Page 195 of Beautiful Scars

Mom lifts her chin. Then her eyebrows. “You’re going to pin it all on Cole.”

“No,” he shoots back. “No I’m not. I’m going to give you the opportunity to build bridges because youwantto, and not because you were forced into a corner. Put this behind us because it’s what’s best for Meisie. I’ll accept your deal, Helen.”

Her gaze darts to him. “My deal?” she practically spits out. “That deal expired a long—”

“Ma’am, your drink.”

Mom stops talking and leans back as the waiter sets her cup of coffee down on the table.

“Would you like to order?” he asks.

“No,” all three of us reply in unison.

“I’ll give you a few minutes,” the waiter says, not making eye contact as he walks away.

There’s silence for a beat, and then Mom opens her mouth, glaring at Kill like she wants to stab him in the eye with the silverware. Her hand’s even back on the table like she’s considering making a grab for the knife.

So I take her hand instead. Hold it. Squeeze it.

“Mom.”

She looks at me. Her face softens when she sees my expression. “Meisie?”

“Mom, I love him.” My throat closes up and I have to swallow to force out the words. “If we weren’t already married, I’d want to marry him.”

I try not to look at Kill, but I can see him from the corner of my eye anyway. He’s watching my mom, but with every word I can see him puffing up a little more. His jaw growing harder. His chin lifting.

Well, fuck, if he didn’t know by now how I feel, then he’s a damn idiot.

“Meisie,” Mom says. “No, please—”

“With your help, we can be a family,” I tell her. “You, me, Maddie...Cillian.”

She’s shaking her head, but at least she’s not voicing a protest.

“Mrs. Ford,” Kill says. “She’ll never be as safe anywhere else, with anyone else, as she will be with me. You know that.”

She stops shaking her head. Her eyes shift reluctantly to Kill. “How will it look?” she murmurs. “My daughter on the arm of a known criminal?”

“Isn’t my happiness more important than your politics?” I ask her, drawing her eyes back to me.

Mom drops her gaze, pulls her hand out of mine. “I can’t—”

“Let’s go see Maddie,” Kill says, taking his wallet out and tossing a note onto the table. It more than covers my soda water and Mom’s cup of coffee, but he doesn’t seem to even notice how much money he put down.

So we go see my daughter. Me, my mom, Kill. Anne-Marie already knew we were coming.

Maddie acts like Christmas has come early, completely unaware that at our family Christmas her grandmother and stepfather want to kill each other. She drew a picture of what she claims is a frog that she saw out in the garden, but looks more like something you scrape off the side of a road. That picture gets handed to all of us, and then she promptly climbs up Kill’s leg and latches on his hip, waving the drawing around like it’s a flag and she’s staking claim.

Which, I guess, is exactly what she was doing.

Mom takes it all in with a strange, far away look on her face.

This was Kill’s idea when we were working out the details of our plan last night in bed. Before he decided to go rogue. He’d said Maddie had taken a liking to him. I thought he was being full of himself because I’d just told him he fucked like a god, but nope—turns out he was right.

It feels like we’ve only just arrived, and someone’s ringing a bell for the kids to go eat lunch.

“One big happy family, hmm?” Mom says as we head outside to take in some sun while the kids eat. “You, my grandchild, and a drug dealer.”