Page 128 of Between Never and Forever
“Savannah, wait,” he says, and I whirl on him.
“She made my life hell, Levi. She put me in situations that fucked me up so thoroughly I’m still not recovered. You saidIwas the bad influence.I’mthe one who you’re worried about with Brynnlee. But my mom is okay? Are you forgetting who she is? Are you forgetting who fucking made me this way? How could you do this?”
He was supposed to be on my side. My enemy is his enemy. How could he befriend her?
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is,” I grind out. “Itisthat simple. She was a terrible mother. She made me miserable. I was abused, and she just let it happen because she cared more about getting high than she did about being a parent. She cared more about Terry than she did about her own kid. He would have raped me, and she would have let him do it. I know it. And you’ve just...”
How do I say it? He’s forgiven her for what she did to me? How could he forgive her? It wasn’t his place.
“You were supposed to be on my side,” I whisper through clenched teeth.
I don’t know which emotion is stronger, my anger or my sadness. Levi steps closer, until my back is against the car, and slowly spins my baseball cap around so the bill is at the back. Then he removes my sunglasses and sets them on the top of the car, so our eyes meet. He takes my hands in his and presses them to his chest. I can feel his steady heartbeat as he rests his forehead on mine.
“I have always been on your side. Always.”
“Then how could you do this?” I shove at his chest, but he holds firm. “How could you forgive her for what she did to me?”
“It’s not like that, Savannah.”
“Then what’s it like? Enlighten me. Because it definitely doesn’t look like you’re holding a grudge. It doesn’t look like you’re holding her accountable for what she did to me.”
Levi sighs, then pulls back and meets my eyes again, but he still doesn’t let go of my hands.
“I haven’t forgiven her. But she’s not the same person she was back then.”
I scoff and try to look away, but he keeps talking, insistent and hushed. I can feel him still looking at me, and like a magnet, I look back.
“When I hired her, it was because she was displaced from the storm and trying to stay sober. She’d been sober for a year before she lost the house. She had been turning things around, and then the hurricane—”
“No. I don’t care.”
I shove at him again, and this time he takes a step backward giving me space to seethe. My temples pound from the force of my scowl, my jaw aches. If I look, I bet I’ll find cuts in my palms from my nails because of how hard I was clenching my fists.
“You don’t get to humanize her. You can’t just make her a sympathetic character in my life story. She’s not. She’s not. She’s the villain. She’s the bad guy, Levi. And you just...you just...welcome her? You welcome her with open arms? You give her a job? You let her around your kid?”
Levi shakes his head.
“Don’t bring Brynn into this. Don’t judge my decisions as her parent.”
“How can I not? You saw how Sharon was with me. How many nights did you hold me because my house wasn’t safe? How many times did I cry myself to sleep in your bed? How many bruises do you remember seeing?”
“Savannah, please, just trust me when I say it’s different. She’s different. You spent all last night defending Torren, saying he’s not the person I think he is. Why can’t that be the case with y—”
“That’s not the same thing!”
“It is! Not everything is black and white, remember? Sharon is an addict. She was a terrible mother to you. She was a terrible person when she was high, and you deserved so much better. Those are facts. But it’s also fact that Terry got her addicted and kept her high, and he abused her and used her, and she was too fucked up to do anything about it. Your mom’s situation—not yours, but hers—exists in the gray space. And she,like you, still somehow managed to pull herself from rock fucking bottom. That deserves recognition.”
The silence stretches as we stare at each other. I hold, and I hold, and I hold, and then I crack.
“I can’t,” I whisper, closing my eyes against the sting of tears. “I can’t forgive her, Levi.”
I feel him close the distance once more, taking my hands back in his.
“I’m not asking you to. But she’s important to Brynn, and Brynn deserves people who love her. My mother hasn’t changed. And Jules’s parents...They’re worse. They’re terrible, and even Julianna didn’t want them around Brynn. But Sharon...Sharon cares about her. Sharon loves her. Brynn has already lost too much. She deserves more than just me.”
My heart sinks. I know he’s right.
