Chapter 33 Willow
WILLOW
The next day at school, I feel like I’m in a bit of a daze, but in a nice way.
My classes have been going well, despite everything else that’s been going on in my life.
And even with the distractions I currently have, I’m still able to focus on papers and homework better than when I was juggling long hours at the strip club and constantly stressing about money.
I feel so much lighter now than I did then, and it’s doing wonders for my grades.
As I’m walking across campus from one class to another, my phone vibrates in my pocket, and I pull it out.
Olivia’s name flashes on the screen, and I make a face, feeling guilty about ignoring her call last night.
I answer now, putting the phone up to my ear.
“Willow. How are you feeling?” she asks as soon as I pick up.
“Oh.” I blink. “I’m okay.”
“That’s a relief. I heard through the grapevine that you didn’t go on your date with Joshua this weekend since you weren’t feeling well, and I wanted to check in.”
I wince at that. Right. I almost forgot about that lie.
I remember Malice’s threat about killing Joshua if he touched me, and shake my head.
I’m going to have to think of a way to let Joshua down politely.
Not that we actually had anything going, since we never even went out on a single date, but I’ll need to make it clear I’m not interested in starting anything up with him.
But I feel like I should talk to him before I tell Olivia anything—especially since gossip seems to spread fast in her circle—so I silently ask her to forgive me for lying.
“I’m pretty sure it was just a twenty-four hour thing,” I tell her. “Or something I ate, maybe. I’m okay now.”
“That’s good. I called you last night, but you didn’t answer, so I was concerned.”
“Yeah, I just passed out early watching a little TV. I wanted to be well-rested for classes today.”
I can hear the smile in her voice when she responds. “You’re such a diligent student. I really am very proud of you, Willow.”
“Thanks,” I murmur, touched.
I’m about to ask if she needed anything other than to check in on me, but before I can, she clears her throat.
“There’s… actually another reason why I’m calling.”
“What is it?” Something knots up in my stomach as I speak. Olivia sounds almost nervous herself, as if she doesn’t want to tell me whatever it is, and that can’t be good.
“Well…” She hesitates for a second, then sighs. “It’s your mother. Yesterday, she came to my house, and it was far from pleasant.”
“Oh, no.”
“She essentially demanded that I give her money.”
My jaw drops, and my heart goes with it. “What?”
Olivia sighs. “Yes. She just showed up unannounced, and it seemed like she was high on something, the same way she was when she came to the museum. She told me I owed her and that she deserved it for raising you.”
My face burns with embarrassment, and I’m glad this is a phone conversation so Olivia can’t see it. There’s anger there too, because what the fuck? Misty and I had that whole conversation about how she was going to try to be better. How she was going to get clean and take charge of her life.
And this is how she decided to take charge of her life?
“I’m so sorry,” I tell my grandmother. “She said she wasn’t going to do stuff like that anymore, and then she…”
I trail off, not even sure what to say.
“It’s not your fault, dear girl,” Olivia replies, her voice firm. “I offered to help Misty with rehab if she wants to get clean. I’m perfectly willing to cover the costs of that, but I told her that I wouldn’t be giving her any money outright.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, swallowing the lump in my throat.
“Of course. She is your adoptive mother, after all, and she seems to be struggling right now.”
I feel like laughing, although it’s not funny at all. Misty is struggling? If she is, it’s because of the position she’s put herself in. I’ve tried to help her, Olivia tried to offer rehab, but of course that wasn’t good enough for Misty. Nothing is ever enough.
When I hang up with Olivia, I glance at the time on my phone. I still have one more class, and I don’t want to miss it, so I try to shove down everything I’m feeling and focus on school.
The notes I take are a disjointed mess, though, and my mind keeps replaying the conversation I had with Olivia over and over. The minute the professor releases us, I make a beeline for my car and start driving toward Misty’s place.
I’m fuming, my hands tight on the steering wheel, and I hit the brakes hard as I pull up outside her house. Storming up to the front door, I burst inside, not even bothering to knock.
Misty steps out of the kitchen, looking surprised.
“Hi, baby. What are you—”
“You promised,” I snap, cutting her off. “You said you were going to be better. You said you were going to try. And I believed you because I always do, even though you’d think I’d know better by now!”
“What—”
I shake my head before she can say anything else. Before she can try to spin this to make me feel sorry for her.
“No, I don’t want to hear it. This is the last fucking time. You’ve lied to me and manipulated me for my whole life, and now you’re doing it to other people too!”
Misty must finally figure out what I’m talking about, because her lips tighten at the corners, her chin lifting defiantly.
“It’s not like that,” she says. “Everything I ever did was for you. Everything I did was to try to keep a roof over our heads and food in the fridge. I don’t know why you hate me so much for that. For trying to take care of you.”
It’s the same song and dance, and I try to harden my heart against it. Every time I get close to cutting her off or telling her we’re done, she comes up with some way to keep me here. To keep me thinking that she cares about me and she’s done all of this for me instead of her own selfish ends.
“Stop lying!” I shout. “Just for once, stop lying to me. Olivia offered to pay for your rehab. What about that? What about how you said you were going to get clean?”
She rolls her eyes, resting her hands on her hips. “I told her no. I don’t need some hoity toity bitch who doesn’t know the first thing about me telling me what I have to do. She could’ve just given me the money and I would have used it to get clean. But I’m not going to be treated like a child.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides, and I can hear the blood rushing in my head.
“You always have an excuse, don’t you?” I whisper, my eyes burning. “So many fucking excuses. So much bullshit. People try to help you, and you throw it back in their faces.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.” Misty scowls. “I’m still your mother.”
“God, stop! Just stop it. I’ve given you so many chances.
