12. “Should I StayShould I Go?” #4
Soren had shared something personal about himself and his father because she asked him to. It was cheating not to offer something equally personal in return, so out of sheer guilt, she admitted, “They live in Nashville now.”
His brows shot up. “That’s not a small town.”
“No, but it’s home to one of the largest evangelical megachurches, and that’s the real community my mom’s always been chasing.”
“So they’re religious.”
Every breath seemed forced and bottomless. “That’s a generous way to put it.” The sarcasm was there, but it landed flat. “There’s faith, and then there’s obsession.”
He studied her carefully as she continued to wring her hands under the table. Realizing this was something she didn’t usually discuss, he said, “We don’t have to—”
“My mother’s need to conform and belong somewhere overshadowed everything,” she blurted, wanting him to understand. She needed him to get that their moving was not a normal choice. It wasn’t about her. Not really.
“Church wasn’t just for Sunday mornings in my house,” she explained.
“Once my mom found God, faith became her entire identity. It consumed her. And the more severe her faith became, the more she needed. It was never enough to simply be a mother or wife. She had the compulsion to…” She frowned, trying to explain it in a way that truly expressed how deep her mother’s addiction went.
“She was subsumed by the church’s ideology. ”
Reaching for her wine glass, she drained half of it.
“I didn’t realize they were that involved. Were they strict?”
“Not at first, but the more she got into it, the more things started to feel like some Puritan settlement. And I was just your run-of-the-mill heathen trapped in sin.”
He chuckled, as if to say he preferred her that way.
“When I was twenty-one, they found a church community, and my mom wanted full-time involvement. She asked me to go with them, but…” She shrugged.
“You didn’t want to go to Nashville?”
“Hell no. But I also didn’t have a reason to stay.
I was working at the municipal building as a clerk, making shit pay, and there was nothing keeping me here, but I was not going to move across the country to join some sort of fanatical conservative cult that thinks women should submit their free will. ”
She didn’t look at him as she admitted, “It’s not that I don’t believe in a higher power. I do. But I’ll never get behind a religion that views my life as a stain that needs to be cleansed. I am who I am.”
“You’re not a stain.”
She laughed without humor. “Filthy, that’s the word my mom likes to use.”
“Were they angry you didn’t go with them?”
“Not at first. I had no money, and they planned to sell the house. I think they thought I’d eventually follow them out of desperation. But I was only desperate to find a way to stay.”
“That had to be scary.”
“I cried a lot. I didn’t want to leave. I had a life here. Friends.”
“I’m glad you were stubborn.”
She smiled. “Me too.”
“How did you wind up getting the house?”
“I saw an open submission post on social media calling for stories. I figured I always got decent grades in English, and I could write something. I never expected it to go anywhere, but hoped I might be able to sell it for a hundred bucks and maybe write a few more. If I sold enough, I could come up with a down payment for an apartment and try living on my own.”
He chuckled, knowing how the story ends. “Sounds like you underestimated yourself.”
“A bit.” She grinned, the coldness in her chest cracking as a sense of warmth spread like a warm, comforting hug.
The waiter returned, and the conversation paused as plates were set across the table, tempting aromas wafting from each dish. Pan-seared scallops in an autumn corn puree over sage brown butter with ribbons of prosciutto. Dry-aged lamb chops with rosemary and crispy potato cakes.
When she tasted her first bite, she moaned at the heavenly flavors melting in her mouth. The taste, the texture, the scent… It was all decadent.
“Tell me about the day you got your first book deal.”
She grinned and lifted the linen napkin off her lap to wipe her mouth. “Mm, this is really good.” Everything was so delicious it was difficult to stop eating.
She sipped her wine, then continued with her story.
“I got an email from an editor at the publishing house, asking if I wanted to schedule a call. I said yes, thinking they were going to connect me with someone who could collect my tax information or whatever they used to send out payments. Since they contacted me, I assumed they liked my story, because I’d heard that no response meant not interested. So I took the meeting.”
“Always take the meeting.”
She smiled, because that was excellent business advice.
