Page 15

ALANA

“You took my son to their gym?” I shove my mother’s bedroom door open and find her standing at her window, her eyes on the yard and the twin boys she made damn sure to thrust back into my life. “Are you serious, Beatrice?”

Her fragility is extinguished by the taunting in her eyes, so when she slowly comes around and meets my stare, the sympathy I feel for the woman I know is hurting is gone, to be replaced with renewed anger.

“You had no right!”

“You will call me Mom,” she warns on a low growl. “Or Mother, when you’re feeling contemptuous. You won’t call me Beatrice. Ever.”

“I don’t give a single shit about names right now!” I stride across her room and glare out her window, only to find the Watkins boys exactly where I left them, but their eyes are up here, and her window is open.

Because, of course, they get to listen in on this drama.

Snarling, I grab the window and slam it down until it closes with a crash, then I yank her curtains across, too, to claim even a modicum of privacy.

“You know you’re wrong.” I point in her face and fight every voice screaming in the back of my head that I’ll pay for it. “You know my history with them, Mom! And you knew damn well I wouldn’t approve, which is why you didn’t tell me.”

“It’s a gym.” Unfazed, she wanders to her dresser drawers and peruses her jewelry box for which pieces she’ll wear today.

“Franklin runs from cows that hardly move, is terrified of a rooster older than Noah himself, and trips on his feet at least a dozen times a day. He needs socialization, to meet his peers, an opportunity for structured exercise, and a lesson on how to use the very limbs attached to his body.”

“Mom!”

“He can’t walk more than five feet without falling on his face.

” She chooses a heavy golden bangle and slips it over her hand.

“It’s not like I’m sending him out to the Watkins property, Alana.

That gym is a legitimate establishment. One of its kind, actually, and caters to most of the kids Franklin will meet once the new school year begins.

He’s already at a disadvantage, seeing as he’ll be the only new student there, and this is his final year in elementary school.

Signing him up for the summer will help in more ways than one. ”

“And comes with the added bonus of pissing me off, right?” I throw my hand in the air. “You did this to assert your dominance and annoy me.”

“What was that thing you said to me so recently?” She selects a chunky necklace, busy with dangling crystals, and reaches back to fasten it around her neck.

“Oh. Have you considered that this has nothing to do with you at all?” Her thin lips curl into a devious grin.

“He liked his lesson, even if he would say otherwise, and Eliza Darling runs the kid classes anyway, not Tommy. If you stopped throwing a fit and actually asked a few questions, you could be better informed and less melodramatic on the matter.”

“Melodramatic?” Rage is like a living, vicious dragon breathing flames into my belly.

“It is not melodramatic to not want my son spending time with a man who lacks filters or a cool down button and boasts a giant friggin’ chip on his shoulder and a decade’s worth of rage bottled up that was caused by me . ”

She rolls her eyes. “Your insinuation that he would treat Franklin badly because he’s mad at you is ridiculous.”

“He is Tommy Watkins!” I roar. “And he is pissed. He has every right to be pissed! Worse, he’s had ten years to let his anger marinate. My son is not safe in that man’s company.”

“Ludicrous.” She moves to her makeup case next and selects a fiery red lipstick. “If you thought he was capable of hurting a child, no matter the temper bubbling under the surface, then you would never have given him even a second of your time.”

“You didn’t want me to give him a second of my time!

You were responsible for ninety percent of all the fights he and I ever had because you insisted I leave him in the trash where—your words—he belonged, and I refused to do so.

You couldn’t stand him being in my life, and you made that known every damn day we were together. But now you’re on his side?”

“He’s grown.” She talks around the O she makes with her lips, coloring them a bright red. “He’s matured. And believe it or not, but I’m allowed, and capable, to admit when I’m wrong.”

“No, Mother. You’re not capable, and this isn’t a change of heart, no matter how sneaky you think you’ve been. This is manipulation because you thrive on chaos and get a sick thrill out of watching everyone else scramble around, cleaning up the messes you’ve made.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion.” Infuriatingly calm, she sharpens the lines of red with her pinky nail. “Doesn’t make them right.”

“He is not going back to that gym.” I have nothing to gain by remaining in this room and reverting to my fifteen-year-old self, bickering with my mother and turning my voice hoarse from the effort.

Not when I remind myself I’m a grown woman now, and Franky is, in fact, my child.

My rules, no matter whose house we’re in.

I turn on my heels and swing her door open. “If you take him back there without my permission, we’re leaving. I will put my son in that car so fucking fast, your head will spin. And I assure you, if you undermine my parenting like this a second time, I’ll make sure you never see him again.”

“You’re being overly dramatic,” she drawls. “It’s a gym.”

“And you’re being exactly who you’ve always been.

Underhanded, manipulative, and when called out on it, you stand atop your mountain of self-righteousness and declare yourself the worst treated mother who ever birthed an ungrateful child.

” I stalk through the door and fist the handle, and glancing back, I swallow the ache that bubbles in my throat.

Because we’re revisiting the same bullshit I grew up with, the same old drama and control tactics, but this time, I’m sparring with a sick woman.

“I would have thought, faced with your mortality, you’d learn to embrace the family you have.” I look her up and down. “Your behavior is not okay.”

“You know nothing of my mortality. Nor my intentions.”

“Right. And there’s absolutely no chance you could be wrong.

” Shaking my head, I close the door and start toward my room.

I need a shower. Fresh clothes. A fucking bra— how utterly apt that I faced Tommy Watkins today without one —then I need to go to the bookstore and figure out a game plan for getting that place back into shape.

But when I blow into my room with the rage of a thousand divorced women, I come to a skidding stop and find Franky sitting cross-legged on my bed, his book nestled in his lap, but his eyes on me.

Shit.

“H-how much of that did you hear?” Anger burns in my throat, but I calm my movements, closing the door at my back and wandering across the room until I can lower into a crouch and search his green-eyed gaze. “I got kinda heated, huh?”

“You don’t normally shout like that.” He nibbles on the corner of his lips and studies me through constantly dirty lenses. “You were mean to Tommy and Grandma both on the same day.”

It’s this town! These people! This life, I want to scream.

But I lock those words away and nod instead. “I did. Lost my temper a little bit. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

“I’m sorry I went outside and made you mad.” His eyes glitter and turn red. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just woke up before you did and heard them outside in the yard. I wanted to see what they were doing.”

“Do you… uh…” God, I’m not ready for this . “Um. So you met Tommy at the gym already, huh? And Chris. What was that like?”

He drops his gaze, lifting his shoulders and shrugging. “Tommy wasn’t like how he was just before. He was silly at the gym.” He pauses before leaning forward and whispering, “I even saw him use his middle fingers at someone’s dad.”

Of course he did. I choke out a laugh, hating how it verges dangerously close to hysteria. “Yeah?”

“He didn’t mean for the kids to see it. But I did. And Chris was more talkative today than he was at the gym. He was trying to distract me from your argument with Tommy, so he told me how the truck’s engine works and stuff. But I heard you anyway.”

I take his hands in mine and release a gusty sigh. “You’re too smart for your own good, you know that? People see a nine-year-old and assume you’re like all the others. Kids your age are easy to divert. But we know better, don’t we? You understand so much more than they think.”

“I heard Tommy say you snuck out of town without telling him.”

Aching and silent, I nod again.

“And you said to Grandma how he has a right to be angry. Because you did what he says you did.”

Kill me. Please, universe, take me now.

“Yes. I did what he says I did.”

“And he’s mad because you didn’t tell him you were leaving?” He rolls his lip between his teeth, thoughtfully processing my words. “You didn’t want him to come to New York with you?”