Page 115 of Landon & Shay: Part One

“I blame the two women who raised me.”

Mima peeked her head into the room and raised an eyebrow. “Are you two hungry and done crying like silly gooses? I just whipped up some food.”

“Starving,” Mom and I echoed at the same time.

We stood up and headed toward the dining room. As we sat at the table, my phone dinged.

Landon:How’s your heart?

I smiled at his words.

Me:Still beating.

28

Landon

For the past forty-eight hours,I’d been in touch with Shay constantly texting her, calling her, and making sure she was remembering to breathe. She hadn’t been at school for two days, and honestly, I couldn’t blame her. Her life was turned upside down. It made sense that she and her mother needed time to regroup.

Me:How’s your heart today?

Shay:Still beating.

Good.

On Wednesday afternoon, I was surprised when my doorbell rang, and Shay’s mother was standing on my front porch. She was wrapped up in a long, brown trench coat with sunglasses on, and her hair was pulled up into a messy bun.

“Mrs. Gable, hey.”

She flinched a little as I said her last name, as if it were tainted.

She removed her sunglasses then crossed her arms and hugged her body tight. “Please, call me Camila.”

“Okay. How can I help you?”

Her eyes had purplish bags beneath them as if she’d spent the past few nights crying. Again, I couldn’t blame her. Her whole life had been transformed in a matter of moments. All because of one man’s selfish choices.

“I wanted to say thank you. For what you did, for telling Shay the truth about Kurt. You can imagine that the past few days of our lives have been a living hell, but Shay and I have moved out, and I am in the process of filing for divorce…” Her words faded away, and she sniffled a bit, wiping her hand beneath her nose.

I saw so much of Shay within her mother. Her same brown eyes, her same dark hair, the same frown lines around her lips. I wanted to hug her and give her comfort, but it didn’t seem right. In a way, I was to blame for the hurting she was experiencing. I was the cause of her current suffering. If she was in need of comfort, I doubted she wanted it from me, which made me come back to the first thought on my mind: what was she doing here?

She shifted back and forth in her tennis shoes and ran her hands against her forearms.

I cocked an eyebrow. “Why do I feel like you have something more to say?”

“Well, because I do. I haven’t figured out how to word it correctly.”

“Spit it out in any way, shape, or form, and we’ll go from there.”

She took a deep inhalation. “I need you to stay away from my daughter.”

Well, okay.

Didn’t see that coming.

“Wait, what?”

“I’m sorry, Landon, I really am, but I see it in you. I see the damage in your eyes, in your heart, and I don’t want my daughter going through anything so heavy. Not after this. Not after everything she’s been through. Her heart needs a break.”

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