Even after everything you’ve done! You’ve lied to me, you’ve stolen from me, you’ve let me get hurt.
But I’m always fucking there for you! When you’re passed out in your own vomit or getting molested by some asshole or incoherent on the side of the road, I’m always there, and for what?
So you can turn around and ruin my relationship with the only real family I have? ”
Misty’s head jerks back, and she looks almost surprised by the force of my emotions. Maybe she wasn’t expecting me to push back like this. I’ve let her get away with shit over and over and over, so why wouldn’t she think this time would be the same?
But it’s not.
I’m done.
“I took care of you,” she says, her voice turning a bit plaintive as she takes a step forward. “Without me, you’d be in foster care somewhere.”
“Yeah? Well, maybe that would’ve been better,” I say, my voice cold and hard.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have had to spend my childhood babysitting an adult who could never keep her shit together.
But you know what, Mom? I’m finished. I don’t want you in my life anymore.
I’m done cleaning up your messes and playing damage control.
I’m just done. And you know what? It’s not because I finally found a real blood relative.
It’s because you’ve always been a horrible excuse for a mother. ”
Before she can say anything else, I turn and stride out of the house, feeling caught up in a tidal wave of emotions.
My hands are still clenched hard, and I have to remind myself to breathe when I get back to my car, trying not to speed all the way back to my apartment.
When I get home, I put on a home improvement show and throw something together for dinner. Usually that relaxes me, but I still feel sick to my stomach and agitated.
I pick up my phone, about to text Victor, but I stop before I send the message.
The things he texts me usually help me feel better, but right now, I need more than that. I need to hear his voice, to listen to the calm, even tone of it as he speaks in his measured way. So I hit the call button instead.
The phone rings exactly three times before he answers.
“Willow.” His cool, even voice is immediately soothing, and I relax on the couch, letting out a breath as he asks, “What’s going on?”
“I—” My eyes burn, and I swallow. “I think I just cut off my mom. For good.”
“You think?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No. I know I did. I just… couldn’t do it anymore.
Everything with her is always such a fight.
It’s always her lying to me and treating me like shit and then turning around and needing me.
And whenever she needed me, I always went.
I was always there to pick up the pieces of whatever she broke. I’m so tired of it, Vic.”
“Did something happen?” he asks, his voice quiet.
I let out a breath and tell him the whole story.
Misty promising me she was going to get clean, saying she didn’t want to lose me and she would do what it took to keep me in her life.
Her going to Olivia’s and demanding money, then scoffing in her face at being offered a way to get clean that didn’t involve my grandmother just writing her a check.
“She has a lot of nerve, I’ll say that for her,” Vic comments when I finish.
I snort softly. “Yeah, she does. She’s never lacked nerve, just common fucking sense.
And I guess the part that hurts most is, I used to really believe she cared about me—on some level, at least. That even though she fucked up and used me, she really did love me.
But then she goes to my grandmother, who I’ve only known for a couple of months, and demands money for raising me.
Like Olivia owes her for taking care of me when there was no one else. ”
I keep talking, and Vic lets me get it all off of my chest. He asks questions here and there, makes soft noises to let me know he’s still listening, but mostly, he just hears me out.
All of my emotions come out in a tumble, and for someone who seems so detached from his own emotions more often than not, he seems to understand mine well.
When I’ve finally run out of words, the line goes quiet for a moment. Then Vic’s voice comes through again, low in my ear.
“I’m sorry.”
I exhale a slow breath, realizing that my chest doesn’t feel as tight anymore. All of that was weighing on me so heavily, and it feels good to finally have the burden lifted.
“Thanks,” I tell him softly. “For letting me say all of that.”
“Of course. I understand a bit, how it can feel.”
“I know,” I whisper. “I think that’s why I called you.” More than anyone else I know, Victor seems to understand this side of me—the battered, bruised, and broken side. I hate that our trauma bonds us, but it does. “How are you doing?” I ask, changing the subject.
He makes a noise that could almost be a small laugh. “The same as ever. I’m just working.”
“Still trying to find a way to track down X?”
“Yes. We don’t have any leads yet, but I’m working on it.”
I hear the clacking of his keyboard in the background, and I smile a little, imagining him with his phone pressed between his ear and his shoulder, listening to me while he keeps working.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can,” he replies. The but I might not answer part is silent and implied, and it makes me smile even more. That’s just how he is.
“What do you like about working with computers so much? How did you even get into it?”
There’s a soft hum as Vic considers the question.
“I like it because it’s orderly,” he finally says. “Computers work on a system. Ones and zeros. It’s mathematical, and the engineering is set up so that you should get the same result every time you do something in the same way. There’s very little chaos to it. It just makes sense.”
I nod. “Yeah, I can see why that would appeal to you.”
“It does,” he agrees. “Whenever things in life are out of my control, there’s at least something that works the way it should, and that helps. I find hacking to be… soothing.”
That makes me chuckle. “You’re good at it,” I tell him.
“I should be. I started when I was young, mostly just messing around to see what I could do. When Malice, Ransom, and I started doing jobs before we built our shop, those skills came in handy. So I keep them sharp, the same way you would keep any skill or tool well maintained.”
The way he talks is so even and calm, and the sound of it washes over me like a soothing river.
It gets dark in the living room as we keep talking.
This might be the most words we’ve ever exchanged in all the time I’ve known the brothers, but Vic doesn’t seem anxious to hang up, and neither am I.
He answers more of my questions and asks a few of his own, teasing me about home improvement shows and the fact that I don’t throw away leftovers until they’re way past their prime.
My eyes close after a while, and I curl up on my side, still cradling the phone to my ear.
I’m not even aware of the exact moment that sleep creeps up on me, but it finally does.