Page 35 of Single Mom for the Mountain Men
A surge of helplessness and anger pulses through me when I remember my mother’s face with a dark bruise forming around one eye, the way she tried to paste a shaky smile on her face as I came back from school one day. She had tried to act like there was nothing wrong, waving off all of my concerns and questions, then went on to set the table for lunch.
“Why did you stay with James if he was abusive, Lena?” I ask in a harrowed voice. My chest feels full of messy knots, thick and painful emotions swelling up inside of me. “I don’t understand. Why would you do that to yourself?”
Averting her gaze, she lets out a silent breath. “Have you seen those cartoons where there’s a toad in a boiling pot? Theysit in there, relaxing in the steaming water while the other cartoon character chops and adds vegetables to the soup. They don’t know they’re being cooked until the water comes to an uncomfortable boil. It isn’t until they’re burning alive that they try to jump out. Abuse is like that, Aiden. You don’t know the quicksand you’re in until it’s too late.”
An old ache runs through my body, like a violin’s string that has been strummed. This pain has lost its intensity over the years since my mother passed away, but the scars remain.
“I feel sad for Sophie the most,” Lena continues in a mumble. “Seeing our relationship has given her scars of her own that she’ll have trouble overcoming. It’s gonna stay with her forever, and I’m to blame.”
“You are not to blame, Lena.” I shake my head, clenching my hands around hers. “You are human, too. You loved him so much that you stayed and tried to work things out. Sophie will recognize that when she gets older. She won’t ever blame you, just like I don’t blame my mother.”
“I can’t recall when the last time was that I actually felt any sort of love toward him, now that I think about it,” she confesses lightly. “I…I can’t think of a single reason why I stayed as long as I did. I guess it all became familiar. To sit through that, to suffer—it became an everyday occurrence instead of a rare thing. When you’re insulted every day, those insults don’t feel derogatory anymore.”
My gut churns unpleasantly as I listen to her words. “I’m sorry you had to experience that all alone, Lena.”
She smiles and shifts her weight into my lap to embrace me softly. “I’m sorry you had to live your childhood alone like that. You had to be strong for your mother, and you were. That’s why she decided to leave him, because you gave her the strength she needed to leave once and for all. I’m proud of you.”
Her words lift a weight off of my shoulders that I didn’t know I had been carrying all this time. I relax in her arms and wrap my own around her, pressing our bodies together. The connection and attachment I’ve felt for her this entire time gets stronger and stronger with each day that passes.
Now, I can’t imagine life without her or Sophie around.
Chapter seventeen
CHAPTER 17: Lena
“Tanner?” I call out before knocking softly on his door. “Do you want dinner? It’s getting cold.”
There’s no response. I hear a few taps and thumps behind his closed door, so I know that he’s awake and moving around.
I turn the doorknob after calling his name again and swing the door open slowly.
Tanner is standing by his bed, his phone in his hand and his shirt thrown on a chair. There are a few scrapes around his waist, and bruises litter his biceps. There’s a tiny, red scrape right below his left cheekbone. He looks up as I come inside and tug the door so it closes behind me.
“Tanner,” I begin, “you don’t want dinner?”
“Lena, I’m not in the mood,” he snaps, his voice like a scissor cutting straight through paper.
“Okay, okay,” I say, raising my hands up defensively. “Don’t have dinner, then. You don’t need to be rude to me.”
“Lena…I’m sorry…I’m just…I don’t want dinner,” he replies sharply, but he still doesn’t look at me.
“Are you sure?” I press.
He throws his phone on the bed and rubs his palms over his face. “Yes,” he mutters.
“Well, all right. Who were those men? Why did they ambush you like that?” I decide to cut directly to the chase. The entire scene had been harrowing, to say the least. One moment, Tanner had been smirking at me, talking about something, and the next moment, some guy had taken a swing at him in the middle of a crowd.
Neither Aiden or Brody knew who this guy was who had attacked Tanner, and they didn’t even know why he was attacked in the first place. Their faces had been grim, and their responses monosyllabic. I got the feeling that they were more pissed about the sudden ambush than they were worried about Tanner, which made me even more confused.
“It doesn’t concern you.”
“But they wanted to hurt you. Theydidhurt you,” I insist. “What did they want? And why did you run off instead of settling it with them then and there?”Why do your brothers know nothing about this? What are you hiding from them?
“Why aren’t you answering me!” I raise my voice, frustrated beyond belief when he doesn’t reply. “Just tell me.”
“It’s not your fucking business, Lena!” he bursts out, finally looking at me so he can glare at me. “Why you feel the need to have your nose in other people’s business is beyond me. Learn to take no for an answer, for fuck’s sake.”
I startle at the venom in his tone, and the scowl on my face melts into a blank expression. His words shred through me like an arrow, but I try my best to not let it show on my face. He has never spoken to me this way before. It shakes me to my core, scaring me for a second.
