Page 60 of Temptress

“Oh, Sloane,” she said on a sigh of disappointment, her words a contradiction to the soothing way she dragged her hand over my hair almost tenderly as she held me. “I told you this would happen, didn’t I?” I sat up straight and looked at her in bewilderment, but she wasn’t done. “I warned you over and over that men were good for nothing, but you never listened.” She rolled her hand in my direction. “Now look at you. Instead of listening, you let yourself get sucked in, and sure enough, you got hurt.” She shook her head andtsked. “How could you be so stupid?”

Just like that, something inside of me snapped. I shoved up from the couch, but instead of biting my tongue like I always did, I opened my mouth and let the words flow, saying everything I’d ever wanted to say to my mother but was too scared. I pushed that misguided sense of obligation aside, and for the first time, I told the woman who’d broken my heart more than any other person on the planet exactly how I felt.

“You know what, Mom? You’re a coward.”

Her chin jerked back, her eyes widening in shock. “What did you just say to me?”

“You heard me. You’re a coward. That’s always been your problem. For as long as I can remember, you’ve always viewed love as a weakness. The truth is, it takes strength to love someone. Whether it’s a friend or a man or your own fuckingdaughter, loving a person doesn’t mean you’re weak. It takes bravery to put your heart on the line like that, to risk you could be hurt.

“You got your heart broken byoneman, and after that, you shut yourself off from loving anyone, even me,” I said with a caustic laugh. “Instead of pulling yourself up and finding a way to move on, you let that heartbreak morph into bitterness, and that’s infected every single part of your life. You let that bitterness fester and rot until it turned you into an unhappy shell of a person. Tell me, Mom, how’s that worked out for you so far? You could have made the choice years ago to let go of the pain and try again, but you let fear stop you, and what kind of life have you lived?”

I threw my arms out, looking around her sad house that didn’t hold a single happy memory for her.

“You want to sit there and call me stupid for falling in love with someone, go ahead. But I’m not going to let your bitterness affect my life any longer. I’m not going to give up on love or happiness. I’m going to keep trying. And, sure, maybe I’ll get hurt a few more times before I finally find someone who loves me back, but it’ll be worth it, because at the end of my life, I’ll be able to look back proudly and say I was brave enough to take chances. When that day comes for you, what are you going to have to show for it?”

I whipped around and started for the door, snatching up my purse along the way. Once I had it opened, I turned around and looked at the woman sitting on the couch, curled into herself as she stared up at me with wide, watery eyes.

“I love you, Mom. You haven’t done much to deserve it, and you’ve hurt me more than any man ever could. And I still love you. But I’m telling you right now, if you can’t find a way to see yourself out of that darkness and meet me here in the light, you’re going to lose me for good. Because I deserve to be loved. And I’m done settling for anything less.

With that, I walked out, pulling the door closed behind me. Even as the tears spilled down my face as I climbed in my car and started it up, I felt a weight lift off my chest.

* * *

I took that high I’d been riding since sticking up for myself earlier and channeled it into my gardening. I’d neglected my poor flowerbeds for too long now, and they were paying the price for it.

With my gloves in place and my earbuds cranking out some of my favorite songs on repeat, I got to work tearing out the weeds that thought they could spring up and try to choke out my pretty flowers. I worked as the sun beat down on me, causing a fine sweat to bead across my hairline.

By the time my aching back forced me to take a break, I had a whole pile of pulled weeds at my side and a sense of accomplishment in my chest. I went inside to grab a bottle of water and had just guzzled down half of it when my cellphone rang.

I pulled the phone from my back pocked and swiped the screen without paying much attention “Hello?”

“Hello, am I speaking with Sloane Chambers?”

Something about the authoritative tone of the woman’s voice on the other end gave me pause, causing the tiny hairs on my arms to stand on end. “Yes.”

“Ms. Chambers, my name is Sylvia Dart from the Valley Pines assisted living center. I’m calling because you are listed as the emergency contact for Lucille Kleiner.”

Just like that, my entire body went numb, and I could barely hear over the steady whoosh of blood in my ears.

“Is—Is Lucille okay?”

When the woman on the other line answered, I felt like the ground had just been ripped out from under my feet.

“I’m afraid not.”

29

SILAS

Iscanned the monitors in the security office, pretending like I was doing my job, but the truth was, I was looking for one person in particular. I’d been waiting for Sloane to show up at Whiskey Dolls for rehearsal, but the minutes kept ticking by with no sign of her.

The longer I waited, the more anxious I grew. Since my talk with Darcy, in which my baby girl had managed to help me pull my head out of my ass, I’d been wracking my brain trying to find a way that I could make things right with Sloane.

I spent the majority of the day before watching her driveway, waiting for her car to pull up, but it never did. Now I was stalking the monitors, hoping to catch her at work, because I couldn’t go another day without seeing her. I missed Sloane like I would miss a limb. I wasn’t whole without her. I missed that sassy attitude she threw at me when I pushed the right buttons, and that sweet smile that lit up her beautiful face every time she saw me. I missed holding her in my arms while we lay naked in bed together, her head tucked perfectly beneath my chin because she fit me in a way no one else ever had.

I had to find a way to fix this, because now that I knew what true happiness was, I knew there was no way I could go the rest of my life living without it. She’d given me a taste of something spectacular, and I needed to get it back. But what was more, I needed to show her I could give her the same thing.

I caught Asher coming out of the rehearsal studio and moved fast to catch her. Calling her name, I knew the second she turned to look at me over her shoulder, Sloane had filled her in over everything that had happened, because the glare she was shooting was vicious enough to make the paint peel off the walls.

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