Page 94 of Fierce Love
“I’m not signing anything.” My mother sniffs. “If Hollyn Davis can’t separate fact from fiction, that’s not my fault.”
“If you sign this, maybe there’s a chance someday, a long, long, long time from now, that you and I might be on speaking terms. If you don’t, I’ll never see or speak to you again.”
“You don’t mean that. I’m your mother.”
“What’s that old saying? You can’t pick your relatives.”
She tosses the pen away from the pages and gives me a defiant glare.
In my thirty-one years, I’ve only ever gone against her when it involved Hollyn. Today is no different. If she wants a war, she’ll get it. “Sign it, or I will get Hollyn custody of Kinsley by dragging your name through the courts. I’ll make our feud so public, so scandalous, that you’ll feel like you’ll never recover. Every borderline-illegal thing you’ve ever done will be brought to light. You’ll be a social pariah. The Tucker name will be treated like a disease.”
“Nathaniel!”
“Those aremyterms.”
She picks up the pen, finds the highlighted lines, and she flicks her name or initials across the spaces.
“Happy?” she asks, standing up to pass me the papers.
“Not even a little bit,” I say, turning on my heel, prepared to leave.
“I did what I thought was best. They’ve had a good life—much better than they would have had otherwise.”
I spin around, and rage is a living, breathing thing inside me. “What aboutme, Mother? Hiring private investigators that you must have gotten to, chasing my tail, desperate to find her. The years I’ve spent believing she left me bychoice.”
“Don’t kid yourself. Shedidhave a choice, and she chose my money and influence over your love. That’s the kind of woman you want to be with? I saved you from another conniving Davis, who probably would have led you into legal peril.”
“If this is your version of being a savior, your version of love, I don’t want it. I don’t want any part of it.”
“Did she tell you I made her sign anything? Because I didn’t. She cameto me.”
“After you backed her into a corner,” I roar. “She was eighteen. Probably scared out of her mind that the one adult in her life who she could rely on might be going to jail. And you knew—you knew because you set it up—that Hollyn would fold under that kind of pressure. Donottake the moral high ground with me. All these years, I’ve ignored the things people have said or implied about you because in my heart, Ineverthought you’d hurt any of us. Certainly not deliberately. And with such blatant cruelty.”
“You were seventeen, and you thought you were going to get married? Please.” My mother throws up her hands. “Recipe for divorce, and those are expensive. You think I was going to let the Davis family get hold of our money?”
“But you did,” I say, staring her down. “You did exactly that when you paid off Mickie Davis so she wouldn’t tell me of your betrayal. The worst part is that even if Hollyn and I had gotten divorced, she’d never have taken a penny from me. Not even if I’d begged her to. You don’t know her. You never bothered to know her. And from now on, you won’t know me either.”
“Nathaniel,” she says, following me down the hall as I stride toward the front entrance. “Nathaniel! I’m sick. You can’t abandon your sick mother.”
“For all I know, that’s also a lie,” I say over my shoulder.
Then I hear a loud crash and thump behind me, and I close my eyes before I turn around. On the floor, my mother is face down.The butler comes racing out of the adjacent room, and he’s at her side before I’m able to convince my feet to move.
“I’ll call emergency services,” I say, “but I’m not staying.”
It takes everything in me to turn back to the door, to open it, and to step though. Once I’m outside, I pull out my phone, and I dial for an ambulance, rattling off the details of the Tucker estate. When the dispatcher asks me to stay on the line, I tell her that my mother isn’t my problem anymore, and I hang up the phone.
After I texted the sibling chat that Mom was on her way to the hospital, I drove to my apartment. Slowly, I’ve been moving my things into the house I’ve been sharing with Hollyn and Kinsley. Part of me has been afraid to hope too hard that Hollyn and I can make things work. But it finally feels like all of the secrets and lies are rising to the surface.
In my apartment, I sit on the leather couch, and I drag my phone out of my pocket. I’ve been clinging on for far too long to a lie, and it’s time I let it go.
Dialing my voicemail number, I listen to the message Hollyn left me the night her life blew up. And for the first time in years, I let myself hear the anguish and the steely resolve. I’d heard those things that night, too, but when I couldn’t solve it, I’d let the voicemail become a symbol of my rage, my frustration at how she left me. A single voicemail. How dare she.
But I don’t want to cling on to any of that anymore, and I hit the delete button, then, knowing the instructions I gave to the phone company, I navigate into my deleted items on the web, and I delete it from there too.
I’m only dealing in truths now.
I rise from my seat, and I go into the principal bedroom to sort through one of my dresser drawers I often use for junk—odds and ends that don’t quite have a home but that I can’t bear to part with. At the very back, I find the small box that fits in the palm of my hand. I haven’t let myself think of this thing in years. Truthfully, I’m not sure why I kept it.
