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“Everything okay?” I give her a light peck on the cheek and take a seat on the couch beside her.
“Yeah. It’s just my mom. Somehow she found out I’ve been spending the night here, and she’s . . .” Sarah’s voice trails off. She lets out another tired sigh and holds up her phone. “Just see for yourself.”
I scoot closer and read the writing on the screen.
Donna: I told you to stay away from him
Sarah: Leave me alone
Donna: No
Donna: You’re my daughter
Donna: You don’t get to tell me to leave
Donna: Listen to me
Donna: You need to avoid him
Donna: He’s dangerous
The texts go on with Donna nagging Sarah to dump me and Sarah ignoring her.
Although annoying, they look pretty harmless . . . until Donna starts making threats.
Donna: I have no choice but to tell the authorities
Sarah: Tell them what?
Donna: That he’s a dealer and he should be behind bars
Sarah: That’s not true and you know it
Donna: It IS true
That’s as far as they’ve gotten. I’m happy to see Sarah defending me, but I’m worried that’s just going to make Donna even angrier.
Even though Donna’s been downright cruel to Sarah at times, and she’s had no problem making Sarah resent her on her own, I have no doubt she blames me for stealing her daughter away from her. Nothing’s ever her fault.
“Do you think she has any proof?” Sarah asks, worry etched into her beautiful features.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. Does she have any dirt on you?”
“I doubt it. She’s seen me meet up and exchange stuff with my supplier, but as far as I know, she doesn’t have anything that would count as evidence—I’m pretty sure she’d have shown us if she did.”
Sarah seems unconvinced.
“She doesn’t want me locked up, Sarah. She just wants me to sell her some drugs or introduce her to someone who would.”
Her eyebrows remain knitted.
“Don’t worry about it. Leave her to me. I can deal with her.”
Previously, my forbidden attraction to Sarah was filling my brain to the brim and clouding my judgment. Now that I’m in the first happy, healthy relationship I’ve ever had, it’s easy for me to see what needs to be done.
“Are you sure?” Sarah asks.
“Yeah.”
Sarah takes another sip of her coffee and stares blankly at the blank TV screen. It’s starting to grow dark outside. The natural light streaming in through the blinds becomes weaker by the minute.
“I wonder if she’s ever going to leave me alone,” Sarah says. “You know she took over the clinic so she could be the landlord and keep her clutches around us—my dad, Peter, and now me?”
“Do you want to move to the city?” I ask.
Sarah turns to stare at me. Obviously, she didn’t expect that. “What?”
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it. And the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. You were doing well in the city, right?”
“I suppose . . .”
“You had a good job, and you had a better time managing your stress and anxiety. You said you stayed away from the online scene for years until you had to come back here.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know if I was stressed out because of Peter’s death or because I was here.”
“Do you remember how it started, your habit of using sex as a coping mechanism?” I ask. “It seems to me like you didn’t have this problem when you were living in San Francisco.”
“I . . . Well, when I was a teenager, home was hell. My parents used to fight all the time. When they got divorced, I thought finally, we’d have some peace and quiet. But my mom always found a way to get to us.”
“She’s nothing if not determined,” I agree.
“I was an awkward kid, and I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t have many places I could escape to—except when I was spending time with my boyfriend at the time.”
“Martin?” I surprise myself with the chill in my voice.
I’m not usually a jealous lover. But then again, I’ve never wanted to own a woman as much as I want Sarah.
I’ve got her now, and it feels fucking great. But at the same time I’m also acutely aware of how much it would fucking suck to lose her after finding out what I’d be missing out on.
“Yeah. It felt like the only time I was free from my problems, like the only time I could stop thinking about what was going on at home,” she says.
Jealousy burns in my chest, thinking about her with someone else, even though it happened when she was a young girl and I wasn’t even in the picture.
Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense.
I try to change the subject. “Did Peter know you had trouble dealing with stuff?”
“Not really.” Sarah goes quiet as she ponders my question. “I mean, he was dealing with the same difficult stuff, too. And my dad was busy trying to stop my mom from completely destroying our finances.”
