“Yeah, he is, but—”
“He’s yours.”
I shut my mouth.
Mom didn’t.
“Standing outside in the cold, waiting for word about you,putting you in his place so he knows you’re safe, he’s yours like Beck neverwas, like that other one never was.He’s yours.He’s yours to break or he’syours to hold safe.”
“Chaos men are unbreakable,” I informed her.
“If your father lived to see his daughter in that hospitalbed like I saw her, he’d have shattered,” she retorted.
And that’s when the tears started to sting my eyes.
“Men are breakable, Rosalie,” she said in her calm, serenevoice.“They just hide the cracks better than we women do.”
“I thought he was going to kill me,” I whispered.
She stood solid and held my gaze, hers suddenly bright likemine was, filled with wet, knowing I was now talking about Beck.
“He’d kissed that neck he’d nearly squeezed the life from somany times, I couldn’t count them,” I told her.
My mom stood there and kept hold of me, warm and safe, usingnothing but her gaze.
“Do you think I want to jump into another situation withanother biker?”I asked.
“Your father was a biker,” she reminded me.
“My father was one of a kind,” I reminded her.
“He died and you went searching,” she stated.
This, I couldn’t handle.I knew it.I understood it.I wascoming to terms with the mistakes I’d made.
But hearing it come from my mother’s lips, I couldn’t dealwith it.
So I looked out the window at our dead winter lawn, ourempty driveway, the curb bare.
“You found that Chaos boy, the first one, as a replacement,”she said, careful, gentle, sweet.
I swallowed.
She was right.
Dad had died.
I’d been lost.
Then I found Shy.
“He wouldn’t keep you, you went reeling,” she kept on.
I saw nothing but clear, hot waves rippling before my eyes.
“Then you latched on to the next thing that reminded you ofwhat you lost,” she said.
I’d done that for sure.
