12. Roman
ROMAN
“ C onsorting with the enemy?” my mother snipes when I get back inside.
She’s lounging on my couch, all the tears from earlier magically disappeared.
I shoot her a look and drop onto the other end, sighing as the cushions absorb my weight. “What are you talking about?”
Ma just got here, and already she’s made me feel spread too thin.
“You know what I’m talking about.” She waves toward the door with a flick of her wrist. “What’s your plan there?”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I bite out, irritation sticking to my insides like tacky glue.
She doesn’t back down though, because of course she doesn’t.
“Tell me,” she says casually. “Does Juliette Calloway know who you are?”
My jaw tightens. “Ma, I just said…”
I freeze.
Juliette Calloway.
Realization settles in like a slap to my face. She does know who my little rose is, and she just proved my suspicions right. She is Juliette Calloway.
My mother’s watching me like a cat with a caged mouse.
“Oh my God.” She leans forward with a glint in her eye. “You didn’t even know.”
I swallow, not responding. But that’s answer enough for her.
“You let her into your home and you didn’t even know ?” she repeats, her voice shocked.
“This is none of your business.”
Ma hums. “Well, I sure hope that anonymity went both ways, because if she knows who you are, then believe me when I say she’s about to run home to her daddy and tell him.”
I scoff. “That’s a little dramatic.”
“She’s your enemy.”
“Not my enemy,” I snap. “Just because Marcus hates the Calloways doesn’t mean I have to. They’ve never done anything to me, and I have no loyalty to the man you used to fuck.”
Her eyes narrow, but she doesn’t react to my hurled insult. She just tilts her head and lowers her voice. “Call it whatever you want, but this is all the more reason to get in touch with your father.”
I stare at her. “What the hell does Juliette Calloway have to do with me reaching out to Marcus?”
She shrugs. “Craig’s been trying to get rid of Marcus for years.” She scrunches her nose. “He’s a nasty piece of work. If he finds out you’re alive, you better believe he’ll be here in a heartbeat making sure you don’t stay that way.”
My mouth drops open. “You’re saying Craig Calloway would what…come here to kill me?”
“Don’t be stupid,” she spits, like she’s at the end of her rope. “Why do you think we’re here with different names and living a life we were never meant to live?”
I laugh, because she’s so goddamn delusional. “You actually believe that? You think Craig Calloway orchestrated an assassination attempt on a kid?”
She doesn’t blink. “The brakes failed, Ry. On a rental that his company owned. You think that’s just bad luck?”
My head shakes slowly, but doubt starts to gnaw at my edges, her words sticking. “That’s what accidents are , Ma. That’s why they’re called accidents .”
“You’re the last Montgomery,” she says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “All of Marcus’s power and wealth… If you’re gone? There’s no legacy left. No heir. Get rid of you, then you get rid of him .”
“This isn’t some fucking mafia movie,” I mutter.
She gives me a long look. “Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.”
I study her, searching for a crack. For something that tells me this is just another one of her drug-induced conspiracies, but the only thing humming is her certainty.
“Yeah, well, there’s a flaw in your logic,” I point out. “If I’m so necessary to his legacy, how come I’m a dead guy with a fake name who he turns away every time he sees me?”
“Because you weren’t ready,” she replies. “And neither was your father. So he buried you—buried us —to keep you safe until people forgot.”
I roll my eyes, frustration bleeding into the moment. Not this again. She’s had some version of this story for years—of my dad secretly wanting me but just needing to bide his time—only, this is the first time she’s brought in things like murder and an over-the-top bad guy to sell the tale.
“Right, because Marcus Montgomery has always been such a thoughtful father.”
She tilts her head. “You want to know what I think?”
“No.”
She keeps going anyway. “I think that girl out there…Juliette.” Her mouth curls around the name like smoke. “She makes you want things again. Things for yourself. Things you haven’t even thought of because you’ve been so worried about me and Brooke.”
I tense, not wanting to talk about this with her.
Ma leans forward, her voice silkier now. “Don’t deny it, Ry. I saw it.”
My jaw tics.
“Imagine how much easier it would be to have her if you went back and played the game.”
My brows rise, incredulity racing through me. “Now you want me to go back to the town where you claim a man wants to kill me? You’ve really lost it if you think Marcus would let me come back. We’ve tried that before, remember?”
