Page 41 of Waiting Game

Cody’s the same as I am. Spending one night here is too much.

“Nothing ever changes. You might stick up a couple new cameras and some motion sensors here and there, but it’s always the same.”

“I like it. It’s nice.”

I roll my eyes at Callan’s simple answer.

Colt shrugs. “You never got the bug.”

“Cole’s always felt the pull of the city lights.”

The softly spoken words come as a massive shock. Whipping away from my brothers, I see my mother standing on the front stoop of the massive log building that is the ‘big house.’

“Mum?” I sputter. “What are you doing here?”

She holds out her arms for me so I lope forward. I don’t wait for an answer, just let her embrace me.

“It’s so good to see you!” I bite out, surprising myself with how much emotion there is in my voice. “It’s been too damn long, Lindsay Matthews. You bad girl, you.”

She smells like the perfume I bought her when I was fourteen—she’s worn it ever since. “I missed you.” Her laughter mingles with tears.

“Same.” I hug her tighter, making her laugh as I lift her and twirl her in a circle. “God, it’s been ages.”

“I was in the facility for too long.”

I don’t give her crap for spending months at a time in some lab in an Amazonian rainforest, not when her work matters to her, but I enjoy the moment for what it is—a rarity.

“How long do we have you for?”

“I asked for a sabbatical,” she stuns me by saying.

“A sabbatical? Why?”

“Because my boys need me. I might have wished that the heart attack took Clyde out, but I’m glad for your sake that it didn’t.”

I swear she’s so naive sometimes. How can she think we could ever forgive him for what he did to her? Deathbed, heart attack, or not.

“—you’ll need me around if you don’t kill him during his recuperation. He’s a miserable patient.”

Her statement has my lips curving.

Since their divorce, she stopped beating around the bush with him and ceased being afraid of the man who’s made it his life’s work to have the residents of Pigeon Creek quiver in their boots whenever he darkens the town’s door. Never mind what he did to her.

I prefer to believe that I take after her because the prospect of being like him is discomfiting. Pops’s never frightened me, though, mostly I want to be on the other side of the continent from where he is.

How he treated Mum is one of the reasons I started reading romance. I wanted to immerse myself in something that was the opposite of what I saw every day—I needed the escape.

Untilsheescaped, that is, and got a divorce.

Then, I carried on reading because, hello? Romance novels are fucking awesome.

Slinging my arm around her shoulder, I complain to my brothers, “If you’d told me Mum was coming, I’d have gotten here sooner.”

“Thought you didn’t dick around getting here,” Colt derides.

“I didn’t, but I’d have found a way to travel through space and time,” I snipe.

“We didn’t realize she was coming until she showed up. You know how difficult it is to communicate with the facility sometimes. I thought we’d hear from her next week,” is all Callan has to say on the matter.

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