Page 91 of Knot Your Karma
“Karma,” he says as I step onto the front porch, October air crisp with possibility. “Your grandmother would be proud of the woman you’ve become. And your mother...” He pauses, hope transforming his entire face. “Your mother was lucky to have you.”
“Is,” I correct automatically, though my heart is doing complicated things. “She is lucky to have me. Present tense.”
“Is. You’re absolutely right.” Sterling’s smile could power the entire historic district. “Please, give me a call when you decide.”
I walk away carrying two compasses and approximately seventeen life-changing revelations.
Also, I definitely need to call my mother.
Like, immediately.
Karma
The hotelsuite suddenly feels like a shoebox, which is ridiculous because it’s probably bigger than my entire shop, but apparently life-changing revelations make me claustrophobic.
I pace between the window overlooking Boston Harbor and the elegant sitting area where my pack watches me with the kind of patient concern usually reserved for wild animals that might bolt at any second. The compass weighs heavy in my hands, and my feet trace the same path—six steps to the window, turn, eight steps to the couch, repeat—while I probably smell like anxious omega having an existential crisis.
“Okay, so I need to call my mom,” I announce, stopping so abruptly I nearly face-plant into the coffee table. “Like, right now. She needs to know about Sterling and everything, and oh God, what if she freaks out? What if this gives her some kind of emotional breakdown and I have to explain that I accidentally reunited her with her high school boyfriend while stealing a compass?”
“She should hear it from you,” Declan says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“We can step out,” Reed offers, already getting up withthat smooth way he has of making everything seem manageable. “Give you space for family drama.”
“No! No, please stay.” The words tumble out more desperate than I intended, my voice cracking like I’m thirteen again. “I need pack right now. Like, all the pack. Maximum pack support for this conversation because I’m about to call my mother and tell her things that might make her cry for the next six hours.”
“We’re here,” Adrian says quietly, which somehow makes my chest feel less tight.
I curl up in the corner of the couch where Adrian’s sandalwood still clings to the fabric, and Reed settles beside me so his thigh presses warm against mine. Declan positions himself where he can see both me and the door.
My fingers shake as I dial Mom’s number, hesitating over the call button like it might explode before I force myself to press it.
She picks up on the second ring, like she was waiting by the phone.
“Karma? Honey, is everything okay? You sound like you’re about to hyperventilate.”
“Mom, okay, so I need to tell you something and it’s going to sound completely insane, but I swear I’m not having some kind of nervous breakdown.” I take a breath that hitches embarrassingly. “It’s about Sterling Ashworth. Remember Sterling Ashworth?”
Silence. Complete, tell-me-everything silence that stretches long enough for me to wonder if the call dropped. I can feel my pack going into full support mode behind me—Declan’s doing his protective assessment thing, Reed’s shifting into diplomatic crisis management, and Adrian’s just being that steady presence that keeps me grounded.
“Sterling,” she finally says, her voice going soft and unsteady like someone just sucker-punched her with nostalgia. “Oh honey. You met Sterling.”
“He had the compass! The one I sold—the one that belongs to Declan’s family. And Mom, he invited us to his house tonight and it was like this whole romantic movie situation because he still loves you. Like, full-on never-got-over-you, carrying-your-graduation-gift-for-thirty-years loves you.”
“Oh,” she breathes, and I can hear the tears starting—that particular catch in her voice that means she’s about to completely fall apart in the grocery store or wherever she is right now. “Oh, sweetheart. What exactly did he say?”
“That you were the most remarkable woman he’d ever known. That he’s regretted how things ended for thirty years. That he worked at Grandma Rose’s shop, that you gave him a pocket watch for graduation.” Tears blur my vision while Reed’s hand finds mine automatically. “Mom, he kept it. He’s carried it every single day since high school.Every. Day.”
She’s full-on sobbing now, those deep sobs that come from thirty years of suppressed emotions finally breaking free. “I thought... God, I thought he’d forgotten about me. When things ended so badly, when he said those awful things about your father, about my choices... I thought he hated me.”
“He said he was young and hurt and couldn’t handle the rejection. He takes full responsibility for being an ass, which honestly makes him more mature at fifty than most men are ever.”
“He offered me everything back then,” Mom whispers through her tears. “Marriage, a future, stability, the whole white-picket-fence dream. But your father... your father was lightning in a bottle, you know? Dangerous and exciting and completely wrong for me, but I couldn’t resist the thrill of an alpha pack wanting me. A beta. I chose passion over security and spent thirty years regretting every minute of it.”
My chest aches for both of them—for the choices that seemed right at eighteen and the decades of consequences that followed. Reed’s thumb traces circles on the back of myhand while Adrian settles close enough that his knee presses against mine—silent anchors through the emotional storm.
“Do you still love him? Sterling, I mean?”
Another long pause filled with shaky breathing and the sound of tissues being murdered. “I never stopped loving him, honey. Not even when I was bonded to your fathers, not through the divorce, not now. Sterling was... he was my safe harbor, you know? The person who made me feel like I could conquer the world. But I was eighteen and stupid and thought love was supposed to hurt.”
