Another beat.
“And if he comes back, you make him come correct.”
The room goes very still.
Fire.
Rain.
Drew’s hand on my back.
My mother breathing softly on the line, having just handed me the kind of pep talk women like her use to survive men like him.
And me—lying there in the arms of one man while trying to decide whether to keep fighting for another.
It should make me feel monstrous.
Instead I just feel tired.
So tired.
But somewhere under all that tiredness, under the heartbreak and humiliation and the hollow ache in my chest, a tiny ember stirs.
Not healing.
Not even peace.
Something worse.
Resolve.
I whisper, “Okay.”
My mother hears everything in that one word.
Of course she does.
“That’s my girl,” she says softly now. “Now drink some water, stop crying yourself sick, and don’t make me get on a plane.”
That startles a real laugh out of me.
“Goodnight, Mama.”
“Goodnight, sweetheart.”
The line clicks dead.
For a second I just sit there staring at the phone in my hand.
The line goes dead.
For a second, I just stare at the phone in my hand.
Rain keeps striking the windows in silver streaks. The fire breathes and shifts in the hearth, throwing warm light over the stone floor, the blanket around us, Drew’s big hand still spread between my shoulder blades like he’s afraid the second he moves it I’ll come apart again.
My mother’s words are still inside me.
He didn’t choose her.
