AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No,” she said vehemently. “I was shocked, Ash. Can’t you see that the world as I knew it turned upside down when I saw him in your bed? Maybe you weren’t close when you were younger, but we saw you differently. To me, you were family no matter what you say.” She hesitated a moment. “I’ve gone too far. I know that now. Jordan showed me.”
My chin quivered before I could stop myself. I blinked angrily and pressed my lips into a tight line.
Mom’s voice softened further. “I don’t expect you to forgive me for the things I said.”
She was right about that.
“Not yet, anyway.” Or ever? But I’d stopped breathing a few moments ago and I couldn’t spit out that venomous suggestion. “What I said…it was wrong. I…I think you can understand even if you don’t want to, but…I can’t ask that of you. I failed in so many ways, but Ash…” Her voice was fading as she tried to get through the words. I was incapable of speaking. Instead, I just pressed the phone harder against my ear until it hurt. “Ash…I have no right to tell you what to do, but you shouldn’t be alone. If he’s not there, you should go back. You should go to him. Clearly, he’s better for you than I have been.”
I frowned, my heart throbbing and teeth clenching. Jordan had been the greatest thing that had ever happened to me. He’d defined my life and made everything make sense when he finally kissed me.
“I see now that I was wrong,” Mom said. “I hope you’ll be able to forgive me. Someday.” After her breath hitched, she added, “And I hope the damage I’ve done isn’t irreparable, Ash.”
I struggled to inhale through my flaring nostrils but managed somehow. “You made me feel like it’s my fault our family fell apart.” I couldn’t keep the accusation out of my voice. “You made me feel like I depended on your blessing, and because I couldn’t get it, it ruined everything.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“At least you’re sorry,” I said sourly. “But that doesn’t change anything.”
“You have the right to feel that way,” she said. I hated that she was accepting this. I seemed to still have some fight left in me. “If it’s my blessing you want, you got it now, Ash. But that’s not what you need. And I don’t have the right to give it or withhold it.”
She was right about that. Except, I couldn’t let this anger out when she was happy to take it. In accepting it, she disarmed me. “I can’t forgive you. Not yet. But…” It was my turn to swallow down the sob that was rising. “This phone call’s a good start.”
In the silence that followed, she sniffed again. “I understand that.”
My heart thundered as it sank in. Jordan had gone there, forced her to rethink all of this, and helped fix what little he could. The wreckage we left around us was too huge to be put back together, but he salvaged what he could. “I need to go,” I said tightly before I could break.
“Will you see him?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure that was any of her business. “Eventually.”
“You should see him,” Mom said hastily. “I told him that, too, if my opinion matters at all. I told him what I told you, and he…listened.”
“I need to go now,” I repeated. She had broken my heart, but the things she had said to Jordan were unforgivable. I wasn’t sure I could ever look at her the same way. And yet, of all the things that could have happened this afternoon, this call was probably the best. Acceptance of responsibility was the first step to forgiveness. It mattered even if the second step wasn’t guaranteed.
“Okay,” Mom whispered. We ended the conversation there and I paced back and forth in the room with a sense of urgency and nothing I could do about it. The last of the sunlight was escaping, and the darkness gathered outside.
When I could no longer stand being inside, I walked out of the room. Watch the stars, I told myself. For a little while, just watch the stars. I needed to do anything other than walk in circles.
In all the anger I still had for her, I was worried about Mom. Where had it all gone so wrong? When had she become so unhappy with her life?
It was obvious to me that I was thinking about her because Jordan was battering at the walls I had put around my thoughts. I was keeping him out because letting him in hurt too much.
So I walked out and around the house to the spacious backyard, where the ground was dry and warm from the scorching days that preceded this night. The brightest stars were beginning to glimmer against the darkening sky.
I sat down and slouched, my chin lifted high, my gaze wandering over the clear, dark expanse. I didn’t know for how long I sat there, but Phoenix’s footsteps made me aware that I wasn’t drifting through the cosmos. I was still in the team house’s backyard and all the light of day had disappeared.
Perhaps it was at the same time he spoke the first word, and perhaps it had clicked in my head a moment earlier, but my heart shuddered so hard that I could barely keep myself from crying out. “I was so scared you weren’t here when I went to your room.”
My head spun and I looked up at his breathtaking figure. “Jordan.” It was the tiniest whisper.
“Then I saw you from the window,” he said softly, cocking his head as if he was pleading with me for something.
I scrambled to my feet and made a pace toward him but stopped myself before I got too close.
He was big and rigid, looking at me with an odd, unreadable expression on his face.
“You left me,” he said. “While I was out, you packed your things and left.”
