Page 61 of Take What Hurts

The glimmer in her mother’s eyes grew, and the corner of her mouth pulled up in a smirk. “Was it worth it?”

Mackenzie glared at her mother through the slits her eyes had become. “What?” She spat the word and, irritation cresting, shuffled from foot to foot. “What are you talking about?”

Her mother’s eyes flashed, and Mackenzie clutched the handle on the door, knuckles white against the bronze. “Ignoring my messages. Throwing me out of here in front of that—” Her mother’s face worked furiously around the words that wanted to escape, cheeks pulling, teeth gnashing with effort. Mackenzie watched in abject fascination as her mother regained control. The only trace of the lingering aggravation was the light mottling on her neck. “Reneging on our agreement.” She let out a long exhale, voice returning to calculated calm as she smiled. “A few well-timed words to Anna, my wonderful daughter’s client, at the recent Seattle Entrepreneurs Gala, about how happy she is with her lesbian partner? Elliott, I think is her name? Also a lawyer, I think.” Her mother smiled, baring her teeth as she picked at a tuft of lint on her coat. “You really should keep your files somewhere other than on the dining room table.” Her mouth pressed into an ugly grimace. “I warned you about living like a slob.” She gritted her teeth, lines of abject contempt creasing the skin around her eyes. “So I ask again, was it worth it?”

Mackenzie’s thoughts moved like fucking molasses, fingers drumming against the handle on the door. “Wh—” And the word died in her throat as she watched her mother’s face twist, chin lifting as she glared at Mackenzie, the smirk that had pulled at her lips broadening. And Mackenzie’s vision tilted, eyes unfocused on the white of her mother’s teeth bared in victory.

The cold sweat started at the nape of Mackenzie’s neck before the rest of her body prickled with it. Body sagging against the door, her brain erupted with cataclysmic clarity as she worked to keep herself upright.

The witness. To the complaint. That Sunday she had busted into the apartment? That one fucking time Elliott happened to be there? Her thoughts sped on a reel until Mackenzie was dizzy with them, until she realized it didn’t matter—the details—what she knew. Her mother, ever the opportunist, had concocted the story that had suited her.

Vision white around the edges, Mackenzie wrenched herself stiffly upright and clenched a fist, nails certainly leaving half moons in the skin of her palm. Blinking rapidly to keep welling tears at bay, she ran her tongue over her teeth and summoned every ounce of cool restraint. She would not allow her mother any satisfaction from this interaction.

Because this was the moment where she would take this thing that hurt and hurt and hurt and would finally, mercifully, be finished. Where she would hack away the final part of the life before so she could go in chase of the life she’d been looking for in every single wrong place and that had found her in the middle of a fucking airport of all places.

Mackenzie, nostrils flaring, shuddered in another burning breath and summoned the calm up from the depths of her abdomen once more. “This is over.” She closed her eyes, unable to quell the surging bile in her stomach while looking at the woman in front of her. Who had birthed her. Raised her. “Truly.” She breathed, eyes opening onto her mother’s twisted face. “We are done. I don’t ever want to see you—” She bit out the words her mangled brain served to her as coherently as she could. “Hear from you. Anything. Ever again.” She paused, and her mother’s eyes flashed dangerously.

Once upon a time, she would have capitulated. Apologized. Smoothed things over. Now all she registered was the ache of pity rising in her throat as the words—long thought, long swallowed—rolled out of her like thunder. “I am not responsible for your happiness. Nor am I to blame for how your marriage ended. I was just a baby, and then I was a child, and a teenager. I didn’t ask for any of this—” Her voice grew steadily louder, the words painfully clarifying. “Just for you to love me.” Mackenzie clocked the way her mother’s eyes twitched as though she’d barely stopped them from rolling, and, despite the pang of disbelief and the confirmation that there would be no acceptable resolution for either of them from this conversation—Mackenzie kept going. “Do you know how it feels? To just be—be tolerated”—she choked on the word—“like that? By your own mother? Just tolerated long enough until I was old enough to bankroll your lifestyle? Imagine being raised to become, effectively, an ATM.” She eased out a mirthless laugh. “Truly, Mother, we are finished. Thirty-three years late, but the error you so regret is finally put to rights. Congratulations.”

