Chasing her into a small room crowded with dust cloth-draped couches, I watch as she falls onto one of them and curls into a ball. The room is lit only by a window at one end. I follow her to the couch, watching as she buries her head and stifles another sob.
Royal life prepared me for so many things, but this is just not one of them. I sit down on the couch as gingerly as I can, reaching out a hand to touch her shoulder. She shudders under my touch but doesn’t look at me.
“Margot,” I say, feeling helpless. “What’s going on?”
She inhales a shaky breath and then turns her head toward me. I frown as I take in her red-rimmed eyes and the tears on her cheeks. She studies me, sucking her pink lower lip between the whiteness of her teeth.
God, that look of hers skewers me, sears me right through.
“Skatter,” I murmur, reaching out to cup her tear stained face. “Talk to me.”
She sits up, wiping at her face. When she responds, her voice is watery and tight. “I wasn’t supposed to cry in front of you. That is definitely not how I saw the weekend going.”
I shrug lightly. “A month ago, I didn’t plan to be here with you at all. Things change.”
Margot bites her lip, looking at me carefully. “Back there, in the kitchen? The way that you talked about my mom and my time in the foster system. You were just so casual about something that you have no way of knowing anything about. And that… thathurt.”
My brows rise. For a moment, I am genuinely without words. I made her cry? Her tears were my doing?
How do I even respond to that? I’m so out of my depthhere and drowning quickly. She frowns a bit as she watches me.
“I… I’m sorry,” I say, looking at her earnestly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She nods and looks down to her lap, wiping her cheeks again. “I know,” she mumbles.
I move closer to her, putting my arm around her. It feels a little awkward but I do it anyway. Cupping her jaw, I tilt her face up to look at me. Then I sweep my thumb across her cheek, collecting the remnants of moisture I find there.
“I really am sorry,” I say, my eyes darting back and forth as I try to read her face. “You always mention it so casually. I just thought… I mean… I never realized that you were sensitive about your mother.”
She gives me a watery smile. “It probably doesn’t help that I just got off the phone with her. She had the usual horrible things to say.”
“Like what?”
Her cheeks stain pink. “She’s been talking to several reporters about me. More like baiting them, it sounds like. She hasn’t decided which reporter she wants to spill my life story to…” Her mouth twists bitterly. “Which means, I assume, that no one has said that they will pay her as much as she thinks she deserves.” She wrinkles her nose. “My mom has always been that way.”
“She’s going to sell your story to some paparazzo?” I ask, baffled. “Why on earth would she do that?”
Margot sighs, shaking her head. “According to her, I still owe her big time. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant with me, she says she would’ve quote ‘been a real beauty’. Having me ruined her body I guess.”
I squint. “What? You didn’t choose to be born. How could any of that be your fault?”
She shrugs a shoulder. “That’s only the beginning of what mom says I owe her. My mom has a running tally of my debts that goes all the way back to when she had to buy me diapers and pacifiers.” She bites her lower lip for a second. “Don’t even get her started about how I drained her resources anytime that I lived with her. Funny, because any time I was in foster care, she railed and ranted about how the government shouldn’t interfere in our lives.”
I glance away, struggling to keep a lid on my temper. “Your mother sounds…” I trail off, searching for the right word. I don’t want to upset Margot, but it’s clear that her mother has some mental issues that predate Margot’s birth.
She sniffs, breaking my hold. Putting a few inches between us, she looks down at her hands. “Go ahead. You know you want to say it.”
Her voice is distant. I think I almost made a very bad misstep, twice in a row.
“She sounds hard to deal with,” I finish, touching Margot’s knee. “It sounds like you had a lot of stuff piled on top of being… financially unstable. That’s what I am hearing you say.”
She looks up at me, sucking in a shaky breath. “Yeah. That’s just the very surface of it, honestly. The tip of the iceberg.”
Standing, I pull her to her feet. She comes naturally into the shelter of my arms, looking up into my face. I don’t have the words to describe how it feels, just holding her like this. “I want you to tell me more. You say I don’t know about it. So I want you to tell me. But… not in here. This room is weird and creepy.”
Margot pushes up on her tiptoes and cups my jaw, then kisses me lightly on the lips. My heart thuds painfully against my ribs; I’m relieved at the fact that I finally did something right, but it’s more than that.
Her scent is in my nose. Her warmth seems to invade me, my whole being. My fingers curl around her waist, digging into her skin. What is this feeling?
