56. Genevieve
Chapter fifty-six
Genevieve
I’d lain beside Reid for almost an hour, eyes burning, lungs on fire, every inhale catching on the memory of Eugene’s face. The face of disgust, of hurt, of the toddler I used to hold buried inside the man who walked away from me without looking back.
Killian had generously offered us a room for the night. I shouldn’t have expected less with how welcoming he still was after the chaos of our family reunion.
But I couldn’t sleep. Reid held me, caressed me as I cried, hoping I’d get some rest for how bad of a headache I was getting from all the tears.
But eventually his breathing deepened, steady and slow as he fell asleep, and I slipped out from under his arm, needing air, space, needing… I didn’t know what.
The hallway was silent, the whole estate asleep for the night.
Except there was light, a gentle glare refracting onto the staircase from the kitchen.
I padded down the stairs slowly, bare feet cold against marble. The Christmas tree glowed in the corner, ornaments catching the light in muted reflections. The house felt too calm and still after the storm that raged in it only hours ago.
I rounded the corner into the kitchen, following the light.
And stopped.
Eugene stood at the island, shoulders hunched, leaning over the marble, a glass of whiskey dangling from his hand. His other hand was pressed to his head, fingers curled tight in his hair, trying to hold himself together by force.
His back rose and fell unevenly. He’d been crying too.
My heart broke so cleanly it felt like something inside me cracked open.
He didn’t turn at the sound of my steps, and my lips parted gently, my throat tight as I took a step closer.
“…Hi, Lovebug.”
My voice came out soft, and his head snapped up and over to me. He looked at me as if I’d personally offended him, like my words had physically hurt him to hear.
His eyes were red, swollen. Knowing my boy, I knew he’d tried to rub at them too hard, attempting to force the tears away.
The glass clinked gently against the counter as he set it down, fingers trembling before he curled them into a fist. “Don’t,” he seethed. “You don’t get to call me that.”
I nodded gently, ignoring the feeling of my heart being ripped from my chest. “You’re right. I don’t.”
He turned away from me, raising the glass back to his lips. After his sip, he shook his head, lowering it as he toyed with the rim of the glass.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
My eyes burned. “Killian offered us to stay the night… We’ll be gone first thing in the morning.”
He didn’t say anything to that. His eyes fixed on his glass, body language firmly against my being there.
The clock on the mantle ticked as we stood there.
I kept on thinking of what to say, kept searching for the right words, terrified of the wrong ones.
But eventually, I found the strength to fill the silence again.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” I began, voice cracking as I forced my composure. “I’m not here to force anything or to—”
“I waited,” he said, cutting me off, flexing his hand before it clenched once again. “Waited for you—every day, for years—to come back home. You never came.” A tear slid down his cheek. He didn’t bother to wipe it. “…We were your kids… I was your kid,” he whispered. “And I needed you.”
“I know,” I whispered, nodding.
“I’m not my sister. And you’re not my mother. I don’t want your apology,” he said. “I don’t want your explanations. I don’t want your reasons for why you left.”
“If you don’t want them, I can’t force you to listen to them.”
He placed his glass on the table, shoulders shaking as he took a deep sigh.
“You know… I spent years thinking… maybe you couldn’t find us.
Maybe Gregory and Cheryl really did keep you away.
Maybe you were hurt. Or maybe you died trying…
That would’ve been easier on all of us.” A hollow laugh slipped out, short and bitter.
“Turns out you were just living your life.”
He dragged a hand down his face, exhaling hard. “Every birthday,” he said quietly. “Every Christmas. Every time I got in trouble at school… every time I woke up from a nightmare—” His breath stuttered. “I kept waiting for you to walk through the door.”
He let out a bitter scoff. “And when you found Brielle… when you finally called me… I thought—” His face twisted. “I thought maybe this whole time there was a reason. A good one.”
“There was,” I whispered, barely audible.
He narrowed his eyes. “But why wasn’t it us?”
