Page 93 of The Moment Promised

I try to push past the aggravation occurring within my body, but this conversation can’t wait another minute. We need a plan. We need Jason gone.

My mom won’t look me in the eye, she shrugs her shoulders and kicks a pebble by her foot.

“We can’t stay with the Walkers forever. Sooner or later, we are going to need to go back to our own house.” I take a step closer to her and place a hand on her shoulder. “Without Jason living in it.”

She focuses past me. “Adeline—” She shakes her head. “I think you should give him a chance?—”

I interrupt, “No.” I ignore the sweat beading off her forehead, I hadn’t even asked her how rehab went, or had the chance to really speak to her about how she’s feeling. What she’s going through. My head pounds so loudly, it’s all I can focus on.

“I know it’s a lot to take in.” She lightly caresses my head like I’m a child who hasn’t gotten her way. “Him being here andeverything, but we can’t make him leave. It’s his house as much as it’s ours.”

“Mom, you aren’t in your right mind.” My voice doesn’t belong to me. This one is frantic and shaky. “I don’t know exactly what went down. He found you at your lowest. Made you feel weak, like you were nothing without him. Am I right?”

She fumbles backward, as if my words are punching her in the gut. “Adeline?—”

“Don’t you get it?” I barely take a moment to breathe before I start again.

She just blinks. She doesn’t try to interrupt me.

“Jason abused you, Mom. For years. You jumped every time you heard a loud noise, you had bruises all over your body, your life didn’t even belong to you.”

All she does is look at the ground.

“He broke you down until you felt like you were nothing. You couldn’t leave him, not even forme.” My voice breaks. I point toward myself, feeling every ounce of pain she made me feel. It barrels into me all at once. I’ve always tried to push it down, always knew it wasn’t as simple as leaving. But here I stand for the first time in my life, angry at my mother for not putting me first.

For allowing me to witness everything that I did.

For having a child with a man like Jason.

Hurt and betrayal bubble up inside me. I back away a little.

I will never allow my children to be fathered by someone that hurts me, someone capable of making me feel like I’m nothing. I’ll die before letting my future children feel even an ounce of the pain I’ve survived.

I can only see her silhouette now, as my eyes fill with more and more angry tears. She’s just a blurry blob of color when she mutters, “I’m sorry.”

I back away a little more, tears pricking my eyes. Emotions I’ve kept buried deep down take over.

“Please, just listen to me.” My mother uses her calm voice on me, the one she hoped would seep into my father’s temper tantrums.

I can’t stop.

Whatever meltdown my body is unleashing, I can’t control it. I can’t put out the fire that burns within me. It has too much control over me.

“Let me just explain?—”

I shove her outstretched hand away from me. The world turns red and everything else fades away. “Just when I had hope we could ever be more than an addict mother and her neglected daughter, you take back the person who destroyed us.”

I don’t look at her, I just let everything out at once, hoping to feel relief from the words. “I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that you neglected me all my life or the relief I felt when you went to rehab and weren’t my burden to keep anymore!”

“That’s enough,” Finn’s firm voice breaks through my hysteria.

I blink away my temper as fast as it was brought on. I glance back and forth between Finn who must’ve just got home, and my mother.

I’ve never seen her so broken. Her faraway expression and wet cheeks make me hate myself. There’s not a single part of me that’s relieved from saying the words that caused the pain written all over her face.

I leave my body in that moment, watching myself from a bird’s eye view. The way I let my anger and hurt speak for me…

I am no better than Jason.

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