Page 66 of Student Seduction
No.
He was lying. Surely he wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t go behind my back like that.
Tears sprang to my eyes.
“How could you, Aiden? You don’t understand. He left. Hechoseto leave. We don’t need him.”
He stood and moved to touch my forehead. I slapped his hand away with what little effort I could muster.
“Get out.”
“I’ll go,” he began, “because you need to rest. But I’ll be back to check on—”
“No. I mean get out of my life.” A sob escaped my throat. “You had no right to call him. No right.”
It was the last thing I said before I fell into the darkness once more.
I was pouring sweat when I stepped into my house Monday morning. I’ve been up all night in the garage attempting to sculpt some semblance of my feelings on what happened yesterday and failing miserably.
After I grabbed a bottle of water and downed it, I headed to mom’s room to check on her.
I heard voices, so I paused before entering and leaned my ear against the door.
“For Christ sakes,” a woman said evenly, “it’s not a death sentence, Lori. Unless you make it one. Which clearly, you’ve decided to do by wallowing in self-pity the rest of your life.”
Lori? I’d never heard anyone call my mother anything other than Mom or Lorraine.
Dad had mentioned hiring an in-home health nurse. A friend of theirs from high school. Katherine? Katrina? I couldn’t remember for sure.
“You wouldn’t understand.” My mother sounded as if she were sobbing. “You’ve always done exactly as you pleased, Kat. Some of us don’t have that luxury.”
“Bullshit,” I heard the woman practically hiss at my mom. My instinct was to run in and tell whoever this person was to back the hell off. But something stopped me. I remained frozen in place. “You made your choices. You chose pleasing your parents over what you really wanted. And what that resulted in was two children and the white picket fence with Mike. Now you’re sick, Mike’s gone, and your kids are skirting around you, terrified of upsetting you. It’s fucking ridiculous honestly, and I personally have no desire to sit around and watch you ruin your relationships with the few remaining people who give a damn about you.”
“You’re being paid to be here,” my mother said quietly.
“By Mike, who I might add, does care about you, Lor. But is what you had with him really anything in comparison to what you and I had?”
Holy fucking plot twist.
The words “easy, expected, and safe,” were uttered but my head began to spin and I suddenly felt dizzy and a little sick. A thousand invisible needles pricked at my face and I wondered if I was going into shock.
Had I heard right? I strained in an attempt to be sure.
“We were playing around, Kat. Experimenting. We both knew we couldn’t just stroll down the street hand in hand. Hell, it’s twenty years later and look what happened to Emersyn’s friend.”
“No,” I heard bitter anger seething in the woman’s tone. “You couldn’t. I could have taken the heat because I loved you. You couldn’t stand to think of your precious popularity being tarnished.”
“That’s not all is was,” my mother’s voice said softly. “I was afraid.”
“Look where that fear has gotten you,” Kat, whoever she was, huffed out. “Right here, in this bed, alone. Looking back on your life with regret about the chances you didn’t take.”
“You don’t know what it was like. After Lucy died, I was all my parents had left. They put all of their hopes and dreams on me. I had to have a successful career. I had to have the perfect house, husband, and grandchildren. I was afraid they’d never forgive me. I owed them.”
My aunt Lucy. My mother rarely ever spoke over her and it stung a little that she was talking to this random stranger about her.
When my mom was learning to drive, her older sister Lucy took her out for a practice joyride. Unfortunately, when going up a hill, the car stalled and they were hit by an oncoming pick up truck.
Lucy was killed on impact. My mother was lucky, or so I’d thought. She was barely injured, just a small scar across her right knee.
