Chapter 19 #3
I sucked in a ragged breath. “And the most loving thing you could have done after that was stay away. You don’t get to vanish and then stroll back in when you’ve decided there’s room for me.
You don’t get to ignore me for most of my life and then come back because you suddenly have time for me.
” My voice rose, sharpening. “And you definitely don’t get to look me in the eye and tell me you love me. That is not how it works!”
I leaned in, my vision blurring with unshed tears. “I am not a doll you can put on a shelf when you’re bored and come back to when you want to play. I am a person. And I get hurt.”
A hot, traitorous tear slipped down my cheek, burning against my skin. I let it fall. I made no move to wipe it away. I faced her head-on, forcing her to look at what she had done, forcing her to see the wreckage she’d come to tour.
“Your leaving hurt me. Every single day of my childhood, it hurt. And you coming back?” I struggled to get the rest out. “That hurt more. Because it forced me to remember that the little girl who waited for you never actually stopped.”
I was crying now. Tears streamed down my face, blurring my vision as they slipped unchecked down my cheeks.
I kept my arms at my sides and let every tear fall where it wanted.
I refused to wipe them away, refused to hide what she had done to me.
I stood there and let myself cry, furious that after all these years, she could still reduce me to this.
“If you were going to leave,” I breathed, the words barely audible, “you should have had the guts to stay gone.”
She made a sound—a small, broken thing that might have been my name, or a sob she couldn’t contain.
I wasn’t done. Everything I had kept buried was finally spilling out, one painful truth after another.
“Every time you’re near me…” I said, so quiet the room seemed to lean in to hear.
“It aches. Because you are here. And part of me… that waiting part… wants you here. It wants you to need me. To choose me. But the rest of me wants you gone. Because your presence just reminds me of the silence. The space you left empty.”
I held her there with my stare, refusing to soften what came next.
“It tears at me because you are the only mother I will ever have… and you are also the deepest wound I carry.”
The last word tore out of me, carrying far more than I had meant to release. I stood there, staring at her, trying to hold myself upright through the sheer force of everything I had just admitted. Then my body decided it had suffered enough and began staging its own revolt.
My breath came too fast, each inhale shallow and useless.
The floor tipped beneath me, or at least my body insisted it had.
A tremor started in my hands and spread through my fingers, impossible to control.
My knees went strangely light, leaving me with the awful sensation of dropping through empty space while my feet remained planted exactly where they were.
The walls felt closer. The air turned heavy against my skin, every breath harder to pull in than the last. Her crying kept cutting through me, each broken sound scraping at nerves that were already frayed to their limit.
I wanted to scream at her to stop. I wanted to scream at myself.
Mostly, I wanted one part of this nightmare to shut up for five damn minutes.
My attention landed on the disaster surrounding us. The suitcase stood open on the bed, clothes spilling across the floor in complete disarray. She was crumpled in the middle of it, crying over the wreckage she had helped create.
The whole scene was so pathetic, so painfully ridiculous, that a bitter laugh nearly caught behind my teeth.
Years of hurt, years of anger, years of waiting, and this was where it had brought me.
Standing in a room full of discarded clothes and broken pieces of a relationship that had never fit properly in the first place.
The weight of it sank through me, dragging every remaining ounce of strength down with it.
I need to leave.
I wiped my tears away with a harsh swipe, dragging the heel of my palm across my cheeks until my skin stung. I was done letting her see me break. If she wanted to stay, she could stay. If she wanted to cling to the role of my mother, she could do it alone.
“You don’t want to leave, Mother?” I demanded, staring straight at her. “Fine. Stay.”
I took one sharp, shuddering breath.
“I’m leaving.”
Her hand shot out before I reached the doorway. Her fingers stretched toward me, reaching, pleading, searching for something they could hold on to. I moved past her before she could catch me, leaving her hand suspended in empty space.
I walked out of the room and kept going.
Out of the apartment. Down the hall. My feet struck the floor in quick, uneven succession, carrying me farther with every step.
I needed distance. I needed walls between us.
I needed to get far enough away that I could finally breathe without feeling her presence pressing against me.
I kept going.
I didn’t look back.
Not once.