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My eyes narrowed, wishing all kinds of painful things on Marcus before grabbing my purse off the rack. Mack insisted that I always keep cash for emergencies, so I dug a few bills out and shoved them into Marcus’s chest.
Flipping through the bills, Marcus nodded.
“Your generosity earned you another two weeks, but that’s it, Skylar. Give me my daughter for Spring Break, or I will sing like a canary.”
“Have Camdyn home by five o’clock, or you won’t live to have that conversation,” I warned.
“Ouch. You’d really do that to your daughter. Imagine how heartbroken she’d be if something happened to her dear ‘ole dad.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm, which only frustrated me more.
“Not as heartbroken as you think.” I grabbed the door and shoved it into Marcus, urging him to get the fuck out.
“Have a good day, Skylar.”
Pushing the door shut, I rested my back against it, telling my brain to take deep breaths. I held myself together in front of Marcus, but he wasn’t bluffing.
“Mack seems like the kind of guy who would handle it if he knew Marcus was giving you problems.” Mom’s voice lifted my head as my eyes grew, and I realized she’d overheard our conversation.
“Mom, please.”
“Don’t Mom please me, Skylar. What does he have on you? If you don’t want to tell Mack about it, it has to be something big.”
“Don’t you have something else to do?” I asked, trying to deflect because discussing my problems with Adria only added to my stress.
“No, because my grandbaby is gone, so that only leaves us.”
“What a treat,” I replied sarcastically, rolling my eyes.
“I’m full of life experience. Try me,” Mom suggested, tooting her own horn. She didn’t lie there, but there was never a point in my life where I wanted to be like my mother. If anything, watching her was a cautionary tale, yet I still found myself following in her footsteps.
Allowing men to mistreat me.
Exposing Cam to the same bullshit I wished she protected us from.
Doing things I wasn’t proud of under the guise of survival.
Tamia and I had witnessed more than we should’ve all because Adria ranked male attention above everything. Even being a mother. I wanted to tell Adria how I hated how she got so excited about her dates but never put that energy into spending time with us. Or how low and broken I felt when she put me out because her boyfriend at the time didn’t like my attitude. He was paying the bills, so she let him call the shots even though I was only a teenager. I wanted to tell her so many things, but a warning voice whispered in my head to zip my lips.
“Skylar, what is going on? Talk to me,” she urged, watching me wipe my tears with my hand.
“Talking to you has never helped anything.”
The contempt from my deep, throaty response physically smacked Adria.
“Okay, little girl, you need to watch yourself. Whatever you and Marcus are going through has nothing to do with me.”
I laughed through my tears, trying so hard to avoid another pointless heart-to-heart. I needed to focus on the one relationship I could save. That was my engagement to Mack.
“You are the reason I keep looking for love in all the wrong places. I followed in your footsteps, looking for a man to care for me because that’s all I knew. I let him Marcus me because I thought that’s what men do. It has everything to do with you!” The volcano that I could usually control became too much to tame and erupted.
It was evident that Mom hadn’t considered how her poor choices affected us until now. She was looking at me with watery eyes, her mouth slightly ajar, and her head cocked to the side.
Adria’s voice cracked, trying to get her explanation out.
“I did what I had to do to care for you and your sister!”
“Well, I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
“Very astute observation standing in this mansion with luxury cars lining the driveway. I don’t see you getting up to go to work every day, and I know damn well you’re not paying any bills.”