She looks at her nails like she doesn’t care one way or the other if I go. “So maybe you don’t give a choice. Force your father to pull some strings. Let him protect you properly.”
“You make them sound like comic book villains.”
“You play his game, so you can get her .”
I scoff. “You want me to use her.”
“No,” she says quickly. “I want you to stop pretending that you don’t already care.
I want you to have something yourself, after all these years of living for me.
” Her eyes well up with tears and it digs into my chest and spreads outward in a toxic type of hope.
“You don’t think I realize all that you’ve given up? ”
I stare at her, the air tense and silent.
“I’m not going back,” I say, a finality to my tone. “Last time I listened when you told me to do that, it didn’t end well for me.”
Her face tightens and she sits back, nodding like it doesn’t matter. “Whatever, I’m just trying to help.”
Does she not even realize how wishy-washy she sounds? She wants me to get his money, now all of a sudden I’m supposed to go to Rosebrook Falls?
Delusional. Like always.
I drum my fingers on the back of the couch, my pulse ticking up. “Well, you’re not. How do you even know all these things?”
“Believe it or not, your father loved me. He used to talk to me about things. I was a safe place for him, and he leaned on me.”
Doubtful. I’m not convinced my father has the propensity to love anyone.
I must make a noise, because her eyes soften. “I wasn’t always like this, you know?”
My jaw clenches. “Yeah, I know.” I remember.
She scratches at her arm absentmindedly.
“She doesn’t know who I am,” I say, although at this point it sounds like I’m trying to convince myself more than her.
Ma tsks. “If you say so.”
“I know so.”
Her lips twitch like she’s holding something back. “Then you’d better hope it stays that way, because if she finds out, and she’s loyal to her father…” She doesn’t finish, letting the implication hang in the air.
I shift, and she keeps going. “Of course, if you do want to keep seeing her, you might actually consider what I’m telling you to do. Call your father and maybe you can use what’s rightfully yours to get the girl.”
I throw my head back and groan. “Here we go.”
There’s no way in hell I’m having any more of this conversation with her. Not when I’m still reeling from the reality of who Juliette is, and the insinuation of how dangerous her family could be.
I had my hand around her throat, and my fingers in her cunt, and her sweet fucking ambrosia on my tongue, and ignorance really had been bliss.
Now the knowledge feels like a ticking bomb.
“Which is it, Ma? You want his money or you want me to go there and get the girl? Pick a lane.”
She lifts a shoulder. “I’m just saying…you’ve got options.”
It’s surprising to see her so calm, considering what she just walked in on. But when her head lolls a bit to the side and she sighs, closing her eyes and reopening them slowly, I remember why she doesn’t care.
Oxy does that to a person. And so does heroin.
“Tell me why you’re here.” I change the subject. “Or why you stood me up at the coffee shop.”
Sighing, she leans back. “I already told you. I’m here to pick up the money for Brooke’s seizure medicine.”
My chest burns at the reminder of Brooklynn.
“And why was the original money gone, Ma?” I ask, my voice hardening. “Matter of fact, why the fuck is Brooke paying for her own meds in the first place? She’s seventeen.”
Mom straightens on the couch and blinks at me, but she doesn’t have an answer. Or maybe she does but stays silent because she knows I won’t like whatever it is.
I smile tightly. “Nothing to say now?”
Her chin lifts, and for just a moment there’s guilt floating through her gaze.
And there she is.
Heather Argent.
The mom I used to have.
The one who’d count my teeth while I brushed, and let me stay up late to watch her favorite Disney movies.
The one who spun me around until we collapsed into piles of laughter, and who blew bubbles in the living room just to make Brooklynn and me smile, even though the soap soaked into the carpet and made the floor slick for days.
For just a split second, she’s real. Like I could reach out and grab her.
And then…gone.
Snapped back into the woman in front of me, the one who got hooked on pain pills and never climbed back out of the hole they threw her in. The one whose eyes are half closed, whose words come a second too late, and who knows how to manipulate silence with the emotions that she caused me to feel.
Or maybe that flicker of guilt was never there at all, and it’s just the homesick kid desperate to see a mother who no longer exists.
That seems more likely.
My gut cramps at the thought, and I push it down, down, down.
“You’re not insinuating that I ?—”
I smack my hand on the coffee table, and it rattles the few odds and ends on the top.
Ma jumps.