Page 133 of The Casualty of Us
“Sorry,” I mutter, moving my eyes between the two of them a couple of times before squinting in confusion. “What’s going on here?”
My mother’s gaze moves back to Hayes, and he holds it for another long moment before turning to me. An apologetic look on his face that I’m familiar with, and that has my stomach dropping before the first word even leaves him. “I came here before.”
I blink. “What do you mean?”
“Christmas Eve.” He clears his throat with the soft words. “I came here on Christmas Eve last year before heading back to school. Your mom came out and…” His nostrils flare, fear flashing through the hazel as he admits. “I wasn’t sure if she recognized me, but obviously she did.”
“Oh shit.” Ollie coughs for real this time, choking on some food.
“But—” I start, then stop, a sharp scoff leaving me because…I don’t understand. “You never said anything.”
“It didn’t seem…” His brows fall sharply, eyes moving between mine before he decides on… “Right, to try and use it as some kind of excuse when it wasn’t.”
And he’s right, it’s not, but I don’t…
I don’t understand. “Why didn’t you come in?” Everything might be different if he had, or it might be the same, or it might be worse but— “I don’t understand.”
His face falls with a sympathy there that I immediately hate, and I’m just about to snap that when my mom starts up again.
“You know, Hayes, I think we have something in common.”
I turn my scowl on her instead for starting up this whole thing and unearthing the past I’m trying to let go of while Hayes turns back to her.
“What’s that?”
“I think if my parents were still alive, they would love having lunch with yours.”
He pauses. “Oh really?”
“Mmm,” she hums thoughtfully, picking up her wine glass and taking a sip as my scowl falls into a frown. “My mother was an American artist, which translated into a very erratic form of motherhood for her while my father was a French CEO who believed in parenting from afar.”
I feel Ollie tense next to me, probably as thrown as I am because this is the first I’m hearing her say anything bad about them. Not that they’ve been a frequent topic of conversation in our house, but still. You’d think we might’ve heard something about all this.
“They passed when I was still in my twenties, but I knew that I never wanted my family to be like the one I had grown up in.”
Her quiet words have my heart clenching up, not liking that these people aren’t still alive for me to give a piece of my mind to, but Hayes just nods. “I can understand that.”
“Good.” The grin returns to her face like they understand each other perfectly now, and I’m already scowling when they both look back to me.
“Whatever.”
I’ll deal with him and his rock star baby problems later.
Right now I have more pressing things.
“So I was thinking maybe we could head back to school tomorrow.”
And I might as well have announced the stalker’s name by the way the table goes silent.
“What?” I shrug. “There’s only a couple of days left until we go back anyway, and it’s the safest place for us, right?” Hayes narrows his eyes on me, and I quickly look somewhere else, skipping over Talan and Mia before picking my father because he seems like the softest target when it comes to this. “What do you think?”
He looks at my mother after a beat, and I chance a peek at her, seeing the thoughtful expression on her face while they work it out among themselves.
His eyes come back to mine another moment later with a small smile. “Sounds good.”
“Perfect.” I aim a happy grin his way before looking across the table at Mia and Talan. “So we’ll go for the usual run in the morning, then head back to school.”
Get the guys on either side of me safely tucked away behind gates and armed guards again.
