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A sad sigh leaves her. Pointedly, her blue eyes fix on the matching blue ones she gave me. “Would you have?”
My jaw tightens. “Yes.”
“Then I made the right decision.”
My agitation collapses to her resolute utterance. Over this bitterness, this prideful self-imposed segregation, I wrap my arms around her neck.
And she becomes a statue.
Her hands flop by her sides. Over her shoulder, my sisters gape at us. I feel her heart pressed to mine, both quick but sturdy tempos.
“Ask me again,” I say into her ear.
Steeled, she doesn’t move. “Will you—”
“No.” I cut in. Her heavy exhale, powerful with relief and shock, blows my hair around my neck. “I won’t choose him over you this time, Mum. Let’s leave.”
I grab the book from her hand and toss it in the dirt. A gasp slips from her, but she doesn’t reach for it. Instead, she looks through the window at the woman who resembles her, except younger, and nods her head.
“Okay, Kaya, let’s all leave.”
And I don’t want to get him out on bail. Not when my mum is willing to let go. Giving ManXY back his bitcoin is even easier now because it’s not my job to support my dad.
It was his job to support me.
And my mum.
And he didn’t.
I’m done.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX
xander
The clock ticks past six-thirty,and I still haven’t heard from her. Not a name. Not an emoji. I’m not prideful when it comes to her—I’ll fucking blow her phone up soon. There is nothing cool and cavalier about my affection for her. That’s damn true, as all my muscles feel stretched and drawn, as though her distance somehow affects them.
Leaning back in the tattoo chair, I lay my wrist on the side while the artist mixes his black ink with blue. I wait for the work to begin, wanting the sting, wishing it hurt more.
Pain reminds me of my mother.
It’s through pain that I actively seek her out… I realise that now. This was unintentional. Until recently, I hid this motivation to get a knockout. But with each hit, I'm reminded. Each knockout, I visit the wardrobe.
Without boxing... she’s gone, too.
I should be happy about that, but I think I'm a knockout junky, and I think the reality of her is when I peak. Like, around me, my brothers avoid her name, bury the vulnerable times, demolish houses that hold childhood memories, or tattoo the skin she made for them—wiping her out.
Shifting my eyes around my tanned forearm skin, I frown. It's scar free. And 'scars remind us that the past is real,’ well, fuck, all the scars my mother gave me are long since healed. Not a blemish to make my experience of her anything other than a nightmare I hold in my knockout-drunken stupor.
Do I still need her scars?
No. I have Kaya.
My woman.
That's enough.
As the tattoo artist begins to trace the rabbit on my forearm, embedding the black ink perfectly along the fading eyeliner, it doesn’t hurt at all. Anddammit, I wish it did. Wish it could throw me back in time just once more…
