Jay cleaned her apartment furiously but no matter how many dishes she wrapped up or clothes she folded, she remembered the photo she had sent Nicholas and his response. Or rather, hisresponses. He’d called her twice. One had been a video call. It hadn’t even been six yet, so he would have still been at work. Possibly even at his desk.
Heat crawled up her face at the thought.
Especially when, this morning, there had been yet another message.
Don’t think this is over.
God, what had he been thinking, opening that at work? What if someone had seen it? No matter if the mental image of his control splintering in public made her breath come up short—it was hisjob. Not that she was blameless. She had been so fucking stupid, sending that to him, of all people.
Do you want him to blackmail you again, Jay?
She leaned back against a box of things she had wrapped up from her sleeping area. She had been about to tackle her books and some of her smaller knickknacks, but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking and her current predicament wasn’t helping. Thinking about the past had rekindled her conflicting feelings for Nicholas and the alcohol had only added fuel to that fire.
For years, she had lived under the threat of his blackmail, never quite knowing if he would follow up on his threat, and now she’d justhandedhim the means to control her again.
It’s the excuse you wanted, isn’t it? To come back and never be able to leave.
No matter how hard or how fast she ran from the past, it always caught up to her. It was the monster chasing her in her nightmares, but it wore a seducer’s face.
Fate really was an ouroboros. Even her mother was back to her old games. It wasn’t enough to have the last word, she needed to hound her, lay down the guilt card. Remind her that it had beenweekssince they’d talked—like they had weekly fireside chats over cocoa, instead of continual demands to exploit her stepbrother for money.
Jay had scrolled through her mother’s texts with a sinking heart, even the ones she hadn’t let herself look at. They were worse than she thought. With every word she read, she could feel pieces of herself flaking away.
You took me by the hand and led me to my own ruin, Jay wanted to tell her, in addition to so many other things.You told me I would be safe.
The fastest way to put out her mother’s rages was to starve them of oxygen. But her mother was tenacious. She could wear away at you like sandpaper until your resistance was raw and bloody. No, Danielle Beaucroft had clawed her way out of the mid-tier strip club she’d worked at for far longer than she should have, and married a man who had draped her in diamonds and designer clothes. Nothing, for her, would ever be enough.
All those years she had defended her mother’s choices, but now she just felt like a fool. She had let herself be demeaned and used, and hadn’t even noticed until Nicholas himself had pointed it out. Which was a big fucking irony, since he had demeaned and used her, too.
She’d just half-convinced herself that she liked it when he did.
And now, thanks to her, he could do it all over again.
There was still no food in the apartment and she didn’t really feel like shopping. Cooking had been her go-to means of self-comfort, the smells of caramelizing food and spices giving her a nostalgia for a homelife she’d never had, but Jay didn’t feel like standing over a stove, either. When she got hungry enough, she bought herself some red curry from a food truck parked down the street, but she felt the invisible tug of her mother’s impatient words with every step.
You aren’t walking away from this, Jay.
Desperately trying not to think about Nickorher mother, Jay boxed up half the living area, using some of her old sheet sets and throw pillows to cushion the rocks from her collection so they wouldn’t break or shatter during transit. But when she came back from the bathroom to find yet another missed call from her mother, something inside her snapped.
Because she had never gotten to walk away, had she? Only her mother had.
Arming herself with the reminder of the wine from last night, Jay took a long swig right from the bottle as she sat down in the blue chair and dialed her mother’s phone number.
“Justine? Is that you?” her mother’s voice was distant, like she had the phone on speaker. “It’s about time you called. I was beginning to think I didn’t have a daughter anymore.”
“Are you driving?”
There was a pause. “No.”
Jay combed a hand through her hair with a sigh. Faced with the prospect of a confrontation, she could feel her courage rapidly deserting her. She was pretty sure her mother was lying but she needed to choose her battles carefully and that wasn’t what she wanted to fight about.
“Why do you keep calling me?” she asked at last. “What doyou want?”
“I didn’t think you cared. It’s been weeks. I was starting to worry.”
“About me?” Jay asked, as she kicked her legs over the arm of the chair and stared, upside-down, at the entryway to her apartment. “Or the money you keep asking me for?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, baby. You’re my daughter.”
