Page 9 of Point of Contention

She searched my gaze, concern knitting her brow. “How are you feeling?”

I shrugged. “Like shit.”

She offered me a half smile. “Fitting, since you look like it.”

I chuckled. “Nice.”

Greer shrugged. “Truth hurts, babe.”

I snorted at that. Too fucking true.

“Want the good news or the bad news?”

I closed my eyes on a long blink as I considered the question. “Bad news.”

“They’ve lost a third of their members at The Rabbit Hole.”

The wind left my lungs in a loud groan and I tucked my face into my arms. “Oh my god. Because of the pictures?”

“Yeah. It’s a security breach, you know?” Greer sighed. “Lacey’s a wreck. She loves that place. If they have to close…” Greer’s words trailed off and my heart pinched. Cabot loved that place too.

I really had come into his life and ripped it to shreds.

“And Mina?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

Greer was quiet for a moment, then said, “I guess she’s trying to do damage control, but…” She sighed again and gave a little shrug, wincing as she said, “Lacey told me Mina doesn’t want you to come back to work.”

I drew a shaky breath, but I understood. As painful as it was, I’d expected this.

I hadn’t just turned Cabot's world upside down but Mina’s too. Our relationship put things into motion that I didn’t yet know the extent of.

What Stella did when she sold those photos of Cabot and me wasn’t my fault, but I wasn’t innocent in it all either.

“There’s more,” Greer whispered and I snorted. “Your mom’s been calling.”

I closed my eyes. So she’d seen her little girl on the news. Read the stories.

Probably thought I was engaged.

“Great,” I said with a sad little laugh.

When I left home to move to New York, it hadn’t been on good terms.

Okay, fine, that was putting it lightly.

I’d left my mother in tears on the porch and my father screaming. At me. At her. At anything that caught his attention.

But that was just his usual state of existence.

I’d abandoned her to that life because she wouldn’t pull herself out of it and I wasn’t about to be stuck in Iowa with her and her terrible choices.

I’d sent Greer my mother’s contact information—for a rainy day, maybe, or simply because if anything happened to me, Greer could alert my parents—and then I’d deleted all mention of both parents in my phone and blocked every unrecognized number since that fateful day five-and-a-half years ago.

Finally, because it felt like the most normal thing to do at this point, I said, “Okay. Send me her number.”

Her eyes widened, but after she held my gaze for a moment, waiting for me to change my mind, Greer nodded. She picked up her phone and her fingers moved over the screen, then awhooshsound indicated she’d sent the contact info to my phone.

“Thanks.” I sat there a few more minutes, then gathered what little strength I had and climbed off the bed.

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