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“Hi, Gabby. Is your mom joining us, today?”
“Nah, she couldn’t. Dad wanted her to go with him to Georgia. Uncle Torch and Aunt Katie were going. So, they got on their bikes and headed out. She said to tell you she loved you though.”
“That sounds good. I need to try and talk Jacob into a road trip soon. He’s been working too hard.”
I wait for Mom to get settled. The waiter comes and takes her order and while they’re talking I look around me. We’re eating outside on the patio in downtown London. Kentucky really is beautiful this time of year and I love this town. Gabby doesn’t live here, but she’s not too far away. We meet here most of the time. It’s not that I wouldn’t come to her, Mom and Dad know I would be safe traveling in Uncle Skull’s territory. It’s that Gabby likes being here, because she’s more apt to run into Dom. I don’t know what’s going to happen with those two, but whatever does…it will be messy.
“And what were you talking about when I showed up,” Mom questions, staring at me. I’m glad I have my sunglasses on. If I didn’t, I would be terrified she’d see the panic in my eyes.
“Nothing really.”
“Jasmine,” Mom warns, in that voice which all mothers seem to have down pat.
I sigh.
“It’s just a guy, Mom.”
Clearly that was the wrong thing to say, since I immediately see censure on her face.
“I worry about you, Jazz. You’re going to have to figure out what you want out of life soon.”
“You act like I’m a hundred years old, Mom,” I mutter with a sigh.
“No, but you’re too old to have no direction in life,” she argues.
“I have direction, you just don’t like it,” I respond, wishing I had never talked Luke into letting me come back.
“A direction other than quitting school and working at a dead-end job.”
“Mom—”
“And definitely not one that ends up getting you arrested for parking tickets and assaulting an officer.”
“And I’m out of here,” I growl, standing up.
“Jazz—”
“I’ll call you later, Gabby,” I mutter, grabbing my purse.
“Jazz don’t leave like this. I’m sorry, I just worry about you. You need to start making adult decisions. Your father and I won’t be around forever.”
I stop walking. I shouldn’t, but I do.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’re not going to be able to bail you out forever, Jazz,” Mom says, and I snap. I shouldn’t. I should hold it in, but sometimes you just can’t. I have in the past, but being with Luke has allowed me to feel a certain amount of freedom. He accepts me for who I am. Hell, he more than accepts me, he likes me.
“I didn’t ask you to bail me out the first time, Mom.”
“We couldn’t let you stay in jail—”
“You didn’t have a problem letting me stay that first night,” I remind her, and even though I didn’t ask them to bail me out, it hurt that no one bothered to.
Not even Hawk.
“Your father felt you needed to learn a lesson,” she says, and I ignore the pain that hits me.
“Well, you two can breathe easy. I did learn my lesson. I learned that I should have taken the baseball bat to Officer Dewayne’s balls and not just his damn squad car.”
“Jasmine,” Mom says, but I don’t want to listen. I just keep walking. Luke will have a cow, but I’ll call him and have him come pick me up later. Right now, I need to cool down.19GruntThere are a lot of things that I don’t understand about Jasmine and plenty of things that I’m just learning. Yet, as I walk up past the dam to find her sitting on the concrete spillway, the sadness on her face nearly guts me. I vow to find out every little thing I can about her to protect her from this kind of pain. As I get closer, the tears on her face are evident. She’s not sobbing like most women I’ve met do when they are upset. No, not my Red. She’s just staring out, like she’s looking at something that I can’t even begin to see, while silent tears are running unchecked down her face.
“How did you find me?” she asks, surprising me, because I didn’t think she had noticed me yet, and I did my best to keep my approach silent.
“You left your phone at the restaurant,” I tell her, holding it up in my hand. She turns to stare at me, and I have the strangest urge to kiss her tears from her face and make her promise me to never cry again. Instead, I take a few more steps, bridging the distance between us, but not touching her—at least not yet. “Gabby told me what happened and that you would probably be here.”
