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“Might have to wait until you meet your visitor.” There’s a rare sound of glee in Caroline’s voice and when I look up, I cease breathing.
The last person I expected to find standing in my apartment stares at me with puffy eyes, a downward expression, and silent awkwardness.
“Gwyneth,” I whisper, still not believing my eyes.
She tugs on her sweater, shifts her feet, and murmurs back, “Hi.”
Her voice is so much softer than mine, too feminine and small. She even looks like it now, broken, distressed, and the urge to destroy whoever caused her that boils in my blood with the harshness of a volcano.
“I’m going to bring some tea and cake,” Caroline announces with delight, shoving Gwen inside with a less than subtle push.
My phone nearly falls to the floor and I realize that I still have Kingsley’s dirty texts up. I quickly throw it in the drawer and stand, my spine straight. “What are you doing here? I mean, no, it’s not that I don’t want you here, but the fact that you came to my apartment brings up questions. Of course, I don’t mean to question you, but…”
Jesus. I trail off when her chin trembles.Damn it,me. I finally have my daughter visiting me and I go blurting like a flustered five-year-old.
Gwen fingers her sweater, staring at me from under her lashes. “Are you badly hurt?”
Oh, that’s why she came. She must’ve heard from Kingsley. It’s then I realize she must have noticed my bruises, too, and this isn’t a state I want to her to see me in.
“No, I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“They’re just bruises. They’ll heal.”
Her chin trembles again and she hangs her head. “I’m so sorry.”
I slowly approach her, my heart beating louder with each step. I speak low, afraid a higher range will have her bolting. “What for?”
“For what Dad did. I dislike that side of him.”
“Wait…what?”
She lifts her head, a tear clinging to her lashes. “Dad hurt you because you didn’t leave like he told you to. He also did that to Nate, when he refused to let me go.”
“Gwen, no. Kingsley didn’t do this to me. In fact, he was the one who helped me and nursed me back to health. If he hadn’t, God knows what hole I’d be in right now.” I’m prideful, but that doesn’t mean I’d deny what he did for me. A part of me holds so much gratitude to him, I have no idea how to express it.
My daughter’s face gets frozen in an odd mixture of relief and horror, then she gasps. “He really did nothing?”
I shake my head, believing it myself. Kingsley is a lot of things, but subhuman is not one of them.
“Oh my God.” She starts shaking like a leaf, the tear finally sliding down her cheek. “I called him a monster and other names and lashed out at him for hurting my mother after I finally found her.”
My heart literally skips a beat. It doesn’t matter if she’s talking about me in the third person, but she indirectly admitted that I’m her mother.
Her. Mother.
“He was so mad, like worse than when he deals with Susan mad,” she whispers more to herself than to me. “What if he never forgives me?”
The obvious distress chatters her teeth and puts a halt to my celebratory dance.
She’s in pain, and while I’m immune to my own pain, hers hits differently.
Hers protrudes through my bones and nearly rips my heart open. It’s been the same since Aunt Sharon hit my belly. It wasn’t my pain that mattered, it was fear that Gwen would be hurt.
In a poor attempt to soften my voice, I say, “I’m sure if you apologize, he’ll forgive you.”
She stares up at me with colorful, hope-filled eyes. “What if he doesn’t?”
