Chapter 19 #2
I wrenched my arm free, the force making her stumble back a step. “Yes. You are. Go to a hotel. Sleep on a bench. I don’t give a fuck anymore. Just get out.”
Her eyes locked onto mine, stubborn conviction written across her face. “No. You need me here.”
The words were so absurd I physically recoiled, taking a full step back. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that? It sounded like you said I need you.”
Her expression didn’t waver. “You do.”
A laugh burst from me—harsh, disbelieving, a full-body convulsion of bitter amusement. “That’s hilarious, Mother,” I said. “Your sense of humor’s finally improving. Too bad I won’t be around to hear the rest of your jokes.” I reached for the last of her blouses.
Her hands landed on my shoulders, her fingers gripping them as she begged me to stop. “Alessia, please. I can’t leave. Just let me stay.”
I stepped away from her. “And why would I do that?”
“Because you were in a hospital bed. And I wasn’t there.” The confession came out rough and uneven. “I didn’t even know. No one called. No one even thought to.”
Her fingers curled inward, nails biting crescents into her palms. “Why would they? I wasn’t there for your childhood. I missed everything. Every scraped knee, every nightmare. Every single part of your life where a mother should have been.” Her eyes filled. “I missed all of it.”
“Spare me the monologue. I’ve heard it all before.”
“No, you haven’t,” she whispered. “Because I’ve never said it right.”
She took a tiny step closer, hands trembling at her sides.
“I want to say it right this time. I’m here because I thought…
maybe I could finally do it right. Maybe I could find the right thing to say.
” Her lips pressed together, suppressing a tremor.
“Every time I look at you, I see everything I missed. Everything I ruined.”
Her eyes held mine, refusing to let me look away.
“And I almost lost you for good.” Her face crumpled. “I don’t want to miss anything again. I want to make things better. I want to try.”
Heat surged up my throat, scorching the back of it and leaving every swallow painfully scraped and burning. The sensation climbed higher, filling my mouth with a bitter sting that made me fight the urge to gag.
“Stop. Lying.” I took a step forward. “That’s not why you’re here.
” My mind raced, the pieces clicking into place.
“You know about the divorce. That’s the reason, isn’t it?
Your little legacy project fell through, so you’re back to try again.
Is that it? You want to do it right this time? Find me a new husband?”
She looked as if I’d struck her. Pain and betrayal flashed in her eyes before she could hide it. “That’s not why I’m here.”
She lowered her eyes, shame weighing heavily across her features. “I know that’s what I told you the last time you asked, but it wasn’t the truth.” Her head lifted, eyes meeting mine with startling directness. “I never cared about an heir.”
A dry, disbelieving scoff tore from me. “Fucking liar.”
She spoke so quietly that I almost didn’t hear her.
“I know that’s how it looks. But I’m not lying right now.
I lied then because…” She winced, as if the memory still stung.
“Because of how you looked at me when you asked why I’d come back.
You didn’t believe I could want you for you.
You needed a reason that fit into your world.
Something transactional. Something you could understand. ”
Her shoulders sank. “So I gave you one.”
Sadness hollowed her expression. “I told myself… maybe this is all we’ll ever be.
You never trusting my intentions. Me always having to give you a ‘purpose’ for being here.
” A fragile, wounded sound escaped her. “I made peace with that. Because at least… even if you never trusted me… I still got to see you. I got to hear your voice.”
Her voice thinned, trembling but clear. “But I was still running, hiding behind a lie because the truth felt too vulnerable. The truth is… I came back because I wanted to know you. Not because of heirs, or duty, or some grand legacy plan.” She drew in a shaky breath, then forced the words out.
“I didn’t leave when you were a child because I didn’t want you.
I left because I was a terrified girl who had been forced into a cage, and I saw only one way out.
I thought getting free was the only way to survive.
But all I did was abandon you to a monster. That is my failure. My shame.”
She took one small step closer. “When I heard about the accident… the ground disappeared beneath me. I almost lost you without ever having been your mother.”
