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‘I never settled for anything, love.’ Her expression became searching. ‘I accepted the situation. It was you who couldn’t accept it.’
Everything in me tightened. ‘Why should you have to accept it? You didn’t ask to be pregnant with me. I ruined your life.’
She snorted. ‘Don’t be so arrogant, Ash Evans. No one ruined my life. I made my own choices. No, they weren’t the best, but I stand by them.’ She gave me a penetrating look. ‘You were the best thing that ever happened to me, though.’
My chest felt sore and it ached at the look in her eyes. ‘I went to see Dad when I was thirteen,’ I said hoarsely. ‘We had no money and I thought—’
‘I know. I found out about that.’ An expression of sadness flickered through her grey eyes. ‘I’m sorry, love. But your father had his own issues and they had nothing to do with you.’ She crossed the distance suddenly and put a hand to my cheek, looking up into my eyes. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course I do.’
‘Oh, Ash,’ my mother murmured, seeing straight through the lie. ‘It wasn’t you. He didn’t want anything to do with either of us and he never told me why. But I let go of him a long time ago. And so should you. He was a selfish man who didn’t deserve to have you as a son.’
I felt nothing but instant negation. ‘How am I any better?’ I demanded, my voice rough and raw. ‘I’m just like him, Mum. I’m just as selfish. I hurt people. I hurt you.’ Ellie’s white, tear-stained face loomed large in my memory. ‘And I hurt someone else I shouldn’t.’
My mother’s hand against my cheek was warm, her gaze searching. ‘Who?’
‘A woman. A woman who didn’t deserve it.’
She searched my face. ‘The girl you were with in Dubai?’
‘How did you know about her?’
‘I read the news like everyone else.’ She gave me a censorious look. ‘You should have told me you had a girlfriend.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend.’
‘There’s only one reason you’re here in a rage. And that’s because you’re hurt. You always get angry when someone hurts you.’ My mother’s gaze narrowed. ‘What did she do to you?’
That was Mum. She’d always been protective of me.
I gritted my teeth, a strange hot feeling running through me. ‘She told me she loved me. And I...walked away.’
Mum’s eyes widened. ‘That’s it? That’s why you’re so angry? Because she told you she loved you?’
‘Because she didn’t mean it.’ I lifted my hand and shoved it through my hair, restlessness and anger winding through me. ‘I did a few nice things for her, that’s all.’
My mother was silent a long time. Then she said, ‘Then why are you so mad?’
You know why. Stop being so fucking stupid.
Something was clawing at my chest, an intense, painful pressure. It felt like an animal wanting to get out of a cage.
‘I—’ I couldn’t finish, my breathing too fast, the words getting stuck in my throat.
An unbearably gentle look entered Mum’s eyes. She was a tough old bird—as she liked to call herself—and she didn’t do affection readily. But it was there in her face now. All the love she tried, in her own way, to show me. ‘Ash Evans, are you in love?’
I opened my mouth to say no, of course I wasn’t. But the lie wouldn’t come. Just goddamn wouldn’t.
The pain in my chest wouldn’t go away either or the sight of Ellie’s tears. Or the sound of my own voice, furious and loud, echoing off the walls of the workshop, telling her I didn’t want what she’d so bravely offered me.
You hurt her, you bastard. After you swore you wouldn’t.
A violent heat poured through me, closely followed by something icy, and I stood there unable to move. Unable to speak.
But I had to. I had to say it aloud because I wasn’t a fucking coward, even though everything in me wanted to hurl it away.
‘Yes.’ The word came out of me cracked and broken. ‘Yes, I think... I think I am.’
