Page 55 of Battle Scars

I open my mouth to respond, but then Hugo rounds the corner, and I have to brace. He jumps up and hits me dead-center in the chest, and as much as I tried to ready myself for a large dog who loves me just a little too much, there’s no way I was ever going to be prepared for just how hard his enthusiasm hits me. We both go down to the ground and I land on my back in the middle of the rug with a ninety-pound dog on top of me, licking my face while I laugh until I cry.

“They really are ridiculous,” Mom says from somewhere in the room. “These two. They love each other so much.”

“This is the notorious Hugo, I take it?” Gabe asks.

“Of course.”

Gabe lets out a shrill whistle, and Hugo leaves my person. Gabe holds out a hand to me, and I take it so that he can pull me to my feet.

“If you love dogs so much, then why don’t you have one?” he asks me.

“I’m never home,” I reply with a shrug.

“You seem home a lot to me,” he murmurs, and I roll my eyes.

“I’m still training,” I answer. “And psychotic murderers and all that.”

He doesn’t respond, just gives a tilt of his chin as we walk through the sliding glass door to the patio.

“I should do a perimeter check,” he says, clearly trying to put a little distance between us. “That is if it’s all right with you.”

“Of course,” Mom says. “But do come back and join us for lunch when you’re done.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and then he’s gone and I can finally take a deep breath again.

We fix our plates and my love of her cooking, combined with the fact that I’m a stress eater, has my plate heaping. We sit down at the rustic iron-and-glass table on the wooden deck overlooking the beach below the hillside and eat in happy silence.

“Do you know what you’re doing with this boy?”

Leave it to my mom to call a man like Gabe a boy. I look at her and see she’s watching me closely. I should have known there was nothing I could keep from her. Our relationship has evolved over the years from mother and daughter to friends. She’s the best mom. I know that seems odd, a famous model actually being the perfect parent—not Stepford perfect, but just a great mother.

If ever there was a person who was nurturing and loving and a natural mother at their very soul level, it’s her. She cleaned my skinned knees and wiped my tears, tucked me in every night with a story and a kiss on my forehead.

But as I got older, our relationship changed. We became even closer, if that could be believed. She held me when I cried over my first broken heart, and then the next. She celebrated my first win on the professional circuit, and every win—every loss too—that came after. But most of all, she understands that while I may look just like her, my personality is so much like my dad, and she loves and encourages that too. We are different people all the way down to our toes, and she has never once tried to force me to be someone I am not.

Even though they divorced when I was very young, my parents have done their best to become friends and stay that way while they were raising me. And always, always, they loved me and let me know it. I might be the spoiled brat that Gabe likes to call me so often—even Bobby threw it in my face—but I’m not rotten. I just had parents who loved me, encouraged me, and wanted to see me succeed. That’s all.

They never did the work for me. They praised me, yes, but they never helped me cheat or awarded me something I did not deserve.

I think that’s why Bobby’s words from last night felt like they sank deep into my flesh and hooked my bones with their barbed intentions. He wanted to shake me up, put me off my game, and while it infuriated me, it also held a kernel of truth, because my dad would not hand me the family legacy if he felt like I didn’t deserve it. And there’s a small part of me that will always feel like I don’t deserve it, that I’m not actually good enough.

“Adrienne,” Mom calls softly to get my attention.

I must have trailed off into my thoughts. “Yes?”

“You were a million miles away,” she says gently.

“I'm sorry.”

“Is everything all right?” she asks.

I don’t even try to prevaricate when I answer her.

“No, Mom. It’s all a mess.”

My mom takes all my plans to avoid talks of Gabe—all the mistakes we’re making with each other left and right—and she throws it all right out the window.

She repeats her earlier question. “Do you know what you’re doing with this boy?”