Sterling
“HELLO?”
Her tone was sharp, as it normally was and I shouldn’t have been surprised but I was.
I knew she wanted something and still couldn’t be bothered to be kind to get it.
I thought she’d have reached out to me much sooner than this.
Besides the blowing up when I initially left, there hadn’t been any contact on her part since I’d touched down in Texas.
Did I think she knew where I was? Potentially.
I didn’t put anything past my mother or her need for control.
More than anything, I was sure that she was waiting on me to come crawling back to the fold so that she could berate me for leaving and having to cover for me in front of the family. Something I never asked her to do.
“I’m where I needed to be, what’s wrong?” This was the way of things, giving nothing away but attempting to placate someone who was only in my life to stress me out.
“There is no reason you’re not here for the summer.
You told me that when you were done in April that you wouldn’t travel again until the fall.
Not like you need a job anyway. I’m not sure what changed but you were here one day.
One! Your grandmother is trying to figure out where you’ve gone.
There are a number of events you’re scheduled to be a part of that we have had to make your excuses for. I will not be doing it anymore.”
I chuckled because she kept sounding like she was doing me a favor when she just wanted to save face to whomever she needed me to be a shield for. “Is there something you wanted, Mother? I am in the middle of doing something.”
“Are you on another assignment? You know what it means to the family for everyone to gather at the family home. How dare you break the tradition!” I kept moving around putting clothes away while Ami finished her first morning nap.
“What does the tradition do for any of us?” I finally stopped and gave her my full attention, wondering if she was going to be honest for once.
I’d spent a little more time with Rachelle when she stopped by to drop off Ami’s baby gift.
She talked to me more about the tougher skin I would have to develop because of the way people behaved with the team and I had been trying my hardest to let things roll off my back.
It was normally easier said than done with my mother but I was too busy and too tired and too far out of her reach to care.
“What do you mean? It’s a way to uphold—”
“—The standards of the family that I will never meet. And I’m fine with that.
I decided that instead of sitting around and being miserable all summer I was going to do what I wanted.
We don’t gather to share and reminisce, the only memories we have between one another are telling stories about who bested the other last. I don’t want that for myself.
” And that was the truth. The backbiting and sniping got old.
Even when I did participate in it I felt like shit once it was done.
“So you’re going to leave your family behind for what? Work? To help some random people instead of spending time with the people who know you best?”
I had to muffle my laughter because no one in my family besides Dalton knew much about me.
And even then, our relationship wasn’t as close as it should have been.
It was too easy for us to be wary of one another just because of the stock we came from.
I understood why he would have misgivings about me despite my never having given him a reason.
Our shared bloodlines didn’t inspire loyalty to anything but the brands and the bottom lines.
With the addition of our mutual parental issues, I was shocked he talked to me at all, honestly.
“I’d rather be doing what I enjoy. So now that you know I’m not coming back, is there anything else that you need from me?”
When the silence lengthened between the two of us I knew she was shocked that I hadn’t fallen in line or cowered to her request. When she spoke again, her voice was tight and I knew she was trying to keep her control.
“I didn’t know you would be so selfish as to leave your mother here by herself. I don’t have anyone here—”
“And that is not my fault. You’ve made it clear that your greatest amusement is making fun of me and I don’t have the desire to spend my time that way. I’m sorry if you’re lonely, but I won’t be coming back. Probably ever. I get no joy there and—”
“So you’ll just let your cousins inherit everything?
You don’t even want to spend time with your grandmother in her later years?
” My mother always reverted back to this: needing to spend time with her mother so that we could get a bigger share of the pie.
None of us could own any of the family businesses outright.
They were held in trust for every member as a birthright.
My mother simply wanted influence over my grandmother’s accumulated wealth and I had no desire for it.
If she wanted to leave me something, that was her business.
If not, it wouldn’t change how I lived my life.
I’m sure no one else in my family could say the same thing.
“Her second greatest joy next to lambasting you for marrying down is to bother me about everything she thinks I’ve done wrong.
She gets on me about my job being too common, my features being too much like his and a whole list of things I’m not in the mood to hear.
So, no, I won’t be around for that. I don’t care about the money, I don’t care about the estate.
I would never want to live in a house that had caused me so many negative memories in the first place.
You all can take it and do with it what you will.
I’m choosing peace. I suggest you learn how to do the same. ”
I hung up on her before she could say anything else.
The guilt trip wasn’t going to work because I no longer felt beholden to her.
I’d done the one thing she couldn’t—I’d broken away.
Even if it was just for right now, this was the first step of many I felt sure I could make.
I never lived for her approval but still sought it out because that was how she raised me.
Now I needed to focus on being a better me.
And the crying voice on the video monitor was the reason that I had the strength.
I finished putting Ami’s clothing in her drawers and made my way into her bedroom.
Overnight she slept in my room, but I was slowly trying to acclimate her to sleeping in her crib during the day.
She’d been home for two weeks and now was just over six weeks old so even though she’d come early I didn’t think it was too soon to have her sleep alone.
Of course, some days I couldn’t put her down and she just slept in her wrap as I did chores around the house or I slept on the daybed in her room.
“Good morning, Princess!” I grabbed one of the pre-made bottles of water out of the fridge and added her formula to it before placing it in the bottle warmer. When I walked to her crib she was wiggling inside her pink, floral sleep sack like she was ready to be let out.
Ami was a beautiful baby and I could say that without bias because she wasn’t mine.
She had that adorable infant scrunch and new baby smell that was so intoxicating.
That head full of big curls seemed to have gotten longer in the last two weeks and I wondered if I should get her a little baby silk cap.
She was still too young for one but a compromise of silk crib sheets might work to protect her hair.
It was always my favorite assignment when I worked with neonates because even though they were sometimes fighting for their lives there was so much hope and promise in each of them.
Ami wasn’t any different. She was hitting her milestones despite the traumatic way she’d been born and didn’t seem to have any ill-effects to arriving at thirty-seven weeks.
Ami didn’t return my cheer and her bottom lip quivered as her tiny face scrunched up.
I knew she was hungry and I’d thought to change her diaper before she got fed, but that wasn’t what she wanted to happen.
I unzipped the sack but kept her limbs braced so that it wouldn’t activate her startle reflex.
I scooped her up happy that she hadn’t soaked through her diaper while she slept so I had some time before she had to be changed.
I grabbed her bottle out of the warmer and tested it against the inside of my wrist before I placed it at her lips.
She hungrily worked her little mouth around the nipple and began to drink her meal her tiny little eyes finally blessing me with a look.
It was a what took you so damn long look, but still a blessing in my eyes.
“Well, there you are pretty girl. Did you have a good nap?”
I swore she stared at me like I was ridiculous to be asking her those questions so I could only laugh and sit down in the gliding armchair that was in her room.
Aldrich had given me free rein to buy what he thought was necessary but I didn’t take the liberty to decorate anything.
That would be up to him or her whenever she got older.
I was mesmerized watching her have her bottle noting every feature that screamed she was going to grow into the prettier version of her father.
She had big cognac-colored eyes like him and a head full of curls just like him.
To add insult to injury, she had the audacity to be born with the same deep dimples that dented his cheeks.
Her skin was slightly lighter and that seemed to be the only thing that hinted at her mother doing more than carrying her.
“She good?”
I glanced up noting the way he looked in the room. His steps were slow, a caution borne either from not wanting to disrupt us or spook me with his sudden appearance.