Page 87 of The Attraction File

“She’s right, you know. I should have done this five years ago, but I was young and scared.”

“You were twenty-nine. It’s not like you were nineteen when you first met me.”

I shook my head as his lips thinned. My mother chose that moment to come back into the room and stop pretending she wasn’t listening.

“None of that matters, Evaleen. Nineteen, twenty-nine, or any age, you are never too old or too young to find love.” She placed the flowers on the coffee table and stepped back admiring her work.

“Then take me out, Edgar. I’ll go change.” I turned but was stopped by the other two people in the room yelling no at me.

“That dress looks amazing on you, Evaleen. Why would you change?” my mother said.

“It was just something Aria didn’t want anymore and thought would look good on me. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s me.”

“Oh, it’s you, Evaleen. It’s so you.” Edgar’s voice deepened the more he spoke.

I didn’t feel comfortable in it, but the way Edgar looked at me made me want to wear it. So he would never look at me any other way.

“Okay, I’ll just grab my jacket.”

“No,” Edgar said.

“But it’s still chilly out there. I think there is a freeze warning tonight.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets as his eyes darted around the room. “Remember, I’m making you two dinner?”

My mother came over to stand next to me. “Are you sure you don’t want me to leave. There’s a new Vin Diesel movie I have been wanting to see.” Her eyebrows wiggled as she stepped closer to the door.

“No, we should all stay here.” Edgar held out his hands in front of us.

“Edgar, what is going on?” I asked, fed up with his hot and cold routine.

Why did we all have to stay inside? He liked me in the dress but not enough for anyone else to see me in it?

“Edgar, you aren’t some crazy dominant asshole who refuses to let another man even look at me, are you?”

He ran his fingers through his hair in obvious frustration.

I hoped he didn’t want to keep me in a cage and pee on me. That would be a hard no.

“No, listen, I didn’t want to tell you this but I saw Damien outside before I came in here.”

My heart rate picked up and I had the sudden urge to hide my mother in the closet.

“What? Oh no,” I said.

“Whose Damien?” my mother asked.

She didn’t know. I never told her anything Edgar said about Damien being Shane and that his friend saw him at the airport. I especially didn’t tell her Damien and Ashton were pictured together.

How does a daughter tell her mother that her worst nightmare had come back? The man that drove her daughter to run away on her eighteenth birthday.

I felt the tears again, but this time they were justified. I turned to my mother and put my arms around her. “I’m sorry, Mom, but he’s back.”

She tried to pull away but I held her tight. “Who’s back. What are you . . . oh God. No. No.”

We held on to each other for a few minutes. Both of us crying until we gathered ourselves enough to let go.

“Is that his name now? Is Shane, Damien?” Her brown eyes wide as she gazed at Edgar.

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