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She groans. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to see if you had a scar on your butt cheek.”
I stiffen. Has one of my exes been talking or something? Am I going to read about this in the tabloids, and how pissed is Mr. Talman going to be? “And why would I have a scar on my butt cheek?”
“Do you? Have you ever been attacked by a bush?”
Oh my God. Can she hear herself right now? I hope she can hear herself. “Only every time I step outside my front door.” I throw back my head and roar with laughter.
Her face turns bright red. “Oh. My. God. Everything I am saying today is coming out wrong,” she cries out in dismay, eyes going saucer wide.
She tries to take a step back away from me. She trips over her own feet, and I lunge forward and catch her around the waist. Her slender, muscular body goes stiff with surprise. For a long, long moment I hold on to her, my arms tightening around her, and she stares up at me, lips slightly parted, eyes huge.
Then I set her back on her feet.
She hurries back to her seat and plops down, and I sit down in the chair facing her desk, and as I do, it hits me.
She mentioned me being attacked by a bush.
Plenty of girls have seen my ass. So has my entire team.
But only two people know the story behind it. My dad, who wouldn’t have any reason to recount what happened to me on my sixth birthday, and who wouldn’t have any reason to talk to Rowan, or ...
I grimace in disgust. “My mother called you?”
She nods. “She said you changed your phone number and she needed your new one?”
That’s a punch to the gut.
“I haven’t changed it recently, as you know. What I did was block her number, and I stopped taking any calls from unknown numbers, so she can’t get ahold of me.”
Rowan winces sympathetically. “I got a weird vibe from the very beginning when she called. Honestly, at first I thought it was some kind of stalker.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Well, you’re not wrong. And you need to stay far away from her. Please.”
I don’t want to talk about it, I think sourly. I don’t want to have to explain why I don’t want to talk to my own mother. Who would want to? Nobody enjoys dredging up painful, humiliating memories from their past.
She just nods and doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t try to pry; she’s not one of those emotional vampires who gets off on other people’s trauma.
“I am here to support you, Mason, to make your life better. If your mother doesn’t do that for you, then I will not give her the time of day. And certainly not your phone number.”
I heave a sigh, pacing the floor, suddenly filled with a restless, angry energy.
She’s standing there, no judgment on her face.
I realize that I actually do want to tell her. My sober coach knows some of it, but not everything. But I trust Rowan, and suddenly all of this ugliness wants to come out.
“My mother was much younger than my dad. Age-old story. She was young and gorgeous, married the successful rich guy for his money, then figured out that being a wife and mom was not her thing. My father was a workaholic, and he felt that the job of the man was to earn the money, so I was raised by a series of nannies.” I grimace. “I really wanted a mom growing up. She’d show up from time to time, and I always thought she was coming back for me, and I was always wrong. When I got older, I realized that she only came to us when she needed money. She was nowhere to be found on birthdays, Christmas, graduation, any of my peewee hockey games ...”
It hurt. The words hurt me to say them.
“Wow. That absolutely sucks. Who the hell does that to their kid?” Rowan is not looking at me with pity. She’s clenching her fists. She’s mad on my behalf.
“Right? I mean, if she’s going to abandon me, she should at least do it right. Disappear for good. But she even screwed that part up.” I let out a bark of laughter. If I make a joke of it, it doesn’t hurt quite as much.
Rowan frowns, chewing her plump lower lip. The words spill from my mouth.
“Anyway, my father eventually got disgusted with her emotional manipulation. From what the maids told me, she’d say things like, ‘You don’t want the mother of your son to be arrested for vagrancy because she’s homeless, do you?’ He finally just got sick of it and said, ‘You’re a grown-ass woman. Get a job and stop partying.’ He and I talked about it when I was in my teens, and we both agreed not to give her any more money. Because yes, when he turned her down, she’d hit me up with these sob stories. Boyfriend stole all her money, she’d been in an accident and couldn’t pay her medical bills ...” I scowl at the memory.
“That is a terrible way to treat any kid, much less your own child.” Rowan’s spitting mad now. “I’m sorry I was nice to her, because there are some words I would have said, and they would have had four letters in them. Wait, let’s see, bitch ...” She counts it out on her fingers. “Four to five letters.” Her eyes blaze with fury. She looks like she’s about to throw down.
