Page 3

Mother dearest had other ideas. The covers were yanked off me, and bright sunlight flooded in once more. “Nope. You ain’t moping. That’s not what we do.”
I glared at her. “It’s not? How many times did I pick you up off the bathroom floor after you wrote yourself off because some jackass dumped you?”
My anger bounced right off her, and she booped me on the nose. “Rich jackass, Bel. They were always rich. And I wasn’t crying over them. I was crying because I missed their Porsches.”
It wasn’t true. She thought I’d been too young to truly remember the assholes she’d dated when I was a teen. The men who’d used her for her pretty face and tiny, perfect body. The men who’d promised her a better life, then reneged on the deal when they found out she had a daughter. The ones who’d left her as beaten and broken and violated as I was now.
My face and the things those men had done to me were nothing new to Miranda. She’d seen it all before, in her own reflection. She knew it was just the way of the world for women like us.
“Anyway.” She bounced on the edge of the bed. “You haven’t been answering your phone, so I decided to just come tell you my big news in person.”
I sat up and pulled a pillow over my lap. “Big news, huh? Did your doctor run out of Botox?”
“No, but clearly yours did. Seriously, Belly, you’re getting crow’s feet.”
She poked at the corners of my eyes, which hadn’t had any wrinkles last time I’d checked, but I was about to turn thirty, and after the last few days, it wouldn’t have surprised me if I’d developed a few.
I batted her hand away. “Just tell me.”
As much as my mother and I picked at each other, it was our love language. At only thirteen years apart, we’d always been more like sisters than mother and daughter. Miranda wasn’t truly capable of being anyone’s parent. She’d kept me alive, but once I’d turned six, I’d had to fend for myself. It hadn’t dulled my love for her any though. She was a hot mess, but she was my hot mess.
Her face smiling out at me from that photo this morning was the only reason I was still here.
She clutched my fingers in her hand, stabbing me with her nails in her excitement. “I’m getting married! Eeeep!”
I squinted at her, wondering if she was still drunk from the night before, though she didn’t look it. “Married?”
“Married! Me! An honorable woman!”
I laughed at the thought of my mother, who had a penchant for drunk dancing on tables and flashing the room her panties, as an honorable woman.
She didn’t laugh with me.
I sobered quickly. “Oh, shit. You’re serious?”
She shoved me in the arm. “Of course I am.”
“You don’t even have a boyfriend!”
She tutted at me in disapproval. “Well, not anymore. He’s my fiancé now.” She held up her hand to flash a rock the size of Texas at me.
I grabbed her arm. “Get the fuck out. What is that? It’s fake, right?”
She gasped in outrage. “Hush your mouth!” Then she grinned at me. “It’s totally legit. I had it checked!”
I let go of her hand and sat back against the headboard. “Who is he?”
Her excitement disappeared and was replaced with a calm matureness I didn’t often see on my mother’s face. “His name is Bart Weston. We’ve been dating for months. He’s tall and handsome and the literal sweetest man on earth.”
“And rich?” Because they always were with her.
Which always made me wary of them and maybe why my mother hadn’t mentioned him to me. She knew my feelings on men with money. I’d seen too much of their ugly. As a result, I’d always kept my own interests to this side of the Saint View-Providence border.
She laughed. “So freaking rich, Belly. You should see his house! It has wings!”
“So do bats, but that doesn’t make me want to get into bed with them.”
She shushed me, her expression sobering as she picked up my phone, unlocked it, and aimlessly scrolled through. “He’s a good one, Bel. I promise. You’ll like him.”