“No. No. Sorry,” I mumble. “Mom can be…intense. But she’s not that bad. Not once you get to know her. She is super protective. It comes from a place of…love.”
Axe doesn’t speak, only waits for me to go on. I don’t say that sometimes it doesn’t actually feel like love. That it feels like something altogether different.
“I know I look reasonably healthy now. But we had some really traumatic years. And she was the one who kept me safe and fed and clothed and dealt with all the gazillion doctors—somehow got all my hospital bills paid, too,” I add.
“I’m sure she’s a good woman. Just worried about you,” says Axe, his voice neutral. As if he himself is unsure if that’s true.
But now something sharp and unexpected snaps inside me, and I’m furious. Dragging myself here feeling like absolute shit was hard enough, but now Mom’s managed to hunt me down, order me home, and scold me like a damn child—in public, in front of Axe. It’s too fucking much.
“Sometimes, I’m not sure that what she does is all out of love,” I blurt, surprising myself. I never talk to anyone about this. Not even Nonna. I never wanted to give her more ammunition to dislike my mother. “When I was little, Mom had this twisted way of preparing me for things. If she knew I was getting shots or some kind of procedure the next day at the hospital, she’d actually stick a pin into my arm the night before.” I wince at the memory. “She’d say it was to help me get used to what was coming. Like, seriously—a real, two-inch sewing pin! She’d always say,Now the worst is over! Cry it out here so that you don’t cry there. So when she filmed me getting treatment, I’d be strong. Bonkers, right?”Oh my God, Josie. No. This is sonotfarmers-market-date banter. Shut the fuck up, girl. Get your shit together.
Axe’s jaw drops. “Please tell me you’re taking the piss,” he says.
“I wish.” I laugh, but it’s a brittle sound.
“That’s cruel.” He puts his hand on my shoulder, so soft and light, squeezes sweetly, and then drops it.
“She’d come into my room all cheerful. Like it was some kind of girlie bonding activity.Hold still, Josie, she’d say, and then—ooof!She’d smash the point of it, with all her strength, right into my arm. I’d be sitting there in bed, tears rolling down my face, and then she’d make me cocoa and hug me and tell me how brave I was. How much she loved me. How she wished I wasn’t sick.” My throat locks up. Why am I saying all this? To Axe. My literalboss. I am having a full-scale emotional meltdownto my bossin real time.
And, oh yeah, it’s being recorded by tech geniuses.
Axe should just fire me now. How could I possibly represent the She’s the One ideal? More like She’s One Hot Mess.
“That’s…that’s batshit, Josie,” Axe growls. His eyes are hard with shock. “That’s not preparing you for shit. That’s bloody torture.”
“Yeah, I see that now. So it was kind of nice to see someone else dealing with her for a change. Just disappearing her, you know?” I wipe my eyes. “Sometimes I think Mom only likes me when I need her. It’s like she thrives on my misery.”
“There’s an old Scottish saying: ‘Better a bare foot than a bad parent,’ ” says Axe. He looks away as a shadow passes over his face. Then, more quietly, he says, “I grew up wealthy, a proper Scottish toff in some ways. But my father was extremely…sadistic. As you Americans would say, he was a ‘totally fucked-up dude.’ ”
He puts on an American accent to lighten the mood, but some truths are too heavy to be lightened, no matter how hard we try.
“All the money in the world, but no kindness. No love. He thought he was toughening me up, too—but it was just his cruelty. Sometimes he’d make me do things just to see me struggle. It didn’t matter if I had material things. The emotional scars Da left on me were far worse.”
It might be the most honest thing Axe has ever said to me. My chest aches at the thought of him as a little boy running through the grounds of a sprawling Scottish estate, unprotected from the harshness of his father’s expectations. His eyes glinting with determination and hurt.
Before I can think, I reach out, taking his hand in mine. “I’msorry you had to go through that. No child should have to prove their worth to their parents. And your mom? What is she like?”
He just shakes his head, like,Yeah, that’s enough sharing for today, and I know right away, without him even saying it, that she’s gone.
Oh, Axe…I let him step closer until I can feel his breath on my skin. Axe is so big that just being near him makes it feel like he could block out the whole world. It’s like we’re both finding this unexpected sense of safety in the space between us, breathing the same air, carrying the same weight. We’ve just laid out our childhood messes, exposed all the scars, and there’s something strangely deep about being this raw with someone.
When he pulls back to look at me, his hand momentarily cradles my cheek, his index finger brushing away the tear that’s slipping down my face. Surrounded by the scent of market roses and the faint, fading warmth of the winter sun, as I stare into his eyes, I feel the whole world disappear, leaving only the magic of the here and now.
“I’m sorry to tell you, lass,” he says, and now I hear the old Axe again, his voice a tease, “that between your daft mum’s antics and our mutual childhood trauma revelations, this date, so far, has been an absolute cock-up. I might rather burn this data than hand it over to the team.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t tell,” I say. “Let’s start all over, right now.”
Axe does a ridiculous moonwalk, as if he’s reversing time. I’m charmed. He’s not usually goofy.
“Done,” he declares, stopping mid-step with a flourish. “Now let’s do some strolling, a wee bit of small talk, and maybe buy a few tatties.”
“Tatties?” I choke out.
“Potatoes! Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“I think you meantaters,” I say.
“I meantatties, bonny lass.”
