Page 58 of Best Served Cold

So why the fuck couldn’t I let it go?

I’d come home from the club and gone right to bed, but my stupid brain hadn’t wanted to shut down, not even after downing a few of the sleeping pills I kept in reserve for when my insomnia got really bad. I’d lain awake, tossing and turning for hours as the events of the night, and the party, and the bar, played in my head in a constant loop.

Zane on his knees for me, his dark eyes blazing with that magnetic energy I couldn’t seem to get enough of. The intensity of it, the way it narrowed my focus and quieted the noise in my head. How he made me feel like the only person in the world. Like he wasn’t just looking at me but was seeing me.

I’d managed to fall asleep about an hour before my alarm went off and dragged my ass to work, dreading facing Zane again after what had gone down.

He’d been completely unaffected by it and treated me exactly the same as the day before.

That hurt, and I had no fucking clue why.

With a low groan, I lowered myself onto the couch and glanced at the time. Becca should be home within the hour. Hopefully I could actually fall asleep tonight so I could make it through tomorrow without killing myself, or someone else, because I couldn’t pay attention to the job.

Trrrr. Trrrr. Trrrr.

The number on my phone wasn’t in my contacts, but the area code from back home made my hackles rise.

I’d already blocked my family, their friends, and everyone from church. Who would be calling me, especially this late?

I should let it go to voicemail.

But what if it was important? What if something happened that we needed to know about?

Too tired to keep spinning about this, I snatched up my phone and answered the call.

“Hello?”

“Noah?”

“Mom?” I straightened up, my hackles rising.

“Of course it’s me. You don’t remember your own mother’s voice?” she said in that fake pout that drove me up the fucking wall.

“Sorry. Didn’t recognize the number.”

“You might have if you hadn’t blocked me,” she said icily. “That’s the thanks we get after raising you? Providing for you?”

“Why are you calling?” I cut her off before she could lean into her guilt trip.

I’d been hearing this song my entire life. Every time I stepped out of line or tried to take any sort of control over my life, she’d come at me with the ‘you owe us because we made you’ argument.

Of course the one time I’d pointed out how I hadn’t asked to be born, and that providing for your children is the bare minimum of being a parent, she’d taken the door off my bedroom and taped scriptures and quotes from her favorite pastors about sin and entitlement and not honoring your parents all over my walls as punishment.

“Excuse me?” she asked haughtily. “I’m your mother. I can call you whenever I want for whatever reason I want.”

“I just meant what’s going on now. It’s been a long week.”

“Your father is retiring.”

“Oh.” I paused, waiting for her to continue. “That’s…good.”

“You need to come home.”

I managed to stifle the laugh that tried bubbling out of my chest. “I’m sorry?”

“We’ve been praying and talking with Pastor Michael and we think it’s time you come home, settle into a proper Christian life, and take over the store like we always planned.”

I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood.

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