I roll my eyes. Her response tells me everything. “So he doesn’t. You really think he’s going to want you in here?”
He’d shut my mother down when she’d brought up payment. My hands curl into fists and I lift my chin to meet her eyes. I may have just been crying, wishing for… wishing for an escape, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let that come at my mother’s hands.
I’ll live and fight and thrive just to see this woman scorned. I will do it out of spite, even though I want to give up right now.
Her eyes narrow. “Zeus can do what he wants. I’ve been paid. Your mama can do as she pleases, consider this a little parting chat.”
“What did you get paid for?” I ask warily when she begins to move again. She is circling the bed I’d slept in. The room is luxe, just like all the rest in the club. But unlike the room I’d been in with Law, this one is smaller, cozier. The bed is at the back of the room beside a door that I guess is the bathroom. I am standing between the wall and the door, the bed blocking my exit and my mother is advancing.
I’m trapped.
Fuck.
“Same as your man,” she replies, still coming towards me.
My breath goes out of my body as surely as if she’d gut punched me. “What?” I whisper.
“I delivered you to Zeus and got paid a nice little nest egg that’ll take care of me for a very,verylong time. Just, like,” she waves a finger in the air, emphasizing the last two words, “your man.” Her voice is light and carefree. She is enjoying this. What kind of mother enjoys this? I feel my insides turn to ash and it is hard not to get sick when she goes on speaking. “You’re only worth the cash you bring in, Honey. Thank god you have my looks.”
I’ve heard that from her my entire life. She’s tried to push me into all sorts of performance arts to see if I was any good at them, if she could morph herself into a manager rather than a performer.“It’s time you got out there and worked. It’s your turn to earn a dollar. I’m tired.”The pressure for me to be a star atanythinghad been immense, until it was apparent I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t dance well enough to perform. Couldn’t sing anything but a sour note. I’d been shit at running lines.
She’d even tried to get me into modeling. But I’d been too nervous to hold poses. The first photoshoot she’d forced me into I’d thrown up in the middle of the set. The photographer had lost his shit and that had been that.
It had all been a wash and she never let me forget it.
“But you finally came through. I bet you fetched a pretty deal for that man of yours, too. He was a real looker.” She chuckles and runs her hands through her hair. I hear her tone change. Know where she is going when she starts to speak again, “Wedolook so much alike. I bet he’s lonely right now. You think he’d be up for-”
“You don’t touch him!” The words rip out of me faster and louder than I mean them to and I take a deep breath. “Stay away from him.He’s mine.” The last two words come out in a growl.
It isn’t true. Law isn’t mine.
He’s traded me for a stake in the club, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to make sense that I still think of him as mine, even if he never was.
He is mine as far as she is concerned. I’ll die before I let my mother breathe his air, because even if it’d all been a job to him, he’d given me far more good than she ever has. I’m used to being broken by the people that are supposed to care about me, but gettingsomegood is miles better than the shit my mother has forced down my throat.
“Oh, you’re feisty. That’s new.” She crosses her arms and pauses at the foot of the bed. “You never did like sharing. Such a selfish girl.” She clicks her tongue at me and shakes her head.
“Get out. I don’t want to talk about this.” I move away from her, back up until I hit the wall behind me, but my mother keeps right on walking towards me.
She tilts her head to the side, a mean smile, the smile I am most familiar with when it comes to my mother. It’s the smile I worry will appear on my face soon. The kind that doesn’t reach her eyes. The kind that is more a snarl than anything. Sharp and cutting. The smile I fear is a weapon. And she has it aimed squarely at me.
“You didn’t really think he loved you, did you?”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, youdid.” She sighs and wags a finger at me in chastisement. “Stupid girl. No one will ever love you. I never did, and if I never did, what chance do you have of making someone else fall in love with you, hmm?”
I shake my head, closing my eyes, focusing on forcing her words away from me. “You’re lying.”
“A lie?” A bitter laugh sounds. “I never loved you.Ever.”
I open them. “I know that,” I say, the truth coming as easy as anything. Her smile vanishes and my mother looks shocked at my ready acquiescence. She’s always told me I’m a shit liar. That she can tell right away from my eyes if I am lying or not. She has to see the truth in my eyes that are mirrors of her own.
I’m not lying.
I know she’s never loved me.
We stare at one another and after a beat she rocks back a foot. Suddenly she doesn't seem so big. I don’t feel so trapped. She doesn’t expect that. Good. Let her be surprised by something.