Slicing a scallop in half, she swirled it in the warm, buttery sauce. “I was totally unprepared for what came next. I mean, I was a kid. I didn’t have a clue how these things worked.”
She popped the scallop into her mouth and laughed as she chewed. “They wanted to offer me seven figures for that story and several more in the series.”
“Wow.”
“I know.” Chasing the bite down with another swallow of wine, she smiled proudly. “When they told me the number, I screamed so loud my mother thought I was hurt.”
He chuckled. “What did she say when you told her?”
Her smile faltered, but some indignant part of her wouldn’t allow that, so she stiffened her shoulders and straightened her spine. “At first, she was confused. Then betrayed.”
“Betrayed?”
“Yeah. The fact that I wanted to stay back and write erotic love stories rather than go chasing megachurches across the country with her blew her brainwashed mind. It turned into a fight that... Well, nothing was ever the same after that day.”
“What did your dad say?”
“He took her side, as always.” She set down her fork, and Soren refilled her glass, reading her needs before she could voice them. “I moved in with Wren for a while, just to get some breathing room. My parents eventually listed the house and then…they left.”
“That must have been hard.”
She shrugged. “My mom always had this hole inside of her. It wasn’t anything motherhood could fill. She resented my strong-willed personality since I was little, and the more she tried to fit me in a box, the more I rebelled and tried to break free.”
She rarely thought about those days, and it was strange to feel the lingering ache that still remained when she considered how difficult and scary those times had been, more than a decade later.
“I didn’t hear from them for months. Then my book was published, and my mom finally called.
” Her gaze lowered to the table. “It’s funny how some days can encompass both the happiest and saddest moments of your life.
I was so proud. And when she told me she picked up a copy of my book, I foolishly thought she was coming around and accepting me for who I was.
But for all of my pride, all she expressed was shame. ”
“I’m sorry, Joce.”
She shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
“Still, I know what that’s like, wanting a parent’s approval and never getting it.”
And she never would.
Her mother belonged to a faith that demanded women shrink. Modesty over confidence. Submission over voice. A woman’s body existed to serve. Any desire of her own marked her as broken and dangerous.
Jocelyn had written an explicit romance about a woman who wanted without apology, who chose passion over obedience, who treated her own hunger as something holy.
Every page declared the opposite of everything her mother believed.
And she refused to be ashamed of her work, knowing the book existed as proof that there were enough women out there, just like her, to ensure its success.
That was all the validation she needed to stand up to her mother, and stand up to her she did. But there was no grey area in the end. No agreement to disagree or negotiating into some middle ground. It was either repent or be shunned.
She always thought parents were supposed to love their children unconditionally. That was what Christ preached in the bible, right? But her mom had some very explicit conditions, rules that would have broken Jocelyn’s soul had she given in.
Her laugh was cold and hollow. “She was mortified. She told me I would burn in hell if I didn’t unpublish it immediately. I mean, I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
“Did you want to?”
“No. I worked for months on revisions and had planned an entire series out. I felt like I finally discovered my calling. And I loved every part of it.” She gave him a shy smile and admitted, “To me, writing is like air. I can hold my breath and go without it for a while, but eventually, parts of me start to wither and die without it. It’s painful when I go too long without creating.
Everything starts to fall apart. I need it. It’s part of who I am.”
He nodded as if he understood needing something so deeply. “You love it.”
“Yes.” And she’d followed her heart. “When I got my first real royalty check, I called the realtor. The house was still on the market, and I told him I wanted it, even though—at the time—it was ugly and in need of repairs.”
“It held memories.”
She didn’t know if buying the house was about keeping those memories or erasing them and creating new ones. In her mother’s eyes, she’d become the serpent in the garden. Maybe she was. “I bought it because I’m a petty bitch.”
At that, he laughed.
“I wanted the final word. I wanted to look them in the eye one last time and for them to see what my sin had bought. I wanted to make sure she knew the money that would buy her new home and put food on her table had come from that sin. I wanted her to taste it, all the way down in Tennessee.”
“Did it feel good, being able to have that last word?”
“Hell-fucking-yes.” But it would never feel as good as their acceptance might have felt.