Page 21 of Her Defiant Heart (Damaged Hearts 1)

“I guess.” I shrug, uncomfortable with how closely he’s watching me. I’m not used to someone paying attention to me like Rhett does. “I’ve always had to take care of myself.”

“No parents? You just magically appeared?” He’s teasing me, but it rubs me the wrong way.

“My father is dead,” I say bluntly. “And my mother left when I was very young.” I clear my throat, so much emotion forming there it’s difficult to speak. “Like, I-don’t-even-remember-her young. I was practically a baby.” I pause, checking on Rhett’s reaction and he’s enthralled. I continue. “My parents got into a terrible fight.”

“Did he hurt her? Did he ever hurt you?” Rhett breathes. His nostrils flare and his eyes blaze with anger. He’s squeezing my hand so tightly I have to carefully pull away from his grip before he accidently hurts me.

“No, no. Nothing physical.” I think of the few moments when my father did actually hit me, but it never amounted to anything. He was too scared, too weak. “My parents hurt each other with words. Or at least, my mother hurt my father with words. He claims he never did anything wrong.”

He had to have, though. No one’s perfect. And while it still hurts that he’s gone, and his pain has become my pain, I know he was in the wrong sometimes too.

But my mother was worse. She never came back.

“Emotional abuse can be more painful than physical,” Rhett says, and I’m tempted to scream at him, What do you know about abuse? But I don’t.

“Words hurt.” I offer up a grimace of a smile. “And I guess the words my parents tossed at each other that one particular night were spectacularly painful. My mother packed up a few things and left.” Another pause, to let my words really sink in. “She never came back.”

“Never?” Rhett sounds so doubtful.

I slowly shake my head. “I haven’t seen her in twenty years.”

“She’s never tried to find you?”

“No.” My voice is sharp and I clear my throat again. “Never.”

“Have you tried to look her up? Seems like anyone can be found through a Google search these days.”

“Oh, I’ve tried, b

ut I can’t find her. There’s no trace of her.” His question, the skeptical expression on his face, he’s making me feel stupid. Who wouldn’t try to find her long-lost mother via Google? “I believe she changed her name.”

“What’s her name?”

Nerves make my stomach flutter and twitch, the consumed wine suddenly threatening to rise. Has she ever admitted her true name to her current husband? Her stepson? Her new family? “Why does it matter what her name was? That’s not her name now.”

“Maybe I could help you.” He leans forward, full of eagerness. “I could do some extensive searches, maybe even hire a private detective—”

I hold up my hand to stop him from saying anything else. “I don’t want to find her.”

Rhett frowns. “But you just said you tried to find her.”

“Years ago, in my early teens, I was desperate to find her. She became almost…mythical to me, and I thought she could, I don’t know, rescue me. Like I’m living in some sort of wretched fairytale and I need my long-lost mama to save my life.” I’m trying to make a joke, but Rhett’s not even cracking a smile. “But after all the searching and coming up with nothing, I realized she doesn’t want to be found. Not by me, not by anyone.”

“Do you think she scrubbed her name?”

Now I’m frowning. “What do you mean?”

“You can scrub your identity from the Internet. Pay someone to get rid of any and all references about you until…poof.” Rhett snaps his fingers. “You don’t exist anymore.”

Oh. Right. I know about this, considered doing it myself, not that I had much of an Internet footprint. With no phone and no real social media trail, Jennifer Fanelli didn’t have much of an existence. I didn’t participate in any activities at school, I had no real friends…yeah. I’m like a ghost.

“That’s probably what she did.” With a sigh, I grab my wineglass and drain it. It’s like I don’t even care any longer. The “I need to be on my best behavior so he’ll like me” veneer has been completely washed off by wine.

There’s no reeling it back either. Even though I know I should. The panic races through my veins as I contemplate the nearly empty wine bottle sitting in the middle of the table. I want to lunge for it, bring the bottle to my lips and drink it dry. I know I need to restrain myself and play my part, but I can’t. The alcohol has made me melancholy, the fact that this boy knows my mother yet we sit here and pretend that she’s this fuzzy myth…

It’s fucking with my head. My emotions.

My heart.

---