calculated move of hers, each probing question asked, was meticulously plotted to make me feel uncertain about my place beside her son. And it was fucking working until she began insulting his character.
Jase struts toward me, closing the gap between us so deliberately slow, it’s driving me crazy. He reaches for me, tucking a strand of hair that’s fallen out of the messy bun I threw my hair into as I was loading up the dishwasher.
“You did more than survive. You held your own against my mama, one of the hardest, most frightening women to ever exist. Trust me, my sisters were flabbergasted, but you had my back.”
I shake off the compliment because I didn’t stand up for him to prove anything. I couldn’t stand to hear her insult the father of my baby and think she could get away with speaking to him the way she did to everyone else in the room.
Jase has done nothing but defend her and stand by her side his whole life, and as soon as he realizes how manipulative and cold she is and distances himself, she treats him like trash. She’s not the mother I believed her to be. One I used to look up to, thinking I’d be better off with her than with mine, who’d abandoned me.
