Page 15 of Catching His Runaway

Swallowing down the vile rising in the back of my throat, I shut the door and pluck my clothes back up. Ignoring the signs of a panic setting in, I try to focus on something else. “Something like that.”

I toss my clothes in the corner and decide the closet is off limits. The wrinkles will be worth the cost of forgetting about everything.

“So, if I can’t stay in any room, where are you expecting me to sleep?” Looking back toward his bed, I grimace. “Not with you, I hope.”

“Of course not. No, you’ll be sleeping on the floor.” Without thinking twice, the words roll right off his tongue. “Unless you have a problem with that?”

My hands curl at my sides, and I remind myself that Tommy is just trying to make me suffer. Well, I won’t let him have his way. No matter what, I won’t let him get to me. “No problem at all.”

My face must give away my feelings, because the corners of his eyes crinkle in amusement. I guess there is no hiding my dislike of him.

* * *

My time at the estate is slow. There’s not much to do. Even after a few days, none of that changes. Pretty quickly, I build a routine.

Not wanting to spend too much time in his room, after I wake up with my body sore from the carpeted floors, I walk with my meals to keep myself moving.

With the weight of waiting for Santino to have news about my situation, it only adds to my stress as I keep avoiding my mother. She may be making things easy for me by doing the very same. Or she’s giving me space. Who knows.

I’m not entirely sure she wants to see me, either. Not with the timing of how I left things. If she did, she’d jump me like Camellia has the few times we’ve crossed paths.

Ugh.

Tommy doesn’t hold back his annoyance when he catches me looking around the corner, just in case.

“She spends most of her time in the library. You don’t have to keep acting cautious. She’s harmless.” His brows furrow when I glare at him. “Might as well just get it over with.”

“No thanks.” Continuing to walk, I head toward the garden area. I try to walk a lap around the estate. That takes up a solid hour of the day when I lap around it twice.

“I didn’t take you for the cowardly type,” he throws out, the challenge in his voice. “When did that change?”

Two months ago, if I had to place a time on it.

My silence makes him sigh. “Despite your disappearance, I had to listen to her talk about you more than you can imagine. While your siblings wrote you off as dead, Bia—”

“Tommy!” Turning toward him, I tense up. “I don’t want to hear about it, okay?”

His brows lift, but the surprise on his expression doesn’t last for long. He’s right back to glaring at me. “Every day, she waited for you to come back. She told Leon you would, insisted on it. Then I promised them both that I’d find you, and we see how that turned out.”

He doesn’t lift up his hand to remind me, but he might as well have punched me in the guts with his next blow.

“After Leon passed, Bia still didn’t stop hoping. She refused to mourn for two people she cared about.” He doesn’t stop telling me the words I don’t want to hear, even after I try to walk away from him. “WhileIknow you’re a terrible daughter, your mother still wants you back. Stop avoiding her.”

One thing I never want to acknowledge is this man’s rightness. I just wish he didn’t feel like he needed to guilt-trip me into making it happen.

What if she doesn’t want to see me? It’s been days now, and by now, she should have crossed my path. Has he thought about that?

Wrapping my arms around my body, I consider how our first meeting will go.

Will she remind me about missing my father’s funeral? I am sure my disappearance didn’t help his health any more than the cancer that got him. Does she loathe that I never called or sent them any kind of communication?

Ever since I stepped back onto the estate, change has surrounded me. Is my mother a part of that? Or is she still the gentle, caring woman who used to smother me with affection because of her love for her children?

Turning, I move silently, and he follows. We don’t need to continue the conversation; the climb up the grand staircase already tells him where I am going.

How many times, when I was little, did she read to me on that leather couch? All sorts of stories, all ending with romantic tales that had happily ever afters.

Funny enough, I blame her for my high expectations. When she wasn’t trying to prepare me for my duties, she let me slip away into a fantasy land full of Prince Charming types and sexy heroes who swooped the female main lead away.

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