13. Mia
MIA
I hear the car before I see her — gravel under tires, a door slamming harder than it needs to, footsteps fast on the walkway. Then the front door opens without a knock, and Mom walks in like she’s bracing for a wound she’s already decided is fatal.
She takes in the great room in pieces — the draft table still covered in cheat sheets, the empty glasses nobody’s cleared away, four men standing in various parts of the room like they’re not sure whether to look at her or give her space, and me, standing beside Grant in clothes that aren’t the jersey but might as well be, given the way her face changes when she finds me.
Her hands are shaking too, I notice, same as mine — whatever composure she drove down here rehearsing has already started to crack the second she walked through the door.
Shock first. Then disgust. Then something closer to fury than I’ve ever seen on her. “Mia. Get your things. We’re leaving.”
I don’t move.
“Mia.” Sharper now. “I said get your things.”
“I heard you.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel, steadier than I have any right to feel with my heart slamming against my ribs. “I’m not leaving.”
Behind me, I feel Grant shift closer without quite touching me — present, not crowding, letting this be mine to say without making it about him. I’m grateful for that more than I can put into words right now.
“Do you have any idea how this looks?” Her eyes cut around the room, taking in every detail like she’s building a case file — the four men, the mess of the weekend, me standing in clothes that aren’t mine, in a house that isn’t mine, next to a man who used to be my stepfather and is now something she’ll never have a word for.
“Bri sent me a photo, Mia. You in his jersey. Surrounded by his friends.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Then tell me what it is, because from where I’m standing it looks exactly like what I think.
” Her voice climbs, panic bleeding through the fury now.
“You’re twenty-one years old. You have your whole life ahead of you, and you’re throwing it away on some — some arrangement with a man twice your age who used to be your stepfather?—”
“‘Used to be’ is the whole point, Mom.” The words come out sharper than I mean them to, but it matters, suddenly, that she hear the distinction even if she can’t accept the truth underneath it.
“He was steady. He was present. That’s all he ever was to me until I came back here as an adult and everything looked different. ”
“You’re twenty-one. You don’t know what you want yet.”
“I know exactly what I want. That’s what you can’t seem to accept — that this isn’t confusion, it’s clarity. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life, and it terrifies you because it doesn’t fit the story you’ve already decided to tell yourself about how this happened.”
She flinches at that, like the words landed somewhere she wasn’t braced for.
She turns on Grant next, and I watch two decades of complicated history compress into a single sentence. “You’re supposed to protect her. You were her stepfather.”
“I was.” His voice stays level, none of the fire in it that’s radiating off her. “Now I’m the man she chose.”
“She didn’t choose you.” Mom’s voice cracks, fury bleeding into something rawer underneath. “You groomed her. You brought her to this house, surrounded her with your friends, and?—”
“Stop.”
The room goes quiet. Even Jax, who I’ve never once seen without something clever to say, doesn’t say anything at all.
“I need you to actually listen to me.” I step forward, out from beside Grant, needing my mother to see me as the person making this choice and not a shape standing behind someone else’s decision. “Not the version you’ve already decided is true. The actual version.”
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t interrupt either, and I take that as the only permission I’m going to get.
“I called him. A little over a week ago, when my lease fell through and I had nowhere to go. I asked to stay here. He gave me the key and drove home, and I didn’t see him again until Friday, when he showed up with three friends for a draft weekend I forgot was happening.
” I keep my eyes on hers, refusing to let them drop.
“When the guys showed up, I could have left. I have a car. I have my phone. I have friends who would have come and gotten me in twenty minutes if I’d called. I stayed because I wanted to stay.
I’m twenty-one years old, Mom. I’m not confused, and I’m not a victim in this story, no matter how much easier that version might be for you to accept.”
“You don’t understand what he?—”
“I understand exactly what happened, because I was there for every second of it, choosing it every single time.” My voice shakes but doesn’t break. “You weren’t there. You don’t get to tell me what it was.”
She tries a different angle, tears now, the kind of raw grief I haven’t seen from her since the divorce itself. “I’m your mother. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“It counts for everything. That’s why this is so hard.
” My own voice cracks on that one, the first real crack in my composure since she walked through the door.
“But you left him. He didn’t leave me. And you don’t get to decide who I love because it makes you uncomfortable to watch.
” The word hangs in the room like something dropped from a height.
Love. I haven’t said it to Grant yet. I haven’t said it to anyone about this, not even inside my own head in so many words, and now it’s out, spoken for the first time in front of my mother and four men who all go still at hearing it.
