“Yes, that’s right, go ahead and defendhim,” her mother said nastily. “Makemethe villain. You’ll only end up on your ass just like I did. A stupid little whore, just like your whore mother—that’s what you always thought of me, wasn’t it? Oh, how Iembarrassedyou in front of your little friends. But a smart whore gets paid, Justine. That’s the difference between you and me.”
Jay was suddenly, incandescently angry. “How dare you. Helovesme. He loves me and he offered me everything—the whole ten million—all of it. He cut me a check and put it right in myhand. He even—” a shaky laugh escaped her “—god, he even said I could give it toyou.”
There was a charged pause. “What?”
“I told him no, obviously.” Jay rubbed at one of her eyes. “I tore it up and told him I didn’t want it and that I didn’t want you to have it, either, and do you know what, Mom? I amso gladthat I did. I’m not going to be bought and sold like a fucking piece of jewelry.”
“You tore up thecheck?”
“Did you ever love me? Or was I just another stepping stone on your quest for a better life? Never mind,” she said abruptly. “Don’t answer that. I think I already know.”
“Justine—”
“Have the life you deserve, Mother. I won’t be in it. Screw you.”
She hung up on her mother, tears running down her face. She swiped them away, fruitlessly, as more rushed in to take their place.
“Shit,” she said, in a small, broken voice. “So that’s it then.”
As terrible as Damon had been, she had always been able to hold onto the hope that maybe her mother hadn’t really known what he was like. Her mother was selfish and vain, but she was also desperate, and her lifehadbeen hard. Both of their lives had been hard.
And after all those years of watching her mother cultivate an air of girlish innocence that she’d never really had, Jay had told herself that it wasdesperationthat caused her to want to hold onto a cruel and distant man. Desperation that made her turn away when everything come to a head, and Jay had found herself in her stepfather’s crosshairs.
Not hatred.
Notresentment.
Nausea rose in her throat, bitter and hot, as that memory of blood and darkness and cheap holiday glitter slammed into her like a wrecking ball. All this time, she had seen Nicholas as the fox in the henhouse, the surprise traitor. But apparently her mother had been picking feathers out of her teeth for years.
What did it say about her now that her first instinct was to turn tohim? Despite everything, the soothing sound of his low voice in her ear had lulled her back to sleep from the very nightmares he’d helped cause, and she had never felt as safe as she did when she was in his arms.
(I wish it had always been like this between us)
I do, too, she thought desperately.God help me, I do.
Even if it wasn’t good for her, he was the only thing she’d ever had that was just hers.
Jay picked up her phone again, swiping away the text her mother had already left, not wanting to see the words before they could burn themselves into her brain.
I talked to Mom. She typed before she could think better of it. With her eyes blurry with tears, it was easy to ignore what she had sent him before.She knew, Nick. She KNEW this whole time.
Jay stared ahead unseeingly at her wall.
You were right about her. You were right about everything.
She closed her eyes briefly, before swiping at them again with the back of her wrist.
I don’t know what to do.
She set her phone down and that was when she noticed the wine. With a curse—that’s coming out of your deposit, Jay—shepicked up the bottle and swallowed down what was left, before tossing a wad of paper towels on top of the spill to absorb the worst of the stain.
Her phone didn’t light up. After a while, she stopped expecting it to.
Instead, she crawled into her bed and she cried herself to sleep.
???????
“How was the sensitivity training?”
