Page 46 of Beautiful Defiance

She steps forward, then shakes her head. “We need time apart, Six. I’m sorry.”

Mom rushes over to me and pulls me in for a hug.

“Take care of your father, Seven. I’ll be in touch. I love you.”

“I love you too.” I don’t hug her back. My arms hang at my sides. She’s leaving us. Goddammit, she’s abandoning us.

My chest aching, I step out of her hold and go stand by my father. I never wanted it to come to this. For my parents to give up on something that brought them happiness.

It’s all I remember growing up. My parents flirting, smiling, laughing. Them treating each day together as though it were their last. Now there’s nothing.

Mom gets in the car and drives off without sparing us a glance in the rearview or sticking her hand out the window to wave at us. Normal things she did even when she did something as simple as returning to the grocery store for one dumb and giant onion for our burgers.

Can’t have hamburgers without slices of sweet Walla Walla onions, she’d say with a smile while wiping away the tears pouring down her face. No matter what my mother did, refrigerate, nuke, put on dark shades, she always cried when cutting up onions.

“Shit, Son, what the fuck is wrong with me? I just let the best thing that’s ever happened to me walk the fuck out of my life.”

“She’ll come back.” She has to.

My dad has survived some bad shit in his past from my shooting the breeze with my cousins in Cali. My mom leaving? Yeah, I don’t know if he’ll survive that kind of devastation.

How did Leigh survive her parents’ deaths?

Seven foster homes in five years?

Her life growing up in a shitty neighborhood?

I have to know.

That girl is brave and strong.

Defiant.

Doesn’t take shit from anyone, including the biggest jerk of them all—me.

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