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Her voice is bright with hope. She wants this to end amicably. She doesn’t see that it can only end the way it started: with pain.
14
TAYLOR
I drop a kiss on Adam’s head before Dad ferries him off to bed. The moment they disappear into Adam’s bedroom down the hall, the atmosphere in the living room shifts.
It’s not the first time that Ilarion and I have been alone since he showed up. But it’s the first time that he’shere, in my living room, consuming space that I’ve always considered to be sacred. Intimate. Protected.
Mine.
It’s a small room, which is probably why Ilarion looks so out of place in it. He’s still standing by the messy bookshelf in the corner, but he could be on top of me in three steps if he chose. Maybe that’s why I’m so on edge.
Or maybe it’s because his fingertips are running along the edge of a framed photograph of a baby Adam. He was nine months or so when the picture was taken. His eyes are a pre-dawn bluish gray and his cheeks are cherub red. I know what Ilarion is thinking, because it’s the same thing I thought when I took that picture.
They look identical.
I’ve put that picture up everywhere we go. No matter how many times we’ve run or moved houses in the middle of the night, that photograph gets hung on the wall first. I still haven’t decided whether it’s because I just like it, or because I’m using it to torture myself with thoughts of what might’ve been.
“Nice house,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Don’t be condescending.”
“I was trying to pay you a compliment.”
“Try again.”
“You’ve done a great job with the boy,” he says. “He’s polite, sweet, curious. He says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ without thinking about it, and he loves to read.”
The smile lasts maybe three seconds on my face before it dries up. I’m caught between the conversation we have to have and the one I want to have. Neither one is going to leave me feeling anything but dissatisfied.
“You have nosy neighbors, though,” he says abruptly.
“Excuse me?”
“Half a dozen people have walked past the house, and all of them tried to catch a glimpse of what was going on in here. They weren’t subtle about it.”
“That’s life in a small town for you.”
“I don’t know how the fuck you live like this.”
I cast a quick look toward Adam’s room, and for a fleeting moment, Ilarion actually looks sheepish. Being a parent can do that where language is concerned. You start to second-guess yourself. Start to see yourself through their eyes. It changes things.
“Because I had to,” I whisper.
“You didn’t have to do anything,” he snaps, his eyes turning to flint fast. “You could have stayed where you belonged and made your life more than…this.”
“Excuse me?” I suck in a sharp breath.
“Look at you.” He gestures toward the side of the room where my waitress uniform is hanging up next to my tattered coat. “A diner waitress in this hick town. You could have been anything.”
I flush, but it’s equal parts indignation and embarrassment. “You have no right to just waltz into my life and criticize me. I did the best I could!”
“If you had stayed, you could have finished college. Become someone important. Done something important.”
My face twists into a scowl. “It’s lucky that you ended up with Cee then. I would have been nothing but an embarrassment to you.”
He walks over to me slowly. “This has nothing to do with Celine.”