Grant doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything. But I feel his attention on me like a physical thing, and I don’t look at him, because if I look at him right now I’ll lose whatever’s left of my nerve.
Brooks steps forward slightly, unexpected, and speaks for the first time since Mom walked in.
“Sandra.” Careful, measured, the tone he probably uses on a client he respects even while delivering unwelcome news.
“I’ve known Grant twenty years. I’ve watched him build a company from nothing, watched him hold this whole friend group together through things that would have broken most men.
I’ve never once, in all that time, seen him act carelessly with anyone.
Whatever you think happened here, I’d ask you to consider that the man you’re accusing isn’t the man standing in front of you. ”
Mom’s eyes cut to him, and for a second I think it might land — something in her posture flickers. Then it hardens into something worse than the fury she walked in with.
“Twenty years.” Quiet now, and quiet from my mother has always been the dangerous register. “You’ve known him that long. I was married to him. Don’t stand in his kitchen and tell me who he is.” Her gaze comes back to me. “I don’t understand any of this. I don’t think I’m meant to.”
“You don’t have to understand it,” I say. “You only have to accept that it’s mine to choose.”
“That’s the thing.” And here’s the part I’m not braced for — not the shouting, but the cold underneath it, level and sure in a way that frightens me worse than screaming would.
“I can’t stop you. You’re twenty-one, there’s no law anywhere that gives me a say, and every man in this room already knows it — it’s the only reason the four of you can afford to stand there this calm.
So I won’t waste the breath trying.” She bends, picks her purse up off the floor where she dropped it, like the decision’s already made.
“I’m going to go home. And one day this is going to cost you something you can’t see from where you’re standing right now.
When it does, you’re going to remember that you looked your mother in the face and chose a house full of his friends over her. I hope they’re worth it.”
“Mom—”
“Don’t.” She’s already turning for the door. “You made your choice out loud, in front of all of them. You can live inside it.”
The door closes behind her. The sound of her car starting up outside, then gravel, then nothing. My knees give out.
Grant catches me before I hit the floor, arms coming around me solid and immediate, and I press my face into his chest and finally let the shaking take over completely.
I’m not crying from grief, not exactly — I’m crying from the weight of a decision that can’t be unmade, the door closing on a version of my relationship with my mother that might not ever reopen the same way again.
The house has gone quieter than I’ve heard it all weekend, everyone moving carefully, like sudden noise might undo something fragile.
Jax disappears into the kitchen without a word and comes back with a glass of water I don’t remember asking for.
Tate hovers close but doesn’t crowd me, arms crossed, jaw tight, looking like he wants to chase the car down the driveway and say something he’d definitely regret.
Brooks stands quietly near the window, watching the empty road like he’s making sure she’s actually gone and not circling back.
“That was brave,” Brooks says eventually, to no one in particular, or maybe to all of us. “Braver than most people manage in a lifetime, let alone a Tuesday afternoon.”
“It didn’t feel brave.” My voice comes out muffled against Grant’s chest. “It felt like getting hit by a car.” “Sometimes those are the same thing.” He says it simply, like it’s a fact he’s observed rather than a comfort he’s offering, which somehow makes it land harder than if he’d tried to be gentle about it.
“I’ve got you,” Grant murmurs into my hair, his mouth pressed there like he’s trying to hold the words in place by proximity alone. “I’ve got you.”
I don’t know what happens next with my mother.
I don’t know if this is temporary or permanent, if she’ll come around eventually or if I lost her for good in the space of a few minutes.
I want to run after the car, apologize, smooth it over into something more comfortable for both of us.
But that would mean taking back every true thing I just said, and I’m not willing to do that, not even to make my mother’s drive home easier.
The guys give us space eventually — Jax herding Tate and Brooks out to the deck with some quiet excuse about checking the grill, giving Grant and me the great room to ourselves.
I hear their voices carry faintly through the glass, low, subdued, none of the usual noise they’ve filled this house with all weekend.
Even Jax’s voice stays quiet out there, stripped of every performance he’s had running since Friday.
I pull back far enough to look up at Grant’s face, and whatever I’m searching for there, I find something steadier than I expected. Something closer to certainty than relief, like watching me stand my ground confirmed a decision he’d already made about the rest of his life.
But I know I said it. Out loud, in the worst possible moment, in front of everyone who matters. I chose him, permanently, with my mother’s back still visible through the window as her car pulled away.
Grant hasn’t said it back yet. His arms around me right now say it louder than any word could, and for the first time since the door closed behind her, I let myself believe that might actually be enough.