I hoped Caspian’s presence didn’t bring up all kinds of trauma for him. I’d always liked the guy, but that was because he wasn’t anything like other vampires. They were all constantly trying to fit a little niche that society said vampires fit into. Weird and goth and mysterious and all those stereotypical “vampire” things.
Caspian? He was the opposite of all that. His personality was pure sunshine, and he was almost always smiling. He didn’t go in for mystery or try to seem aloof and cool. He was just Caspian. It was, no doubt, why he’d been friends with my mother for longer than most vampires had been alive.
Mother made calls all through dinner, making security preparations for the airport and the drive and the house, calling in trusted friends to stay over.
Not once, in the entire affair, did she so much as glance at me.
I was no longer necessary.
The moment he finished eating, she asked Davin to go retrieve Doc from his house, even though Twist and I were still working our way through the food. He, at least, paused and looked at me, but I waved him off.
Still, he hesitated a moment. Then he leaned in and kissed my cheek. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t...don’t worry.”
When I turned to look at him, his dark eyes felt like they were boring into my soul. Did he know?
Mother certainly didn’t.
I looked away and nodded, but I wasn’t sure how to respond.
How to ask, without asking, if he meant that I felt fucking useless. Dismissed, like I was a child, and not a man reaching his mid-thirties, who was realizing that maybe his mother thought he was entirely useless.
She didn’t mean to be insulting. Probably hadn’t even thought about me or what I might do.
I was Flynn, after all.
Flynn with no real career, whom she’d had to prod into every semblance of adulthood I’d ever reached.
Why should I have expected her to do anything other than take charge? Hell, wasn’t that what I’d wanted?
Davin had only just left, and I found that I was no longer hungry. So I stuffed a dinner roll into my pocket and left Twist to her food, and my mother to her phone calls, and went for a walk.
The east side of the house was a rose garden; had been since my childhood. It was beautiful, and I thought mother had some varieties of flowers that were ridiculously rare and expensive. Not that I’d ever put much thought into flowers, but there were roses in almost every shade of the rainbow, from softest pale periwinkle with nearly lavender tips, to dark plum, to a mottled black and pink that had always looked like someone accidentally dropped them in a puddle of ink to me.
Still, in this moment, even in the dark of the middle of the night, it was reassuring. Comforting. Because of my mother, of course. Because she took care of everything, even though I was a useless manchild.
I pulled myself up onto the edge of a wrought iron table and stared out at the bushes, wondering why it bothered me now.
I’d spent years letting her drag me along, kicking and screaming.
Why did it matter to me now?
“Peanut for your thoughts,” a familiar voice said, and for some reason, something in me settled as I turned to look at my raven friend.
“Hey asshole.”
CHAPTER 14
“Douchebag,” she answered back, flitting over to a chair next to the table I was sitting on. “You look like you’ve got the whole world on your shoulders.”
I sighed, reaching up to scrub my palms down my face. “That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Being stressed?”
I groaned and leaned back, throwing my hands behind me to brace my body and staring up at the night sky. There was a flutter of feathers, and I knew she’d moved again, to settle next to me. “No. Yes. I mean...I never do anything. I’m over thirty, and I’ve let my mother drag me through life. She gave me everything I have. Pushed me to do everything I’ve done. Without her I wouldn’t have a business. Friends. Davin.”
“That’s what mothers are for,” she answered, so fast I was sure she’d had that answer waiting for just such a question. “Anyone who says otherwise isn’t a mother. Or if they are, they’re not a very good one.”
I’d learned the constellations, once, as a kid. Even now, twenty years after that summer when I’d gotten obsessed and read a dozen books, I could pick them out, staring up at the nightsky. It was nice that Mother’s house was far enough from the city to be able to see them at all.
