A sneer pulls at her mouth. “Oh, get off your high horse. You benefited greatly from everything I did for you. Look around.” She motions to the house around us. “Look at what you have—what I made possible for you.”
“You didn’t do shit!Idid.Igot me here. I didn’t see you sitting next to me at the midnight business classes I took or receive your help with the hours and hours of editing well into the night. It wasn’t you who fostered relationships, or your name and experience that made the deals. The only thing you succeeded at was guilting me into bringing you to L.A. so you could leech off me. And I let you. Why should I expect even a semblance of loyalty from you? It’s not like you’re my mother. Just someone under my employ, right?”
She tries to speak, but I cut her off. “Never once did I ask for the endless brand deals you forced on me when I was overworked and burnt out. All I wanted was to create Jaded and focus on the one thing I enjoyed out of all of this, but you wouldn’t let me. You had to infect that with your poison too, trying to control everything. And now this? How could you do this?”
“You have responsibilities here, Jade, and being over there…being with him, it made you lazy. It got you home. Now, everything can go back to normal.”
“I wasn’t lazy, I was happy! For once in my life, I was happy, and you ruined it. It will never go back to normal. I will never be the same. You—” I choke on my words. “You made me hurt the person I love most in this world. I walked away to protect him from this, and it broke something in me. There is no normal now.” My chest is heaving with pain and heartbreak and rage, and she doesn’t even look remorseful.
Tieran's voice, strong and steady, comes to me like a guardian angel, always looking out for me, even now.She lives in fear of the day you realize she’ll have nothing without you.
That’s exactly what I need to do, what I should have done years ago. “From this moment on, you’re no longer my mother, and you’re no longer my manager. You’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me. Who will manage your career better than me?”
“It’s funny how you don’t need a manager when you don’t have a career to be managed, and you saw to that the second you sold those photos to The Daily Mail.” I turn on my heel and stalk back toward my front door. Hand on the knob, I stop and give her one last look over my shoulder. “I hope you got a good price, because that’s what you’ll be living off from here on out.”
I wrench the door open, not knowing where I’m going to go or what I’m going to do, just that I need to get as far away from this house as possible.
But I don’t get far, because as I step out, a car pulls up to the curb, stopping me short as an impossibly tall figure with dark hair and shoulders I would recognize in the dark exits the car.
I blink once, then twice, not quite believing what I’m seeing before me.
Tieran pulls his bag out of the car and turns, coming to a halt when he sees me outside the front door.
From where I’m standing, it almost looks like he breathes a sigh of relief. His shoulders loosen, his facesoftens, and a small smile curves the corner of his full mouth, making the dimple on his right cheek just barely indent.
My heart beats a million miles a minute as I look upon the face that, from that first night in a dingy pub, made me feel safe and understood for what felt like the first time ever.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, close to convincing myself I’m hallucinating, as if he’s a mirage in the desert.
He shrugs, the muscles in his shoulders flexing under his shirt. “Someone once told me L.A. has really good taco trucks. I thought I’d come see for myself.”
Nothing can keep the smile off my face as I realize he’s recounting the night I told him I preferred the taco trucks to a ten-course meal. Tieran has never not listened to me, never failed to make me feel heard, cherished—loved. I was a prickly person before him but he never cowed away from my thorns, and that understanding—that protection, made me feel safe enough to be soft like petals. It’s a wondrous thing to be with someone whose only expectation of you is love.
And love is the easiest thing to give when it’s stitched into every fiber in my bones.
“Come here, Hellfire. With you smiling like that, I’ll die if I don’t have you in my arms right this second.”
I waste no more time. I’m off like a light, running across the shallow yard and down the driveway, launching myself into his arms. My legs wrap around his waist, my own arms squeezing around his neck so tightly, he might have to tap out soon for his own safety. Tieran nuzzles his face into my neck, breathing me in and letting out a contented groan.
Here. Mine.Everlasting.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe into his neck. “I’m so sorry. I hated the things I said to you that night. I just wanted to protect you. I didn’t want to drag you down to hell with me.”
“Where you go, I go.”
I pull back to look into his lapis-tinted eyes. “Just like that?”
“It’s so simple.Uncomplicated.You are the love of my life. I’ve learned what it’s like to be without you, and I have no interest in that life. I will follow you to the ends of the Earth, Jade. Wherever life takes you, I want it to take me too.”
I release a breath. “God, I love you.” I clutch at my chest with one hand as it expands to near bursting. “You remind me that life can be this wondrous, beautiful thing, and when I look at you, all I see is possibilities. I look at you, and I see the world laid out before us.”
He tightens his arms around my waist, resting his forehead against mine. “When did you get so sappy?”
I pull back enough to swat at his chest, my fist meeting a wall of solid muscle. “Shut u?—”
His mouth is suddenly on mine, effectively shutting me up with lips, teeth, and tongue. At first, it’s fervent, conveying the need coursing through our bodies after what we’ve been through, but it swiftly settles into something sweet and tender. His lips connect softly with mine as everything that’s felt wrong over the past few days suddenly shifts into place, the final piece of the puzzle I've been putting together my entire life.