Shoulders achingly rigid, she stepped over the threshold, pulling the door to her apartment closed behind her. Brushing her way past her mother, she dragged her other arm into the coat and pushed through the fire door to the stairwell, ignoring the way her mother’s voice, bitter and loud in the silence of the hall, shouted for her to stop.

THIRTY-FOUR

ELLIOTT

Elliott hit pause on the episode of Parks and Recreation she was binging from the comfort of her bed and frowned, listening for the banging she thought she’d heard. Just as she’d decided she’d imagined it, it started again. Definitely banging on her front door.

She stared at the television and absently dug a finger into her temple, where the tension headache had built unchecked on her walk home. Maybe if she ignored the door, whoever it was would go away. Immediately when the thought occurred to her, the banging started again. With a sigh, she peeled herself out from under the comforter and padded down the hall. Standing at the door and looking through the peephole, a sting of hurt lanced through her at the sight of a sweating, wide-eyed Mackenzie.

Because Mackenzie should have mentioned, even in the vaguest of terms, that Anna had threatened her. The churning in Elliott’s stomach was nauseating. If she’d had even an inkling that Anna had been sniffing around, the whole thing could have been avoided with a note to security, and Elliott wouldn’t be standing here with a cut-up face, a bruised throat, a blistering headache, and a rising level of embarrassment over the fact that the person she’d given herself to entirely hadn’t even thought to warn her about a threat made by a person whom they both believed to be a psychopath.

She needed a minute and was contemplating walking away when⁠—

“I know you’re in there.” A pause, and Elliott’s head dropped, staring at the rainbow doormat—one of the only colorful items in her apartment, much to her mother’s repeated disappointment. “Elliott, please.” It was barely audible through the door, but the desperation latched on to Elliott’s heartstrings and tugged.

Sighing, Elliott pulled the door open.

“Thank god, I was so worr⁠—”

It happened like a record scratch. Mackenzie’s face, midway through what Elliott was sure was the beginning of a dressing down, transformed from desperate to pissed, and then the expression was unreadable, half covered by the hands that shot up to cover her mouth. She stepped forward quickly, hands coming away from her own face and reaching for Elliott’s. Elliott took a step back, hand out in front of her, and shot Mackenzie a look. “Don’t.”

Mackenzie stopped dead, eyes filling with tears, and despite the hurt that had swelled into a throbbing ache in her limbs, Elliott’s traitorous hands itched to hold Mackenzie. Refraining, she stood stiffly at the threshold, knuckles tight on the door handle.

“Elliott. Your neck, your face⁠—”

Elliott swallowed hard and bit at the inside of her cheek.

“What happened? Why didn’t you call me back or send me a proper response or⁠—”

“Mackenzie,” Elliott snapped, folding her arms across her chest, which was threatening to pull apart. “Why didn’t you tell me about Anna?”

“How do you⁠—”

“How do I know?” Elliott threw her hands up in the air, then grabbed Mackenzie around her upper arm and pulled her through the door. She wasn’t about to have this conversation in the hall, with her elderly neighbor, Ida, likely listening at her own door. “Jesus, Mackenzie, who do you think did this?” she hissed, slapping her hand roughly against the claw marks on her own cheek as she fell onto her sofa.

Mackenzie’s face drained of blood, and Elliott pulled her down onto the sofa. “Anna?” Mackenzie swallowed weakly. “Anna did that?”

Elliott clenched her fists on her knees, knuckles cracking. “Yeah.” The headache throbbed in her temples. Almost blind with it, she clenched her teeth. “She came to my fucking office, launched herself over the desk at me, and had her hands around my fucking throat. Mattias had to pull her off me.” Elliott let out a harsh breath and winced at the way it made her neck ache. Ignoring how Mackenzie reached for her, she exploded off the couch and paced the space between the coffee table and the TV. “Why didn’t you fucking tell me about what she said? We—” Elliott swallowed around the thickness in her throat and forced the words out of her mouth. “Fuck, Mackenzie, we spent the weekend and then some together. Did stuff together that I thought meant more to you—would have warranted—fuck!” Chest heaving and temples with their own fucking heartbeat, she forced herself to stop, then went to the highest cupboard in the kitchen for the bottle of Advil.