Page 110 of Forever Yours

Incensed, I shoved my hands inside my pockets to keep them from hurling something across the room. And then it hit me like a huge-ass light bulb over the head. Why I really came.

I had asked myself that question so many times over the last month. I had given various excuses to Dad and Jessi and Julien. Complete crap that glossed over the real reason I wanted to be there. I needed closure. I needed to look Mom in the eye one last time and say all the things I’d been too scared to say. And then finally,finally, I could walk away and never look back.

“Why do you hate me so much?”

She startled back. “I don’t hate you.”

I’d lived half my life feeling like my mother hated me because she couldn’t accept who I was.

We stared at each other.

“Please don’t do this. Not now. Not the day before I’m getting married,” she implored.

“You say you don’t hate me, yet you treat me like shit. You don’t want to see me or talk to me.”

I went to the closet and took Julien’s suit down and threw it back into the suitcase. I didn’t care that I had just gotten there or that Brad had footed the fare for the plane ticket to fly me to Charleston.

I zipped up the case and set it on its wheels.

“You don’t even want me here.”

“That’s not true.”

Her mouth snapped shut when I gave her a scathing look.

“You missed out on years of my life. You didn’t come to my graduation. You walked away like I wasnothing!” I yelled at her.

Mom gripped the diamond brooch on her dress. “You don’t understand.”

“Picking out flower arrangements or whatever excuse you made up and told Dad was more important than seeing if your child was okay. Do you not get how bad it was? How scaredI was?”

“The wedding planner needed me to make decisions about the flowers and—”

Wrong fucking thing to say.

I thumped an angry fist over my heart. “I was in the hospital after having the shit beat out of me! And for what? What reason would Justin give if you asked him?”

“Justin?”

I talked over her. “Because I’m gay? Because Marshall told him to? The same Marshall that used to kick the crap out of me every day at school? I would come home with black eyes and bruises. I was just a kid who needed someone to give a damn and tell him everything was going to be okay. A mom who kissed away his tears and told him that no matter what ugliness touched him, her love would burn brighter. Because that’s what mothers are supposed to do. Love their children!”

“Elijah, stop,” she begged, her face ravaged with what looked like despair.

Brad rushed into the room.

“What the hell is going on? I can hear you downstairs, which means the neighbors can hear you.”

I looked over at him, so different from Dad. Other than his money, I honestly couldn’t see what Mom saw in him. His smile was too fake. His face too botoxed. He had three ex-wives and a daughter he ignored.

But the joke was on Brad. My father was ten times the man he’d ever be.

“You must be so happy, getting the perfect rich husband and the perfect heterosexual stepson.” My anger took control of me as flashes from that night came back full force. The pain. The begging. Waking up strapped to an IV. “Did Justin explain why he was kicked out of CU?”

That was the one bit of information I was able to piece together from the snippets of stuff Fallon and Dad had said. That was why Fallon told me I didn’t have to look over my shoulder.

“What are you talking about?” Brad asked me.

“Guess he hasn’t told anyone yet. I wonder why that is.”

---