Page 110 of Tide of Treason
“You were sixteen,” she said softly. “I’d already failed you too many times. Letting him breathe another year would’ve been one more failure I couldn’t stomach.”
I didn’t even know what to say to that, but suddenly realised I’d spent so much time being angry at her that I’d never stopped to consider that maybe she’d suffered worse. Much worse. Eighteen. Giving birth to a daughter while still bleeding from her own girlhood. Wrapping pink blankets around me with bruises on her thighs.
My chest pinched.
“I tried. To hate you. I really did.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“And I thought if I kept hating you, I wouldn’t become you.”
“And how’s that working out?”
“Well. I haven’t starred in an underground trilogy titledBellissima No. 3,so I’m doing something right.”
She turned on the hairdryer, letting it whine uselessly for a second before snapping it off again. “You know what your problem is?”
“I inherited your boobs but not your patience?”
“You inherited my everything and that’s why you can’tfucking stand me.”
My laugh was bitter and breathless. “That’s not true.”
It was. Marrow-deep and cellular. I’d spent half my life trying to scrub Mamma out of me. All the powdered perfume, the postured poise, the way her mouth twisted around a man’s name. But bleach can’t reach the bones. The worst part was how it seeped into everything.
My hips swung like hers when I walked down hallways I meant to own.
My lashes dipped the same way when I wanted something I shouldn’t.
And the ache under my breastbone whenever Lucius turned his back? It mirrored the ache I saw in her eyes when Papà lit another cigarette and disappeared behind his office door.
We exited the bathroom together.
At the bottom of the staircase stood Lucius, tie undone, jaw clenched. When our eyes met, something inside me fractured, only to reform around the shape of him.
One heartbeat.
Due date pending.
My steps led me halfway down, a stilted little dance because we never saw each other from the same vantage point. Always one of us a little higher, the other a little too far gone. Mamma sensed it immediately and vanished toward the kitchen. A wise woman knew when her daughter teetered on the edge of unraveling, after all.
“You made me burn the toast.”
I blinked, mind catching on the peculiarity.
“This morning,” he elaborated, eyes hooded and sultry. “I was thinking about how you looked last night, all soft and fucked out and mad at me for it. So, I burned the toast.”
I swear I didn’t intend to smile.
Truly.
I didn’t.
“Was it white or wheat?” I asked, tone feather-soft.
He scratched his jaw thoughtfully. “Black.”
I took the last steps down with a muted click of my heels, and, before I could talk myself out of it, perched onto his strong thigh. Right there. With one shoe planted on the bottom step, his body carved a monument of tension and that sweet echo of last night’s rough sex topped by long, lazy kisses.