My lips parted, nothing coming out, not a word, not an excuse, not anything that could possibly meet the truth of that question.
He pressed further, taking a step closer to me. “Why was the choice you made not us? Not me?”
I didn’t have the words to answer him.
Because how… how was I supposed to explain something I hadn’t even forgiven myself for?
How was I supposed to tell him that when he needed me most, I wasn’t someone who could save anybody… not even myself?
How was I supposed to say the words out loud? That I chose my own survival, my own life, the path where I wasn’t swallowed whole?
That I chose the one person who made me feel like I was still alive… and that choice took me away from them?
What kind of mother admits she left because the home she was trapped in was slowly killing her? What kind of mother admits she didn’t know how to stay?
He took another step toward me, eyes burning, demanding the truth I didn’t know how to give.
“Eugene…” My voice cracked.
“Did you ever plan to come back for us? Even once?”
“…If I told you I left because I needed to be safe… because I didn’t know how to fight back anymore… because I didn’t know who I was anymore—” My breath hitched. “—you’d think I was choosing myself over you. And I’ve spent years trying not to think that too.”
He swallowed hard, the first crack in his expression.
“And if I told you,” I whispered, voice shaking on a tremble, “that I left because I was breaking, because I was… afraid… because I thought you’d be safer if I disappeared…
how do those words sound to a child who waited at the door for me?
” I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes.
“They sound unforgivable. They are unforgivable. But it’s the truth. ”
I let him sit with the words for a moment as he fell silent. “So that’s it?” he whispered. “You were scared? And that means you just… left?”
“Eugene—”
“No.” His hand slammed the counter behind him, the sound cracking through the quiet kitchen, making me flinch. “No, you don’t get to say that and expect me to understand.”
He took another step toward me. “You chose to run,” he seethed. “And I had to stay. I had to survive that house. I had to survive him. I had to grow up without a mother because you were—” His voice broke, the word shattering in his throat. “—tired?”
Tears blurred my vision. “It wasn’t like that—”
“Then how was it?!” he snapped. “Because all I can remember is holding Brielle when she cried. All I remember is biting my tongue when they treated us differently, waiting up every single night until I fell asleep because you said you would come back—” he raged—then suddenly, his voice cracked completely.
“And you didn’t… You… left me,” he whispered.
The quiet was somehow worse than his anger.
His eyes lifted to mine, broken and wounded before they lowered, his knees dropping to the ground. I scrambled to the floor, motherly instincts taking over like they never left. My hands found the sides of his face, holding up his sunken head as he cried.
“…You were my whole world,” he whispered into the air.
My throat closed as I shook my head. “Eugene, honey, I’m so sorry.”
“You left me. I was just a little boy, and you left me.”
He grabbed onto my wrists, and my heart lurched out of my chest, thinking he’d push me away, reject me again, but he just held them. His fingers trembled against my skin, calloused palms warm and shaking as if even touching me hurt.
“You were my mom,” he whispered, the words collapsing into a sob that ripped straight through the center of me.
Before I could breathe, another broken sound tore out of him, small, helpless, nothing like the man standing in front of me now.
He leaned forward, head dropping, forehead brushing my shoulder, and I froze.
My body was in complete shock.
I couldn’t move.
His fingers curled weakly into the robe I was wearing, and then he folded into me, his face burying into my neck the way it did when he was three years old and the world scared him.
My arms wrapped around him before I could think as his tears soaked my skin.
“Lovebug…” I whispered into his hair, voice shaking, cradling the back of his head like I used to when nightmares woke him. “My sweet boy… I’m so sorry…”
He clung to me tighter. I held him until the shaking stopped and his breath steadied against my skin. Soon enough, the little boy I lost and the man he’d become settled into one trembling, silent weight in my arms.
I didn’t ask him to forgive me.
I wouldn’t dare.
I just let him break against me… the way he should have been allowed to all those years ago.