14. Andi #2
Jonathan did say he’d “normally” recommend a breast augmentation procedure. Which is a ridiculous statement to make. Does the douche recommend that kind of thing regularly?
So this is why she’s freaking the hell out.
“Mom, Jonathan has a full-on mate.”
He’s not going to pick you.
I barely manage to bite back the words. They’re true, but I don’t have a death wish.
“Look, I don’t think it’s a good idea to just... get a boob job on a whim.”
“On a whim? On a whim?” She’s practically screeching now.
She rips open the tie of her robe, swaying on her feet. She’s wearing absolutely nothing underneath the thin fabric.
It’s a shocking sight.
Even though she’s seen me undressed and nearly naked plenty of times for as long as I can remember, considering the modelling jobs I’ve done over the years have required that sort of thing, it’s been a one-way street. She’s normally a lot more conservative.
Understandably so. Her crippling insecurity is the kind of thing you can probably smell on her, though her wine scent is always twisted and acrid because of the chemical unbonding procedure she underwent.
The twisted bondmarks along the crook of her neck are a mottled black.
It’s no wonder she keeps them hidden all the time.
“What the fuck,” Ezra mutters, his eyes going wide with disgust before they fly to the ceiling.
What the fuck is right.
“Mom, what are you doing!” I say, my jaw dropping. “Please put your robe back on. Why in the world are you getting naked?”
“Look at them!” she slurs, pointing at her own breasts.
I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at. She’s rail-thin, so there really isn’t much there.
“Before you sucked all the life out of me, I had tits too! Now look at me!”
“Mom, I think—”
“Shut your mouth!”
Something inside me snaps. Maybe it’s knowing that the burner phone is recording a few feet away. Maybe it’s from seeing Cameron and knowing that my guys are waiting for me, or maybe, it’s just me getting sick and tired of her bullshit.
But there’s something about how pathetic she looks, screaming in my face, in the state she’s in.
I’ve always been a little terrified of her.
Actually, scratch that—a lot terrified of her.
I’ve been scared of what she’ll do to herself if I fuck up badly enough.
I’ve been scared of her ridiculous emotional reactions.
I’ve been scared of the person she turns me into when we get into fights like these.
But maybe I shouldn’t be scared of any of that.
“You’re right,” I say, my voice tight. “I don’t. I don’t understand a lot of the things you do. Like why you threw yourself down the stairs.”
“Threw myself?” she laughs in my face, the acrid smell of alcohol in her breath mixing with her own perfume. “You pushed me!”
“You and I both know that’s not true,” I snap. “You tell yourself these fucking lies over and over again until you actually believe them, but that doesn’t change reality! What you’re doing is wrong, Mom.”
Ezra stands stock-still beside the garment bag, his eyes wide. Having a witness for this sort of fight makes it feel more real. Like I’m not hallucinating the fact that I’m actually talking back to my mom.
“Wrong?! I’m doing this for you!” She’s so close now that some spit flies from her lips and lands on my face, making me flinch back.
“Everything I do is for you! You have everything you could ever fucking need. You have no idea what it’s been like for me.
None!” Her voice trembles as she breaks down into a sob that I’d find gut-wrenching from anyone else. “I’ve protected you!”
“Protected me?” I scoff, the words leaving my lips in a sharp, bitter exhale. “You’ve locked me away in here!”
“I did what I had to!”
“So you faked me pushing you down the stairs so you could do this to me!”
“I did what I had to do!” she repeats, her voice so shrill it’s a wonder she hasn’t broken the windows.
Her words have me freezing in place. That’s basically an admission of what she did, right? That has to be useful for something.
Hopefully the burner phone caught it. Now I just need to get out of this situation. Preferably without Gina taking pictures of me. I’ve never even taken nudes for myself before. Not on purpose. The last thing I want is my own mother taking them of me.
Unfortunately, now that she’s started, it doesn’t seem like she’s going to stop anytime soon.
“You know nothing about what it’s like to have to fuck a casting director to give you a chance,” Gina snarls, her wine scent growing thick and cloying in the air with her genuine distress.
“No idea what they do to little fourteen-year-old girls who come to the big city from a town in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere! You’ve been blessed with an easy life!
A good alpha!” She waves towards Ezra, whose eyes widen as he holds his hands up in surrender.
“Aren’t you forgetting he shoved my head into a countertop?”
“Uh, yeah,” Ezra says, pointing at himself. “Not exactly a shining example.”
“Be quiet!” she snaps. “Alphas do that all the time!”
The alphas I know—the alphas I trust—come to mind.
Eli’s undeniable strength in every fiber of his body, never once being used against me. Not even when we were at each other’s throats when Beck and I first started dating.
Everett’s ridiculous levels of dominance he never uses to force me or anyone else into submission, even though he very easily could.
Hell, even Cameron, who cornered me outside the bathroom when we first met, has never given the impression that he was going to physically hurt me.
“That’s not—that’s not true, Mom.” My voice is tight with emotion at the thought of my guys.
It’s obvious that Gina believes every word she’s saying—and it’s sad.
Something cracks open in my chest as she stands there, swaying on her feet, her robe still open. There are tracks of mascara running down her pale cheeks and her glassy eyes are even more glazed over. I’m sure she’s remembering whatever ghosts she has from her past.
I can have empathy for her as a woman. But that doesn’t drown out the feelings of roiling anger I have towards her as the daughter she continues to fail.
And fuck over, if I’m being honest. Her failures as a mother go beyond just her not being emotionally present.
“Shut your mouth.” Even though her words are sharp, they don’t carry that same frantic, screeching energy the rest of this shitshow has. They’re almost said as an afterthought.
“What in the world is going on up here?” Stuart says from the open doorway, his normally neutral expression twisted into a scowl.
“You tell us,” Ezra says with a soft snort. “You should get her outta here and into bed or something. She’s crazy drunk.”
Stuart’s scowl only grows deeper at Ezra’s words and he shakes his head, his steps brisk as he moves in front of Gina and ties her robe shut again.
“Shut up,” Gina says once more, the words broken on a sob. She collapses into Stuart’s arms and he helps guide her towards the door.
He shoots a glare over his shoulder at Ezra.
“You should leave. You’ve done enough for tonight,” Stuart huffs.
Ezra just shrugs, heading towards the door.
“Night Andi,” he says. Despite the tension around his eyes from the insanity of that interaction with Gina, I see relief in his expression. Or maybe I’m projecting and the relief I’m feeling right now is just that poignant.
I find myself excited for the door closing and the lock clicking shut for the first time since I was locked in here.