Do I? “No. He looks and acts nothing like Don Lucian. But…”
“She looks eerily like your mother. We should check to see if she’s his mother.”
Mom shakes her head. “We can’t do that. If she put him up for adoption, it might have been the only choice she had for her mental health.”
Then how are we going to find out if she’s Everett’s mother?
Exfoliating
Fiona
Three hours later, I pull myself up off the heated tile floor and turn off the steaming water. The loofah and pumice stone lay in the corner, taunting me to continue scrubbing their filthy hands off. To scrub and scrub until all the memories disappear.
But I’ve been in here long enough that explaining this episode to my therapist is going to be hard enough.
Toweling off would be a very bad idea right now. Instead, I reach for my softest robe, but even that chafes after what I did to myself.
Why did I let this guy get under my skin? Maddox and the rest of the Adders will protect the kids. Nothing and no one should affect me this much.
It does.
It still does.
It probably will forever, but I can’t let that threaten all the progress I’ve made.
I walk over to the couch in the living room, make an appointment for tomorrow, and turn on a cheesy romcom to forget the world for a while. This room settles my soul more than any silly romance could. It’s probably all the walls of books and toys of Daria’s. Though she would call them action figures, they’re toys meant to be displayed, not played with. She’s filled our entire apartment with them. From manga to graphic novels all the way to hardcore sci-fi, if she isn’t writing, she’s reading,or buying books. The Street’s library can’t keep up with her, and this apartment is starting to lose the battle. We’re either going to need to ask Maddox for a larger one, or she’s going to have to make some hard decisions soon. It’s a good thing Maddox is a softie. Maybe I can ask for a warehouse loft. That might have enough space for the book dragon Daria has become. Until then, she’s going to have to store some under her bed. Who am I kidding? That’s probably already filled.
***
The apartment door opens a while later, and Daria steps in with a big smile on her face, which slowly fades as she sees me huddling in the corner of the couch. “Why aren’t you at work?”Daria signs to me.
There’s no good answer to that question, so I shrug.
Her eyes move to my outfit as realization dawns.“You didn’t shower because something spilled on you.”
Don’t I wish that was what happened. I shake my head.
“How long?”Her hands move sharply instead of fluidly, like they usually do.“Are you bleeding?”
“No, I stopped before that.” Barely.
She drops her bag and runs over to the couch next to me, careful not to touch any part of my body.“I’m calling your therapist. You can’t let whatever happened derail the progress you’ve made.”
“I have an appointment tomorrow.” Though I should have talked to her today before I hurt myself. This will heal without any scars, but the scars inside…those can’t be wiped away with a pumice stone or loofah.
“Do you want to talk about it? I can message Knight and tell him not to bring lunch. That something came up.”She reaches for the phone she always keeps on her in case she’s with someone who can’t understand ASL.
“No. No.” She shouldn’t ruin her day, too. “I’m going to have to talk to Maddox in a little while.” I’m actually a little surprised that I haven’t heard from Maddox yet. Maybe Jacko heard enough of the conversation that he won’t need to talk to me.
Yeah, right. Maddox has an obsession with knowing every single detail so he can plan his next step. Instead of going into covert ops for Ethan, Maddox should have just joined the military. He’d probably be a general by now, moving armies around like they’re chess pieces.
I’ve spent enough time worrying about myself. “What kind of trouble did you and Knight get into?” Their friendship is something special. They’ve been friends since he was a teenager and she was a little girl. Was Daria ever a little girl? They stole her childhood. And even though we escaped, I never found a way to give her back the innocent joy children have.
“We were supposed to spend the day writing in this little library he found that’s full of old books. But his office called about an artist who finally agreed to meet with him.”
“And you went with him?” Why am I not surprised? He treats her like his kid sister. They bonded over the love of words and grow closer every day.
She nods.“It was fun. The art was weird.”
