Page 7 of Loving You

Monty tensed his jaw before he spoke. “I’m not doing this with you tonight. Your wife is not my mother. I have a mom.”

“No you don’t. Not anymore,” Rod bit out.

It would have been easier if Monty’s mother had passed, which was such a cruel thing to think. But she was alive and well and living in Naples with her new husband and two replacement kids. She’d gotten out of her marriage with a nice fat settlement that carried her through the months it took to make her new rich boyfriend a husband, and now the most she managed with Monty was a birthday call every couple of years.

He hadn’t seen her since he was sixteen, and it was looking like that was going to be his last memory of the woman who had given him his dark curls and crooked eyeteeth.

“I’m not going to argue technicalities here,” Monty said, setting his fork down. His arms felt heavy. Fuck, he wasn’t going to get out of this one, was he? He flexed his fingers in an attempt to get his limbs to wake up, but he was falling fast. He glanced over at his sister, whose attention was on her plate, and his brothers, who were glued to their phones.

They were children, even if he was the youngest. Spoiled and selfish and useless.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to—” He attempted to rise, but his dad cleared his throat loudly, and he froze.

“Sit down,” Rod barked.

Monty’s legs gave out, not giving him a choice. Heglanced at Poppy as the edges of his vision went white. If he was lucky, he was going to faint. Fainting meant he wouldn’t be able to hear all the garbage his father would spew when his body slumped over.

The man seemed to think Monty could overcome his neurological disease with willpower, and the reason he hadn’t so far was because Monty was weak.

Rod refused to accept test results or the diagnosis.

Poppy looked at him, her face filled with sympathy, and he wished he could hate her. But the truth was, she was lovely. She was kind and sweet, and he knew that while his dad doted on her with every fiber of his being, she deserved better.

She didn’t deserve this constant humiliation Rod put her through every time Monty visited for dinner.

“Stop being a brat and just thank your mother,” Carlos said.

Monty tried to answer, but his tongue had given up on him.

Poppy flinched. It had to feel weird that a man old enough to be her father was calling her mother.

“Monty,” she said softly. “Are you okay?”

He forced his head to shake. He couldn’t see much now. His eyes were getting heavy. “Don’t let me drown,” he attempted to say. His brain was too foggy to remember if he was sitting in front of soup.

The world went white.

Then it went black.

Blessedly, he was out.

Monty woke up blind.

No, wait. He wasn’t blind. There was a wet towel over his eyes. He attempted to reach for it, but his limbs weren’t entirely back online. He let out a soft groan, and then someone pulled it off, and he kept his eyes closed against the assault of bright lights.

He appreciated when he woke up prone instead of slumped over a table or curled awkwardly with his lower half twisted around a chair. Usually, when he was home, he had enough time to flop on the sofa before it all went to hell. At his father’s house, the attacks came on too quickly for him to do anything about it.

And if it had only been his dad in the room, he would have been left to his own devices. There had been plenty of times he’d knocked his head on solid concrete because his dad couldn’t be assed to catch him before he hit the ground. But when Poppy was around, she was kinder.

He recognized the smell of her perfume—something sort of floral. Like jasmine.

“It’s jasmine and rose,” she said quietly.

He managed to open one eye and saw he was halfway under the dining table. He twitched his feet. “Was I talking aloud?”

She smiled at him. “You do sometimes when you first start waking up. You told me about the bar exam last week.”

Monty groaned and pushed up on his elbows. His limbs were weak, but he didn’t feel too bad. He really did like fainting better. Cataplexy came with weird complications, like waking nightmares that left him paralyzed and unsure of what was real and what wasn’t.

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