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She opens her mouth and stares at me, some of the anger gone from her eyes, but she doesn’t say anything. Of course she doesn’t. I’ve never called her on this bullshit. I’ve never made her face the reality of our relationship.
I can feel all four of the men around me watching us, waiting for what needs to happen next, but the longer my mother goes without saying anything, the more I realize that she’s not going to. She will offer no explanation to me, will not try to even pretend like she has some affection for me.
I sigh and push to my feet, hooking my coat off the back of my chair. “I’ll send you enough money to pay for the last of my medical bills. I’ll get my own health insurance and you won’t have to worry about getting any more bills. I’ll send someone to the house to pack up my stuff and put it in storage.” My mother gives a jerky nod as Fielder takes my coat and steps behind me. I slide my arms into it, and grab my purse. “If you ever want to talk and can manage it without calling me a whore for loving four men, then by all means reach out. If you can’t manage it. I hope you have a really wonderful life, Mom. I mean it. I want you to be happy.”
Without waiting for a response or any of the guys to follow me, I stride out of the restaurant with my head held high.
Chapter 3
It shouldn’t surprise me to see three expensive as fuck cars parked right outside the restaurant. I stop just on the other side of the doors and stare at them, dread coiling in my stomach because I know that once again they are going to make me choose who I ride with, and this time I can’t skip away from them to Cohen Faulkner and catch a ride from him.
My hands fist at my side as I feel them come up behind me, lingering. The anger that I should have felt at my mother comes bubbling up. None of this would have happened, I wouldn’t have just cut ties with my mom, if they had just left me alone for afewhours. If, instead of broaching the subject of our strange relationship, they’d all just said we were friends.
But no, they had to make this decision for me, take away my ability to tell my mother on my own time in my own way.
Hardin’s hand curls around my fist, misinterpreting my anger. “Fuck her, love. You don’t need her.”
“But I do,” I whisper, not looking at him, at any of them. “She’s mymom.”
Tears of frustration and hurt brim my eyes as I pull away from him, bypass the cars in the parking lot, and pull my phone from my purse. There’s no way that I’m going to ride with any of them. I’ll take an Uber home and grab what I’ll need for the summer, pack up everything else and with any luck I’ll be gone by the time my mother drinks three cocktails and drives home.
But the problem with being in Olympia and not a large city like Seattle, is that Ubers aren’t that readily available, so as much as I would love to just climb into a car and disappear before I explode and yell at the men trailing behind me, I can’t. I have to wait seven minutes for a ride.
I stop at the sidewalk and cross my arms over my chest, waiting. “What are you doing, Ro?” Ezra asks, coming to a stop next to me.
“Waiting for my ride,” I grit out.
“Hardin, take Sweeney back to her house. The rest of us will make the remaining arrangements.” My jaw tenses at Fielder’s order. Like I don’t have a say in what the fuck happens to me. Like I don’t have a choice. When will this stop?
“I’ll make it home on my own and I’ll see you at the time weagreedyou’d pick me up. In two fucking hours.”
Gideon presses into my back and loops an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his chest. “Obviously you’re pissed off at your mom, but that’s not a good enough reason to go off by yourself, sweetheart.”
Shrugging my shoulders, I try to dislodge him, but I’m ten inches shorter than him, and he has at least fifty pounds on me, so he doesn’t go anywhere. “I’m not going off on my own because I’m pissed ather. I’m doing it because I’m pissed at all of you.”
“What?” Hardin all but shouts. “Why?”
I turn a glare on him that I hope melts his face off, but he just blinks at me, waiting. “What gave any of you the right to tell my mother about us? What made you think this was a good fucking idea? Why did you take away my choice as to when and how I would tell her?”
Fielder runs a hand down his face, wearily. I check my phone and see my driver, Tris, is four minutes away. Not fast enough. I need them to be here now.
Especially when none of them seem to want to answer my fucking questions. “We didn’t think about how that would look to her, Sweeney,” Fielder finally says.
“Oh, okay, great, so when we get to the coven meeting hall, you’re cool with me announcing loudly that I’m with all four of you? With telling your parents? With taking that away from you? The ability to feel out the situation? How is your dad going to handle that, Fielder? Think he’ll grin and slap you on the back for sharing your girlfriend?”
“That’s different and you know it,” he growls. “Your mother isn’t going to try to kill us to get rid of us. Unlike my father, who has already tried to kill you.” I flinch at his matter-of-fact tone, and he’s not wrong. But I refuse to back down on this.
“No, instead my mother will just call me a whore in public and I’ll cut ties with her. She’s the only mother I have. The onlyparentI have. And, sure, it wasn’t a great relationship, but now I have to…” I shake my head and shrug off Gideon again. This time, he lets me go. “Now I have no one, with Desi halfway across the fucking world. I have no family left. And it wasn’t your place to take that from me. Even if she’s a bitch who hates me.”
Ezra steps in front of me, his hand coming up to cup my cheek, thumb brushing the arch there. “You don’t have no one, Ro. You have us. We’re your family.”
I smack his hand away from my face and let out a choked laugh. “I’ve known you for less than a year and you treated me like shit for most of that time. How can I call you family?” I ignore the flash of hurt in his gold eyes and take a deep breath, trying to get myself under control.
At least part of this frustration stems from anxiety about what’s coming this summer, this week,tomorrow. I’m under a lot of pressure. I’d thought I’d spend the next few months filming and prepping enough videos to get me through the school year, or at least the first quarter.
But no, that will not be my life. Instead, I’m going to be tested seven times in magic that I have no affinity with, in magic that I have very little experience with. And I have to do this because if I don’t I’ll be under constant attack from Fielder’s dad and the other coven elders.
Cohen suggested I leave them behind and start a coven with him. A coven where we would make the rules and our rules could mean that everyone could learn what they want, have access to all types of magic, that they wouldn’t be limited so long as they aren’t hurting anyone. It’s a good idea, one that calls to me in the very depths of my soul, but if I did that, I’d have to leave these assholes behind, and I just can’t bring myself to do that.
