Page 84 of Beautiful Rush
She pursed her lips. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m…I came to visit…” I waved my hand at the prison. Jesus. This was my mother. Why was it so hard to talk to her? It had always been this way for us though. Nothing has changed. “Are you okay? How have you been?”
“I’m fine, Keira.” She stepped away from the door and we stood off to the side to let the other visitors pass. “Your father didn’t add you to the visitors list.”
I stared at her, the words not fully registering. “What? But I need to see him.” My eyes darted to the door again. “I drove down here from Brooklyn…” I stopped talking and huffed out a laugh.
Why was I surprised? Of course, my father would have been vindictive and not added me to the list. It was the equivalent of having the last word which he always had to have. He wanted to show that he was still in control, even from a prison cell. Which answered my question. He would never forgive me for my betrayal. He wanted me to know that I had won my freedom and independence at his expense. And, of course my mother would support him. Of course, she would never stand up to him or try to defend me.
But she was still standing right in front of me and I wasn’t going to leave until I got a few things off my chest. I wasn’t expecting any answers from her. I just needed her to listen.
“You abandoned your own sons for him.” I waved my arm at the door as if he was standing right there on the other side of it, still pulling all the strings. “Abandoned me because I betrayed him,” I said, laying out the cold, hard facts. I didn’t sound angry or hurt and that surprised me.
She shook her head and let out a breath. “I left you because I wanted you to have that freedom you’d always craved. I left because I couldn’t look my own sons in the eye after what I did to them. You’re all better off without me.”
I bit my tongue.You’re all better off without me. Maybe it was true, and I was starting to believe it was, but that was no excuse. My mother was a coward. She just wanted to brush this all under the rug like she’d been doing all her life.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” she said. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.” Her voice was detached.
Which made it that much harder to have any sympathy for her. She had done this. She had made her own proverbial bed by choosing my father over her own children. “Why did you keep my brothers a secret for all those years?”
“I was ashamed.”
I shook my head. Over the past months, I had learned a lot about the lies we tell, especially the ones we tell ourselves. They were so harmful and as Tate said, they always come back to bite you in the ass. “If you’d been honest from the beginning, it would have been okay.”
It wouldn’t have been okay. It had been a shitty thing to do, leaving her own sons, but she could have at least tried to make it up to them. She could have fought to be a part of their lives. She could have done a lot of things, starting with acting like she gave a shit.
“I can’t go back and fix the past. There were a lot of things I should have done differently. But I tried to forget Killian and Connor. I thought you would be a second chance to get it right.”
I laughed bitterly, wondering how it was that it had all come to this. “That didn’t quite work out, did it?”
“No, it didn’t.”
“You and Dad…you always made me feel like the third wheel. Like there wasn’t enough space in your relationship for me.Youdid that. Not him. You.”
She lifted her chin. “I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes sorry isn’t good enough.”
“I realize that. You still have a chance to do the right things. To live a good life. I don’t.”
It was in that moment, outside a federal penitentiary that I realized I was nothing like my mother. Or my father. I was my own person. I was far from perfect. I made mistakes, did stupid things, said words I regretted, but I would fight fiercely for the people I love. If I ever had kids, I would never abandon them. Not in a million years. I would never give them a reason to doubt my love.
But my mother would rather give up, run away and hide and pretend her children didn’t exist, rather than fight to have them in her life.
“Even after everything, and knowing what you do, you still love him?”
“Yes. And I always will.”
Now I knew the difference between a healthy relationship and a toxic one. I knew what it was like to be loved by a good man who wanted to keep me safe and protect me without trying to control me. A man who gave me wings to fly. Who suggested drag racing as a way to conquer my fears. He did that because he knew me and he understood me, and it had worked, just like he’d expected it would. Somehow, I had come to terms with the fact that I loved a man who had chosen a dangerous job. It was part of who he was. It was part of the reason I’d fallen for him in the first place. And life…it could be snatched away in a heartbeat so you’d damn well better enjoy every moment while you could. Because you just never knew what your future held.
Live hard, love hard, never give up. That was how I wanted to live my life.
It was time to go. Time to say goodbye. Time to get my life together and stop dwelling on the past but I wanted her to know all the things she was missing out on. “Ava and Connor got married. And Eden and Killian are expecting a baby in May.”
I watched her face, waiting for a reaction. Something. But I got nothing from her. Just a nod. That was it. A curt nod like I’d just given her the fucking weather report.
“Go back to your life, Keira. There’s nothing for you here.”
