Page 94 of Fierce-Hyde

Tori took a deep breath and let it out. “Yep. I’m not sure why she has the ability to work me up like she does.”

“Guilt,” he said. “We have it in all forms. You’ve got yours and I’ve got mine. Share with me.”

“When you put it that way with that cute grin of yours, how can I resist?”

“You think I’m cute?” he asked, angling his head.

She looked around at the people outside enjoying the nice weather on their lunch. No one seemed to pay attention to them.

“I think you’re hot,” she whispered. “Unlike all the men I normally go for.”

Here they went again.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No,” she said, reaching for his hand. “I’m learning it’s not. Planning isn’t always the way to go and in this case, it’s working for us. I’m insecure or was with us in the beginning, but I’m not now. I don’t want you to be either. Do you still feel as if you’ve got to prove something to me?”

It’s not what he thought they’d be talking about, but it was nice to bring it up.

“Not anymore,” he said. “Do I think things creep into my head now and again? Sure. I think that is only natural.”

“The same,” she said. “Which brings us to now. My mother called me.”

“I assumed as much,” he said.

“She doesn’t call often. Normally I get these long texts that take me forever to read with a ton of typos. I actually like it better when she emails as there are fewer mistakes for me to figure out what she is saying.”

He laughed. “I’m sure it’s pretty much all the same, typos or not.”

“It is,” she said. “But she called and it wasn’t her lunch hour. So I went into alert mode that something was wrong. She was crying on top of it.”

“Is she okay?” he asked.

“She’s fine. And will be fine. Some guy that I didn’t know she was dating for the past month told her she was moving too fast and wanted to take a few steps back.”

“How did you not know she was dating someone when she told you everything?” he asked.

It seemed to him when Emily’s name came up, that Tori’s mother always shared more than she should.

“She says I never ask. Ialwaysask,” she said. “But all I get is the negative stuff. So maybe I don’t ask as much anymore. Then she gave me some crap that I told her to text and email to vent so that meant the negative stuff. As if it was okay to unload on me so she didn’t on her employers or coworkers or new guys in her life.”

“Didn’t you tell her to do that so that she didn’t get in trouble at work again?”

Tori sighed. “I didn’t do it for her to dump it on me. I told her to write it in an email and then most times you just feel better getting it off your chest, then she can delete or save it in a draft. She never does. She always has to send it.”

He wasn’t sure how to answer that. It’s not as if Emily wasn’t doing what she was told and Tori seemed to enable her mother a lot.

They’d had this conversation a few times.

“But you don’t have to read or reply,” he said. “Do you always?”

“I skim it and then rarely reply. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if there were signs in there that she’d harm herself or anything like that.”

He frowned. “Has she ever done that?”

“No,” she said. “And I get it. It’s a lot. So here she is sobbing on the phone that she’s taking care of him, cooking his meals, and doing his laundry. He’s staying at her place more because it’s closer to his job.”

“Sounds like he wants someone to take care of him, which I find funny since you always say your mother needs someone to take care of her.”

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