Page 98 of The Kiss of Deception

Were the goals I scored motivated by an underlying wish to make him regret leaving? Was my insatiable hunger for success part of a foolish, never-ending quest to avenge us—me and Mom? To prove that we were fine, and we didn’t need him—I didn’t need him to be great.

Only one person has ever been able to quiet my restlessness, to soothe the itch under my skin.

Zoe.

When I’m with her, nothing else matters.

As much as I’m ready to put this in the back drawer for now and enjoy the party by her side, the dot of a question mark pokes at the back of my head.

“Why didn’t it work out with… the other guy?”

“He was the love of my life.” Her voice is soft with the sadness of acceptance. “I wasn’t the love of his.”

I suck in a sharp breath. Of all the things she’s said, that’s what undoes me.

In need of oxygen or a reprieve or something, I cross the room to the windows, watching my busy yard.

There she is—gravity. Zoe waves at me, wearing a grin I could see from above the clouds. I swing the window open like I might catch a whiff of flowers in the wind.

It comes—the wind, invading the room, whisking the wrapping paper to the carpet. My mother tracks it down, as do I. Naked on the nightstand, the book glares at us.

My cheeks burn as she scrunches her eyes shut like she’s trying to unsee, nodding to herself and whispering, “I think I’m gonna go now.”

Like a teenager caught with nudie magazines under the mattress, I only nod back and wait for the furious blush to fade.

“Don’t let her go.” Mom stops at the threshold, one foot inside the bedroom, one foot out. “If she’s the one, don’t make the mistake of ever letting her go.”

“I won’t,” I say, but she’s gone—my mutter all to myself.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I fish my phone from my pocket. One, two, three swipes and my thumb pulls an unopened, unending thread of one-sided white balloons.

I’ve been purposely looking away for so long… I can’t anymore. I must look on, and it’s glaring what I see.

I’ve been so stuck in my own self-righteousness, so self-assured I was doing right by my mother, standing by her, and so stuck in my own hurt, that it brewed and became something bigger than what it was supposed to become.

Small mistakes and misunderstandings cook in silence and avoidance to become big rifts that cause nothing but pain. Maybe that’s why the world is festering. People hurt and keep hurting others in response—even the ones they love the most.

I type.

Miles: Hi, Dad.

And I hit send.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Zoe

“Zoe?”

“Hi. Yes. Hi.”

It isn’t that she startled me. It’s that she is Julia; apparently, Julia makes me a little jittery.

I’m not equipped to deal with the infinite kindness this virtual stranger so generously graces me with. I’ve seen her through a screen, even spoken to her, enough times—but three-dimensional circumstances are different, real in a way screens cannot mimic.

She hits me with another smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes. I see Miles there.

“Thank you. For this.” She waves an arm around, then laces it with mine. “For taking care of my son.”

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