“She passed away in her sleep,” she explained. “The nurse found her during morning rounds.”
“Oh.” The single word was the only thing I could come up with. It was stupid, but it was all my mind could grasp at.
She kept talking—something about arrangements and paperwork, things that were the logical next steps. Things that had me agreeing to an appointment my mind couldn’t process while everything blurred together. My grip tightened on the phone as I stared at nothing, the world fading around the edges.
My mother was dead.
The thought didn’t sit right.
It didn’t feel real. It couldn’t be real, right?
And yet, I waited for… something. Grief. Anger. Sadness. Something to make it feel real. To make it make sense. But there was nothing.
All I got was quiet… a strange, empty quiet that filled all the spaces where my feelings should’ve been.
My mother was dead.Just gone. Just like that.
No conversation.
No resolution or closure.
No final words to tie everything up neatly.
I’d spent so long untangling all my feelings over everything my mother had done to me—spent so much time learning to rebuild after everything she’d put me through—and now she was just gone.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with that.
“I am so sorry for your loss, Mr. Lowell,” Margaret said quietly before the call ended. I lowered the phone slowly, and the silence in the room was all-consuming.
My mother was dead.
And I was left here trying to make sense of it.
CHAPTER 117
maverick
Iwas fairly certain Aria had fallen asleep with her ear pressed over my heart. There was something endearing about it. Like she found comfort in the sound. Granted, she could’ve just been that tired, but I was pretending it had nothing to do with that and everything to do with her feeling safe with me.And maybe that was just because I needed to feel useful after it all.
I kept one arm slung around her while I quietly flipped between texting Roxy and my work schedule. She was quick totake all my appointments off the schedule, delegating what she could and rescheduling what she couldn’t. I thanked her half a dozen times, she sent me pictures of Duke hanging out at the office, and I couldn’t be more grateful for her.
I also found out that apparently, I was the last one in the office to know that Nyla was a lesbian and that Nyla was taking Holly on a date. I blamed that on being her boss, but it didn’t make me any less salty about it.
We were mid-gossiping when Harley strode out of the kitchen without a word. I frowned as I stared at him. There was something… severe and unraveling in his expression.Like he was doing his best not to fall apart.Whatever that phone call was, it hadn’t gone well.
“Harley?” I called after him softly, doing my best not to disturb Aria. He didn’t reply. Instead, he grabbed his jacket off the back of the couch and walked right out of the house.What the hell?
I tried texting him, but he didn’t reply. I wasn’t even sure if he had his phone on him.
My body buzzed anxiously while I stared at the closed door. Harley wasn’t the kind of person to just storm out of a house—not without a word, not without checking on Aria. Those were red flags that worried me.
I waited ten minutes. Ten agonizing minutes. It was all I could do before I was very gently transferring Aria onto a pile of blankets. I made sure her creepy stuffed animals were tucked in around her and waited an extra minute to make sure she didn’t wake. When I was positive I was in the clear, I grabbed my coat and went outside, leaving the door cracked so we could hear her.
Harley sat on the porch with his head down, fingers threaded through his hair. I settled down next to him with enough distance to not be overbearing.
“Who was on the phone?” I asked quietly.
“My mother died,” Harley whispered, his voice hollow. The statement gave me pause. I wasn’t sure how to respond. Did I apologize? I knew his relationship with his mother was complicated—it always had been. It was something we didn’t talk about, and I respected that. I knew he had things to work through.
