Page 54 of Bad Mother

“Well, don’t push it. We need you at your best.”

I’m decidedly less than that.She said goodbye to Kat and headed for the door.

In her car, she glanced at herself in the rearview mirror and let out a soft moan. No wonder Kat had suggested she go home. Her eyes were bloodshot, with dark hollows beneath them. She looked beyond haggard. She turned the radio on low, finally allowing her brain to relax, ceasing to force it to make connections and put clues together. A brainwas a sort of muscle, too, she reminded herself. And sometimes it just needed rest.

Her thoughts turned to Gavin, as she somehow had known they would the moment she gave her mind free rein.That kiss.It had shaken her, confused her. And yes, it had confirmed for her that their chemistry still burned bright. She shut her eyes briefly as she stopped at a red light.

She’d hadpeace. She really had. She’d made a life in New York, immersed herself in a career she loved, and suddenly—as if from one day to the next—her entire world was shaky and unstable, and she had no idea where she should take cover.

She’d kissed the man who’d shattered her heart, and the man she was planning on marrying someday soon had donned a tuxedo to toast her bitter enemy.

The funny thing was, for years after Gavin had left her at the altar, she’d felt like she was cheating on him every time she so much as went on a coffee date with someone. It was terrible, and it was distressing, and it’d only deepened her pain. After a while, though, once the sting had lessened, she’d come to believe it was simply a by-product of the fact that he’d been her first love and her only love, up to that point. That feeling was simply due to the reality that she’d never been with anyone else, and she’d believed wholeheartedly she never would be. Yes, it was natural, and it would go away in time, she’d told herself. Because anything else was too heartbreaking to consider. And mostly, the feelinghadreceded. Brandon was the first man she’d dated without comparing everything he did to Gavin, without measuring her emotions against the way she’d felt with him. No, it wasn’t the same—Gavin had been her first everything, and it only made sense that her feelings for him had flamed with the fire of newness. But shewasattracted to Brandon. He was smart and confident, and he knew how to own a room. He looked at her like she was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen, and he made her feel wanted. She’d come to love him, perhaps not with the same scorching, all-consuming love that she’d once felt for Gavin, butmaybe that was better. Maybe it was stupid to give so much of yourself to one human being when human beings were so damn fallible.

What she hadn’t realized until she’d arrived back in Reno was that she was still so incredibly wounded. What Gavin had done had stabbed through muscle and bone and scratched her down to her soul. He’d been her soul mate and he’d left her without a word, and if your soul mate could do that to you, how could you ever fully trust anyone else again? How could you live in a world with no soft place to land, especially when theworldwas a place where men in positions of power put money and influence ahead of the innocence of children, where people threw rocks at beautiful creatures weaker than them, merely to watch them bleed? How?

He’d known better than anyone that she had abandonment issues, and yet he’d abandoned her nonetheless.

Your mother came to me with the letter and showed me what you were about to give up.

Her mother. The woman she’d assumed hadn’t given Sienna much more than a second’s thought at any given point in her life. And how did she reconcilethat?

A sound of distress moved up her throat, and her head throbbed.

Sienna pulled into her driveway and turned off the engine just as her phone rang.

Brandon.

What great timing he had.

She sighed, accepting the call. “Hey.”

“Hey there, I’m surprised you answered. I figured you’d be busy at work.”

“Then why did you call?”

A pause. “Because I wanted you to know I was thinking about you. Is something wrong?”

Sienna rubbed the back of her neck. Her headache had now made its way around her head. “I saw pictures of you at the gala, Brandon.”

Another pause and the loud squeak of a chair as though he was sitting up or leaning back. “Sienna—”

“You went to a fundraising event for the man who tried to cover up a sex crime? For the man who had my head on a platter and probably still does?”

“Sienna, I know how you feel. Listen, I didn’t want to go, okay, but my firm all but insisted.”

All but.

“Did you even push back, Brandon?”

“Yeah, of course. But there were a lot of big players there, and it was important we do some networking. Listen... Sienna, the polls are saying it’s likely the mayor’s going to win his reelection campaign, okay?” Her heart dropped before he went on. “That fact doesn’t make me happy, and I don’t like the politics involved in my job any more than you do, but the fact is, if I want to make partner at some point, I have to play the game.”

Play the game.

The game. The one where innocent children often lost.

Theverything she’d been unwilling to do. Did that make them incompatible in the end?

She felt as though she were standing on a chasm, one foot on either side of the widening split. And a distant voice she couldn’t quite identify was telling her she needed to choose one or the other because she couldn’t choose both.

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