Page 30 of The Wrong Reciprocation

"I woke up the day of the trip and felt it on me like the weighted vests I wear when I train. I thought I was just tired. These last couple of weeks have been…rough, with…everything. As I was getting ready, my mother called me. She said she had a dream I was possessed and told me to take a cleansing bath and pray. She didn’t want me to come on this trip—was adamantly against it from the moment I told her about it. Assuring her that Rafe would be with me didn’t help convince her it would be okay. The night before my flight she called me and prayed for me. Said she knew I would do what I wanted so the least she could do was pray for my heart and my mind.”

Lowering his head until they met eyes once more, he shrugged. "Against my better judgement, I came here because I wanted to be near you. Because even if we couldn't be together anymore, the proximity was enough for me." He tried to take a step back but Twyla still had him in a vice grip.

The proximity was enough for me.

Those words were an indictment, stabbing her in the chest and slashing at her excuses.

"Let me go, Twyla."

Those four words stole the breath from her lungs, leaving her unable to protest or even cry harder. All she could do was as he commanded, and as soon as she loosened her grip, he backed away from her. She sat back on her haunches, eyes trained on his face, waiting for what was next. The ball was in his court. It had to be, after everything.

Maybe the worse of it all was that his own eyes weren’t hard as they stared back at her. His features weren’t pinched in anger; they were open and exposed—drawn with undeniable hurt.

She had hurt him.

Selfish, calculating, manipulative.

That’s how he described her and of course she’d hurt him when that had been her behavior over the past five days.

Was it only the past five days though?

The question niggled at the front of her brain, growing in size, spreading like wildfire until it had overtaken every other thought she possessed in that moment. She stared at him, eyes red and wet, silently begging him not to leave. Silently—mentally—willing him to stay and listen and understand and forgive her.

Oh.

And there it was. Her breath hitched, chest heaved as she realized what she’d just done. What she’d just attempted after everything. Her fingers twitched with the desire to reach out to him, to hold him tight while she apologized again, but she curled them into fists and shook her head. She was everything he’d named and more and the last thing she deserved in that moment was for him to hear her out and offer her grace.

He kept his eyes on her as he backed away as if she were a wild animal that couldn’t be trusted to give his back to. When he reached the door, he turned and left the room without sparing her another glance or a final word. She’d been anticipating his departure from the moment he’d asserted that she knew, and still watching him leave shredded her apart. All she could do was crumple onto the floor like a used and discarded tissue and cry her heart out.

She stayed that way until she felt slender arms wrap around her back and heard Vanessa whisper in her ear that she would be okay. She insisted that everything would be okay all while helping Twyla onto her feet and leading her out of that bedroom. Over the course of Twyla and Arturo’s conversation, everyone had found their way into the great room—likely in an attempt to listen to the conversation happening on the other side of the door. And even while passing every member of her family and knowing they’d had a front row seat to her greatest embarrassment, Twyla was too devastated to feel ashamed. She was in this predicament now because of them and caring about their opinions was something she didn’t have it in her to do.

Twyla cried the entire time that she and Vanessa repacked their bags. She cried while ordering the rideshare to take them to the airport. She cried while Vanessa ran interference as her Aunt Mable tried to convince them to stay as they headed to the front. And she cried as Nelson loaded their bags into the car and hugged her tight to him.

“I’m going to let you have this,” he whispered in her ear, “because this shit is a lot.” She swallowed audibly, face wet and splotchy. “But know that you’ll be seeing me when I get home next week.”

She nodded. All Nelson knew is Twyla thought that she’d been fucking her uncle, and while that was positively bizarre, it wasn’t the craziest part of the trip. The other details made the situation stickier than she could explain, and for that, she’d keep everything else herself. With a final nod, she accepted his kiss to her temple and climbed into the car after Vanessa. As she made her way to the airline counter prepared to pay whatever it cost to secure a seat on the next flight back to Houston, she wiped her face and decided then and there that changes needed to be made in her life. It wasn’t until she was squeezed into a middle seat between Vanessa and a strange woman who kept smelling her fingers, that Twyla really considered how much she’d fucked her life up.

None of this was fair.

14

AND THEN SOME

Twyla was okay. Mostly.

Bruised but not broken.

Beat up, but not beat down.

Down, but not out.

At least that’s what she told herself. A month had passed since that failure of a family trip and in those four days before her mother returned home, Twyla had completely upended her life. She’d signed a lease on a one-bedroom-condo in the mid-rise residential building down the street from her job. The Horizon at Clover was owned by Bright Horizons Academy and offered discounted rent to full-time employees who presented their contracts at signing. Even before the discount, Twyla would be paying less for her own apartment than what she’d spent covering half of the rent plus utilities at the townhouse she shared with her mother. Not only was this decision good for her mental health, it was great for her bank account. Before she called their landlord and removed herself from the lease, she used her mother’s tax return and did the math to make sure the other woman could afford the unit on her own. Even though she was angry with that lady, she didn’t want her to be ass-out, to Sierra’s immense disappointment.

After securing housing, Twyla called an emergency meeting of her girlfriends to help her pack up her things and get them moved over. Her girls brought their men, and the men brought friends so Twyla was moved in one day without having to lift a single box. With the exception of Twyla’s bedroom set, Linda had chosen all of the furniture despite it not really being Twyla’s style, so she was glad to leave all of that behind. By the time the trip ended Twyla had changed her address with the post office and updated her voter registration.

She’d gone back and forth with herself over whether she should let her mother know before she returned home but eventually settled on saying nothing. She didn’t call her or shoot her text to give her a heads up. Instead, she checked the flight information to see when her family landed and sat on the floor in her living room, nervously tapping her foot against the floor as she timed the trip from Hobby to their neighborhood in the east end.

With the newfound peace she had living on her own, Twyla was finally able to process everything. She spent the next few weeks deciding on her next move with the man who hadn’t left the forefront of her mind since the day she’d met him. After explaining the entire situation, Twyla listened intently as her friends had encouraged her to give him time. Well, Sierra fussed her out first, then told her to leave him alone and let him come to her when he was ready.