Why do I feel like a teenage asshole?
“I’m going home,” I tell Mom. “We can talk later, but I’m not doing this tonight.”
“I already texted the housekeeper to get your bedroom ready?—”
“Myhome, Mom. My home.”
She eyes me. “Will…he…be there?”
I don’t answer, but I do glare at her.
Ziggy’s such a cunt. She thinks she’s better than everyone else. And did you hear? Now, she cut her mother out of her life. Her MOTHER. The woman offered to buy her a house, and that wasn’t good enough. She offered to pay for furniture, and that wasn’t good enough. Nothing’s ever good enough for Ziggy. She’s such a stuck-up cunt.
Tears burn my eyes as the ghost of Abby Nora’s voice haunts me. “Is it really that wrong for me to want to make it on my own two feet, and to make my own decisions and mistakes and choices?”
Mom blinks too.
She shakes her head. “No. It’s not wrong. It’s what I taught you to do.”
“I love him,” I whisper. “If you make me choose?—”
I cut myself off as she sucks in a breath.
“Okay. Okay.” She pats my shoulder, then squeezes my arm. “You…go home. We’ll talk tomorrow. After we’ve all calmed down.”
I have to pull over two blocks from the banquet hall because my vision is too blurry to drive. I pull up my phone and text Holt.
Me:I’m coming home.
Reply bubbles pop up instantly, and then?—
Holt:I’m here. And I’m sorry.
I finally get myself together enough to drive the rest of the way home, but I don’t make it inside before I’m crying again.
Holt opens the door for me like he’s been watchingfor me.
I stumble inside to an alarmed bark from Jessica, and then he’s wrapping me in his arms while the dog dances around us, panting and snuffling, and it should make me feel better, but I can’t stop crying.
“He hit you,” I sob.
“Taken a lot worse,” he murmurs. “I’m okay.”
“He shouldn’t—hic!—have hit—hic!—you.”
Dammit.
Dammit.
Not the hiccups.
Jessica howls.
“Come. Sit.”
When I don’t move from clinging to him, Holt shifts, and then I’m in his arms, feet off the floor.
“Your—hic!—foot,” I gasp.
