As a son who had given his mother much to worry about when she hadn’t needed it, it felt good to say, “Just take care of yourself, Mom. I’ve got the rest of it.”
Tears streamed down her worn face, but they were tears of relief.
I’d find a way, I silently told myself, as I once again held my mother’s hand.
Chapter19
Lily
“I have to go,”I said to my mother on the phone as I got a text from Lucas saying he was outside the dorm. “I’ve got a date,” I said before I thought better of it. But I’d been thinking about it all day, so it just kind of popped out.
“Oh, who’s the boy?” she asked with keen, lawyer-like interest, which was exactly why I shouldn’t have said anything.
Lucas was my everything, but I wasn’t shrewd Grayson Spaulding’s daughter for nothing. “Just a first date. We’ll see how it goes.”
It was not technically a lie. This was our first actual date. True, we’d been sleeping together for weeks, but tonight was our first “pick you up, dinner and a movie, drop you off (okay, spend most of the night making sweet, sweet love)” date.
“Keep me posted on him,” she said.
“I will if it turns into anything.” Which I knew I’d have to do soon, probably over the upcoming Thanksgiving break. Especially because I was considering staying here instead of taking the train to DC so I could be with Lucas for four whole uninterrupted days. My body shivered with yearning just thinking about it.
“Oh, your father wants to talk to you.”
“Mom, I really have to—”
“Here he is. Bye, sweetie, love you.”
“Love you too, Mom,” I said. I grabbed my jacket and made my way out of my room as I waited for my father’s voice.
“Lily, how are you?”
“I’m good, Dad, how are you doing?”
“Fine, fine. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about Jane.”
I walked past the elevator, deciding to take the far stairwell, where it was less likely that anyone would hear me speaking with my father. “She’s doing great. I think she’s four-pointing all her classes.”
“That’s good.” He didn’t ask how my grades were doing, which I guess was just as well. I was hanging on, but I had to work my ass off to do it. Good thing Lucas worked nights or I wouldn’t have gotten all the studying in I had over the past several weeks. And I still hadn’t made any headway on Montrose’s “the person I am today” paper.
“I appreciate whatever help you may have been to her.”
I snorted. “Dad, I am no help whatsoever to Jane when it comes to getting good grades. She’s probably borderline genius.”
“Really?” he said, sounding genuinely surprised. As far as I knew, my father had never actually met Jane. Well, maybe when she’d been a baby and there was all the subterfuge, but certainly not in the past sixteen years. And yet I was willing to bet he knew her high school GPA. He probably knew mine too, but only to make sure I wasn’t letting down the family name like Alexis had in school. (I hadn’t. I did what was expected.)
“Well, that’s good to hear. And she’s staying out of trouble? Nothing embarrassing is going to show up online, is it?”
I thought about that night Stick pulled her out of the club in Chesney. Nothing had surfaced after that night—and I’d checked. Frequently. I didnotwant to get the call that my father had seen something about Jane before I had.
“Nope. Clean as a whistle. Just good old-fashioned college freshman fun.”
“Hmmm. I was a college freshman once too, Lily,” he said with a bit of humor in his voice.
He could be controlling and demanding, and lots of other negative “ing”s, but he also taught me to ride a bike and how to swim. And I loved him, even if I felt I could never truly please him.
But I was beginning to realize that was more on him than me.
“We’re being good, Dad,” I said.
