I deserve that.
“Leaves a lasting impression to watch one of your parents tear down the other in the name oflovefor most of your childhood.” The wordstaste like stale whiskey. And for the record, I hate whiskey about as much as I hate tellinganyonewhy I am the way I am. But I’ve been an ass to her. She deserves to know why. And this is why I hate apologizing. “So I don’t do relationships. But it’s fucking hard to watch you do for June what I always wanted my own mother to do for me and not have some kind of reaction to it.”
Maisey doesn’t answer.
She stays right where she’s at, leaning in the doorway, one brow arched at me, arms still crossed over her chest.
I know this trick.
I use this trick daily in my classroom.
And hell if it isn’t working on me despite knowing not to fall for it and despite all the ways I’m telling her that’s as much of my story as she gets. Fucking guilt. “Love sucks, okay? It sucks you dry and leaves you a husk of a human being without the will to get out of bed in the morning to take care of the kid you thought would solve all of your relationship problems and instead made it all worse, until your kid’s the one taking care of you when he’s supposed to be being a kid, until he can’t do it anymore and he breaks too. So I don’t date. I fuck. I have my kids at the school. I have a brother in Kory. I have my aunt Opal. I had Tony. I have all of Hell’s Bells acting like cousins I never had. I don’t need anything else. I don’twantanything else. So don’t count on anything else.”
Coming here to apologize was an awful idea.
My chest aches. My veins are buzzing.
I said too much.
I never say that much.
I said too much.
And she’s watching me with wide blue eyes that tell me she didnotsign up for my level of fucked up.
She blinks once and pushes herself upright. “Give me ten minutes to throw on clothes and make coffee, and I’ll go with you.”
I crack one of my knuckles, my chest still aching, all my senses on full alert for whatever she’s about to throw at me. “No.”
“Make me skip my coffee, and I’ll follow you to wherever this root cellar is, lock you inside, call the sheriff, and have you removed forcibly from my property, then call Opal, and then also call a few of Junie’s friends’ mothers and my new book club friends, and we’ll see how long it takes for everyone in this town to know about whatever it is you’re hiding in that root cellar.”
Jesus. “It’s not mine.”
“You clearly loved Tony more recently than I did, so it’ll clearly hurt you more than it’ll hurt me for the entire town to find out what’s in there.”
I’m not supposed to sweat like this at 7:00 a.m. on a beautiful fall morning. “It’s his porn collection.”
Her nose wrinkles, but otherwise, she doesn’t seem surprised.
Also?
Getting back to Tony’s porn—which isn’t really standard-issue porn but is definitely not something I want June discovering here—and Maisey’s normal sass is easing the ache in my chest.
Fuck.
Of course it is.
She doesn’t care where I came from or why I’m fucked up. She wants to go back to the way we’ve been so she can forget this happened too.
“So help me,” she says quietly, so veryMaiseythat I’m able to take a real full breath, “if you’re lying to me and it’s worse than simple porn, I will erect a building right in front of your front porch so you never see the sunset from my gatehouse again.”
The depth of her knowledge about me and my habits is startling.
Especially given that I don’t have time for sunset gazing in the fall and winter months.
Fuck me.
Opal.