She shook her head. “I’m not here for an heir. I’m not here for a transaction. I’m here because I want to know my daughter. I’m here because if I walk away now, I’m just running away. Again. And I am so… so tired of running from you.”
Tears fell, tracing slow lines down her cheeks. “I know you’ve hated me for leaving. But you never said it. You never showed me your anger. You just… locked it away.” Her eyes searched mine, desperate. “I’m here. Give it to me. Give me your anger.”
I looked at her and felt only a vast, heavy emptiness.
The anger that had once burned through me had burned itself out. The hurt had worn itself down to something dull and distant. Even the urge to react had deserted me, leaving my body strangely still, my mind stripped of everything except the weight pressing behind my ribs.
She stood there, waiting for something from me.
There was only silence inside.
“I don’t hate you, Mother. I’m not angry you left.” The words came out flat, factual. “I was forced on you. You never wanted me. I understand that. It’s the one thing about you that’s always made perfect sense to me.”
I took a slow breath. “What I resent is you deciding, decades later, that you now wanted a daughter. That you could just walk back in and claim a role you’d already abdicated. And even then, I thought… fine. Let her have this. What do I have to lose? A few afternoons? I can handle that.”
I met her shattered gaze, my own clear and still. “But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want your company then. And I don’t want it now.
“The only reason I let you stay here now,” I said, the confession catching painfully in my chest, “was because you needed something. From me.” A tremor ran through my hands.
I forced a slow breath into my lungs before continuing.
“And a part of me… a stupid, hungry part… was so grateful to be needed by you that I ignored every alarm bell screaming in my head.”
Her face crumpled completely. Her mouth fell open, her shoulders shaking as the last of her strength gave way.
Maybe the regret was real. Maybe the longing was real, too. In another life, perhaps that would have mattered.
“Alessia,” she choked out between sobs, “I know I hurt you. But please, give me a chance. I just want to get to know you. Please. I love you.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” A dry, brittle chuckle scraped my throat.
I was so tired of this.
“Do you feel better now? Does saying those words make you feel like you’ve done your part? You tell me you love me, and now your conscience is clear. And if I don’t perform the grateful daughter, I’m the villain. Is that it?”
Tears streamed down her face, her shoulders trembling beneath the force of her sobs. “No, that’s not it. I mean it. I love you—”
The tired, cynical part of me went silent.
It wasn’t her words. It was her face. The vulnerability laid bare there reached past every defense I had built, slipping beneath the anger, the resentment, the years of hurt.
It found something buried deep inside me, something I had spent years refusing to acknowledge.
The child who was still waiting.
That child looked up. She had been waiting so long in the silence that the sound of it—I love you—didn’t feel like words. It felt like light hitting a room that had only known dark. It was blinding.
A high, thin whimper slipped out of me, small and helpless, carrying the unmistakable sound of a child. My hand flew over my mouth, trapping the next broken sound behind my palm.
The room seemed to fall away. In its place stood the long, empty hallway of my childhood home, stretching before me in the dimness.
And I was small again.
Waiting.
The heat behind my eyes had nothing to do with anger. It was the scalding tears of that child, finally breaking through after decades of being buried. The tremor running through my hands belonged to her. The breath snagging in my throat belonged to her, too.
The adult I had fought so hard to become had disappeared beneath the grief. What remained was a little girl, stripped of every defense, sobbing with the force of a wound that had waited years to be acknowledged.
She had just been handed the most beautiful, devastating lie in the world.
That she had been loved all along.
“No, you don’t!”
The sound that tore out of me belonged to someone much younger. It came shrill and fierce, stripped of every adult restraint. It was the little girl buried beneath all those years of silence, finally screaming back.
“Don’t you dare say that to me now.” The words broke apart on the way out, but I forced them through the pain. “If you loved me, you would have been there. You would have stayed. You wouldn’t have left me alone in that house with that man to raise me like a fucking spreadsheet.”
My chest heaved as everything I had buried for years finally broke loose.
“But you did.”