Chapter 37
thirty-seven
VANESSA
He wanted space, so to be a smart-ass I gave him all the space he could handle: almost one thousand miles of it.
I called Richard and finally got to speak to Morgan myself.
As soon as I knew that she and the baby were going to be okay, I booked my flight home.
I flew back to Los Angeles that very night.
My sister met me at the airport and helped me clear all my things out of Elliott’s house.
Within twenty-four hours of him telling me he didn’t need me, I scrubbed every remaining trace of him off my body and out of my life.
If Steve had been there, he would have found himself conveniently relocated, too.
I stayed up until dawn drafting a five-year plan, because at that moment, outlining an aggressive future felt like the only sensible thing to do.
It didn’t include Elliott—or any other man.
I was completely done. Maybe this was the universe finally telling me to be alone and focus entirely on myself.
A week later, he started calling, texting, and showing up at my mom’s house.
Luckily, I had already given Mom strict instructions: no visitors under any circumstances.
She asked me over and over what had happened, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her the whole truth.
He still hung the cloud-and-moon for her, and I didn’t want to be the one to rip that down.
I told her simply that whatever he did was bad enough that I never wanted to see him again, and God bless her, she listened.
I finally broke down and told my sister one night during one of those exhausting, all-night talks. I vented fourteen years’ worth of buried frustration and felt pounds lighter the second it was out. She didn’t offer unsolicited advice; she just listened.
When we were finally spent, staring up at the dark bedroom ceiling, she reached over, squeezed my hand, and whispered, “There’s this beautiful place about a half hour outside the city—just a big, empty field. I think animals used to graze there. It would make a beautiful final resting place.”
A sharp laugh bubbled out of me, the first real one since that awful night at the hospital. For the first time all week, my heart felt like it could actually breathe again.
But Elliott was relentless. After what felt like the fiftieth time mom had to turn him away at her front door, she finally begged me, "Mi amor, dime ahorita qué pasó entre ustedes?" She desperately wanted me to tell her what had happened between us.
“He hurt me, mom,” was all I said, because I knew if I said a single syllable more, I would completely crack.
It had taken me this long just to say those words without collapsing into a heap of tears.
That was the real reason I hadn’t told her sooner; I knew she would be the absolute hardest person to look in the eye.
I refused to go into detail—reliving the specific choreography of his rejection would rip me wide open again, and I didn’t have the emotional strength left to bleed out in front of her.
I was already hemorrhaging internally; stopping any further damage was all I could manage.
When I looked into mom’s eyes, I didn’t see disappointment—I saw an unrelenting anger.
It instantly wiped out any affection she had ever carried for him.
Her kids came first, always. If he had shown up on her porch right at that exact moment, the look in her eyes told me she would have murdered him where he stood and helped me bury the body.
No questions asked. Having her fierce protection in my corner meant everything.
I hugged her so tightly I probably bruised her ribs, and I finally cried into her hair. Even if she was hurting for me, she didn’t flinch.
Mothers really were magical creatures. We truly didn’t deserve them.