“Or what?” His Adam’s Apple bobs beneath my skin. It isn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be.
“Or I’ll make sure that you never set eyes on her again.”
His mouth twitches at the corners. “Confident of that, are you?” There’s no cowardice in his tone; it almost sounds as if he is taunting me.
A low growl erupts from somewhere deep inside. “Try me and see what happens.”
I stand up and back away. My chest is heaving, but the adrenaline is already starting to crash, and through it, I understand that I’ve achieved nothing by coming here.
His expression is still smug. He cricks his neck from side to side and touches the back of his head. His fingers come away bloody.
“Bring it on,” he says, panting. “You forget that I know Remy, and you’re not her type.”
I stumble outside the gym and along the sidewalk, avoiding the receptionist and the group of Lycra-clad visitors waiting to get back inside.
Fuck.
I walked straight into that one like the mouse who thought he was better than the cat. George Quinn didn’t fight back because it suited his agenda to play the victim. But more importantly, I barged in there wearing my heart on my sleeve, and now George and Isabella have found the crack they were looking for.
10
REMY
“Remy? What is it, baby?”My mom pulls me into a hug when she opens the front door, and I sob onto her shoulder.
I’ve been emotional for weeks now, but those tears fade in comparison to the tidal wave that crashes through me when I see my mom.
She holds me tightly without speaking and waits for it to subside. When she finally holds me at arm’s length, her eyes narrow. She is my mom. She knows me better than anyone else, and maybe that’s what I need right now. Someone to produce a Band-Aid for my heart and make it all better.
“Okay,” she says, “let’s go through to the kitchen and talk about it.”
She closes the front door and guides me across the foyer with an arm around my shoulders. I feel like a little girl again, upset because I fell off my bike and scraped my knees. Only this will take more than an antiseptic wipe to fix.
Pedro is sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open. He’s a writer. It’s pretty much all I know about him—my mom hasbecome quite secretive about her new man as if she’s afraid to jinx the relationship by revealing too much—but I didn’t truly believe that he wrote books. I thought it was a creative metaphor for between jobs.
Seems I’ve been wrong about a lot of stuff lately.
He stands up when he sees me, offers me a hand to shake, and then thinks better of it. His brown eyes search my mom’s for a clue as to what he should be doing right now.
“Remy, this is Pedro. Pedro, this is my daughter, Remy.”
“Hello.” I smile and sniff at the same time, and Mom pulls out a seat for me.
“I’ll make coffee.” She switches on the coffee machine and leans against the counter. “Or do you need something stronger?”
“No.” I cover my face with both hands and try to swallow the lump of humiliation in my throat.
I can’t drink anything stronger because I’m pregnant, my babies have two fathers, and neither of them wants to be in our lives because they’re too busy running casinos and adding more zeroes to their bank accounts.
“I’ll make coffee, you sit down, Annie.” Pedro’s gentle voice wriggles inside my bubble of self-pity.
I lower my hands to watch him hug my mom from behind and nuzzle her neck. My mom kisses his cheek, and my chest swells with love for her. She’s happy. I didn’t want my parents to get divorced, but seeing her like this, I understand that she deserves happiness after everything she went through with my sister, and she has found it with Pedro.
Mom pulls out a seat and sits in front of me, our knees touching. She takes my hand and peers right through to my soul in that way that only a mom can. With her other hand, she tucks my hair behind my ear.
“Who is he?” she asks.
I almost choke on a semi-hysterical giggle while Pedro discreetly watches the coffee machine bubbling away on the counter. “Is it that obvious?”
