“I told her the truth!” Amelia cut him off without even turning to face him.
Callum scoffed. “What truth?”
“That you made your bed. That you left a good woman with a mess of trauma and scars, and now you think you can come waltzing back into her life like it’s your God given fucking right to do so.”
Callum stopped pacing and threw up his hands. “I just want to make things right.”
Amelia turned and trained her eyes on her son. “The world doesn’t work that way, Callum. You don’t get to break her heartand then expect some kind of redemption because it suits you. Jo has moved on.”
He scoffed. “With you, by any chance?”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, come on. We all know what you’re like. You’ll sleep with anything if it fucking moves!”
Amelia pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to count through the sheer fury she felt at her son’s attitude towards her. He’d been like this for a long time now, often allowing his anger to overtake him whenever he felt like it.
“You make out like you’ve got your shit together and you’d do anything for anyone, but really…you only care about yourself. You’ve always been that way. It’s no wonder Dad behaved the way he did!”
Oh, that hit Amelia harder than anything else she’d ever been through. Those moments when she cowered in the corner flashed before her eyes…and then came the absolute heartbreak. She hadn’t just lost Jo, she was losing Callum, too. She stepped closer and looked him in the eye. “You may think that it was acceptable for your father to beat me to within an inch of my fucking life, but don’t you dare accuse me of being to blame for it.”
“Mum, I—” Callum clasped his hands behind his neck, his eyes wide. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I-I didn’t mean that.”
Amelia stepped closer, fury rising like heat through her chest. “You cheated. You lied. And now that your shiny new romance has worn off, you want to come crawling back? You’re more like your father than I thought. I’d say Jo had a lucky escape.”
Callum flinched. “That’s low.”
“Is it? Or is it finally the truth you’ve spent your life avoiding?” Amelia’s voice cracked, but she didn’t stop. “You think you can do what you want without consequence, thatwomen will always wait around for you to get your act together. But Jo’s not going to wait, Callum. And sheshouldn’t.”
“I just?—”
Amelia held up a hand. She was done with this. She was done withhim. “I think you should find somewhere else to stay. I don’t want to look at you anymore.”
Callum frowned. “Y-you don’t mean that.”
“You know what, Callum? I actually do.” Amelia stood close to the kitchen door, a habit she’d adopted a long time ago when a man raised his voice to her. “I barely survived what he did to me, I spent months in hospital going through rehab, and you think you have the right to say what he did was okay? That he was justified in his behaviour because he filled your head with shit and accused me of having an affair.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t going to cut it. I lay in a hospital bed unable to open one eye because it was so swollen, and barely managing to open the other…continuing to work so I could provide foryou. So I could make sureyouhad everything you needed, knowing he’d been arrested and the one person you looked up to had been taken away.Ifelt guilty for that.Ifelt as though I’d broken your world.” Amelia wiped tears from her face as she looked back at her son. “But the truth was…he’d repeatedly tried to kick me,your mother, to fucking death.”
Silence.
And then her phone buzzed on the counter behind her.
She tore her gaze away from Callum and snatched it up before he could see it, her chest tightening as she saw the name flash across the screen.
God, it was Jo.
I need to see you tonight. Please. I’ll do anything to see you tonight.
Her breath caught in her throat.
“What?” Callum asked, peering over her shoulder.
Amelia’s hands shook slightly as she read the message again just to make sure she hadn’t imagined it. But Jo’s message was there, clear as day. Amelia didn’t reply. She didn’t even think. Instead, she walked to the front door, snatched up her car keys from the hook, and pulled on her coat with trembling fingers.
“Mum?”
