Page 94 of What's in a Kiss?

But I know even as I ask that losing my mother isn’t a deal I can accept. That isn’t on the table, because losing my mother would be losing my soul. The High Life has shown me what’s possible in love. It’s given me compassion for Jake at eighteen, when I let him hurt me. If I go home now and lose this Jake, I’ll have learned how not to hate him. And I’ll have learned how to love someone someday as completely as I’ve been loving him.

“Have you told him?” my mother asks.

“Told him what?”

“If I can hear how much you love him, I’m sure he feels it, too. That kind of love is strong. Don’t sell it short. It can handle all your questions. Let him know what’s on your mind.”

“My biggest fear is that I can’t stay here. With him. Or that I shouldn’t stay, that he’d be better off without me.”

“Those are very different things. Let’s start with the first. Why don’t you think you can stay?”

“I don’t know if it’s up to me.”

“It’s always up to you.”

My eyes sting with tears. I want to believe that. “Thank you.”

“If I may be so bold, Many Eyes,” my mother says. “Are you scared of the relationship moving to the next level before you’re whole enough to handle the level you’re on?”

She knows me, even when she doesn’t know it’s me. “Recently, he’s started talking about what comes next. You know, a family—”

“The big F word.”

“You can’t sayfamilywithout asking, ‘Am I?’ ” Silver says.

“Silver,” my mom says, “please.”

“I want to get it right,” I say, leaning into all I feel. “I had a great mother. She was my hero. We used to laugh like crazy. She showed me it was okay to feel everything. She loved me through all my emotions, and I loved her through hers. She was strong. She was kind. She always seemed to know what to do. You only get one shot to nail it when you have a child.”

“Oh honey, nobody nails it.”

“You did.”

There’s a pause on the line. I can’t take it anymore. My voice cracks and abandons all pretense of Britishness.

“Mom—”

“Olivia?” Confusion rings in her voice.

“Please don’t hang up.”

The line goes dead. Like a fool, I redial. And redial.

Busy.

“Aughhh!” I toss my phone hard at the wall. Then I scramble and dig it out from where it fell under the bed. I open my iHeart Radio app and pull up Lorena’s livestream, but they’ve gone to a THC-infused soda commercial.

“What do I do now?” I ask Gram Parsons as a knock sounds on my door.

It’s sunset and 7:06, which means everyone’s downstairs toasting Aurora with sabered champagne. Did she send one ofher assistants to drag me from the room? If so, they’ll have to break the door down.

“Olivia?” a small voice says.

I stand, retie my robe, and drag myself to the door. Through the peephole I see Fenny. She’s in a bathrobe too, her hair in the same towel twist as mine. She’s holding her phone, lit up with a logo. I squint. It’s my mother’s podcast.

I open the door. She looks at me wide-eyed.

“Are you Lorena Dusk’s daughter?”