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Although that wasn’t even fair. Hearing Hannah’s name didn’t cause so much as a pang. The shitty part of it was, not only could Sam not remember why they’d gotten divorced, he couldn’t even remember why they’d gotten married in the first place. And he wasn’t even sure either reason mattered. He and Hannah had been wrong for each other from the very first minute, and by the end, they’d both known it.
Helena sniffed. “You can’t blame her for leaving you. If you were half as inattentive a husband as you are a son—”
Sam flopped back onto the couch. “Let’s have it, Mom. Just get it alllll out now. I’m listening.”
She angrily twisted the cap off a bottle of tonic. There was no fizzing noise, and certainly no ice, but she didn’t seem to care or notice as she dumped a splash into her glass. “All I’m saying is that it would be nice to see you once in a while.”
“Because you seem so happy I’m here.”
She returned to her recliner and studied him, and not for the first time he wondered why she disliked her only son so much. He’d like to think it was resentment over his father’s having knocked her up and disappeared. Getting stuck with a kid she didn’t want might turn even a nice woman a little bitter, and Helena Compton wasn’t a nice woman.
But blaming a man he’d never met seemed like a cop-out, and after a childhood of watching his mother blame every other person for her situation, Sam was big on responsibility for one’s lot in life.
Which meant his mother’s dislike of him was his failing.
But on days like today, he just couldn’t seem to care.
“So, you seeing anyone else?” she asked after several minutes of silence.
Sam sat up with a sigh, reaching out a hand to fiddle with the remote on the coffee table. Small talk. He could do this. “I was. Angela. Didn’t work out.”
“How come?”
Because a certain black-haired, blue-eyed bombshell sabotaged it by putting genital-wart pamphlets into my glove box, which Angela found when she was looking for a napkin.
“Just didn’t work out,” he snapped.
“Why?”
Really? The woman had six failed marriages under her belt, and she didn’t understand that sometimes—most of the time—relationships didn’t work.
She jabbed her cigarette in his direction. “I bet this Angela figured it out.”
Don’t bring up Riley. Don’t bring up Riley.
“Figured what out?” he asked tersely.
“That you’re hung up on that McKenna whore.”
Sam froze even though he’d been ready for it. His mother knew his one weak spot and never ever failed to exploit it. His fingers clenched hard on the TV remote he’d been fiddling with. “Don’t. Don’t you dare.”
His mother sniffed and took a sip of her drink. “Riley was a nice-enough girl once, but she writes trash, Sam. One doesn’t get that kind of sexual experience without plenty of leg spreading.”
Sam saw red. “She could be the biggest name in porn, and I wouldn’t let you talk about Riley that way.”
Helena gave a mean little smile. “Like I said. Hung up on her.”
Sam was on his feet and across the room in a second, pulling on his jacket. “I’ve told you a thousand times, I won’t discuss Riley with you.”
“Right, right, I always forget that we Comptons aren’t fit to breathe her name.”
Sam paused only briefly. “You know, Mom, for once I think we agree on something.”
He let the door slam behind him.
Chapter Three
“Men are dogs. We already knew this, Ri.”
