Long Way Home (Thunder Road #3)(76)

She’s no longer a shadow, but the aging beauty queen with her hair up in a bun. “A boy like that will take care of you. He’ll work hard, protect you, and you’ll never have to worry or want for a thing. But if you keep insisting on fighting him all the time, he’ll get tired of pursuing you. Boys like girls who play hard to get, but they don’t like it when you take it too far.”

“I’m not playing a game,” I say. “And I’m going to assume that you aren’t talking about marriage. I’m way too young to even think about the rest of my life.”

Mom fiddles with the tie of her robe. “Your father and I were engaged by the time we graduated from high school.”

Yes, they were. It happens. I can’t say it doesn’t. There are people who meet their true love bearing turtle doves on the second day of Christmas, and stay together forever and ever and ever, but marriage out of high school isn’t my thing.

Let’s pretend Chevy and I are those people who meet and stay together, though right now those odds are about negative two million to one. Marriage is still a lifetime away for me. “Well, Chevy’s not Dad and I’m not you.”

“I know,” Mom says in exasperation, “but that doesn’t make me wrong. It doesn’t mean your father didn’t love me and I didn’t love him.”

Great, guilt. “That’s not what I meant.”

Mom purses her lips like she has a million words to say to me, but doesn’t think I’m worth the effort. She then does what she does best with me—walks away.

“Mom,” I call out, but the annoyance is thick. Why can’t anything be easy between me and her?

At the door, she pauses, but doesn’t look back.

“Why can’t you be okay with me being different from you?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

I blink with her answer, then feel the need to glance down to see if I’m bleeding. That was a stake straight through my heart.

“Your father made me happy. He made me laugh. He was the reason I smiled. I know I don’t know how to talk to you. I realize you were more his child than mine, but I’m trying to help the only way I know how. You have been so sad since your father died and you used to be happy. Very happy. I want you happy. I can’t bring your father back, but...” She trails off.

It becomes harder to breathe in knowing where she was headed. I was happy before Dad’s death and when I was with Chevy. “Chevy can’t make me better. Even if he and I could figure things out, he can’t take all the sad away.”

And maybe that’s the frustrating part of all the men in my life. They act like their presence is some sort of a magic wand that will wipe away my pain, but that’s not how pain works. Grief, despair, agony...it’s shot intravenously through my veins like an unwanted drug and I’m left to deal with the ache until it runs its course. Someone wishing and talking the pain away doesn’t do anything to rush it along as it creeps through my blood.

It’s there and it’s something I have to work through, something that no one else can fix.

“But it was worth a try,” she says. “Someday you’ll understand that there are some pains that make you feel like you’re dying and seeing your child hurt is at the top of the list. I don’t know how to talk to you, and I don’t know how to fix you either. You’re so much like your father. So strong, so stubborn, so independent. I understood how to care for your father, but I don’t know how to care for you. Nothing I do is right. I know I fail you, but keep in mind while I do fail, I love you, too.”

My throat tightens and all I want in the world is my mother to hug me. Mom used to do that—hug me. When I was younger, Mom was the go-to person for scraped knees and sprained pride. She would almost flourish in the moment of me coming in with a trembling chin, always ready with a warm hug, hot cookies and cold milk.

But as I grew up, I shed the dresses she bought for me for blue jeans and T-shirts like my father. I turned up my nose at baking and instead became my father’s shadow as he worked on the Chevelle or his Harley.

I realize you have always been more his child than mine...

My heart sinks and my hand searches for Chevy’s bear to cling to, but I let my hand fall to the mattress. Dad said I needed to give a proud man an out. Maybe Mom’s proud and needs an out. Or maybe Mom needs an opening and her still standing there, telling me she loves me, maybe that’s her giving me an opening, as well.

“Mom.” Words become stuck in my throat and I have to clear it to continue. “My knee hurts and sometimes I have nightmares, so...” Spit it out. “Can you sit with me? Just for a few minutes?”

“Yes,” she says, yet she stands in my doorway like she doesn’t quite know what to do with my offer. I edge to the middle of my bed, offering her room, and she crosses the room and sits beside me.

She’s sort of touching me, yet not. I want her to hug me. I want all the pain to go away. “I love Chevy.”

“I know.”

“I hurt him tonight, but he hurt me, too. I want to be with him, but we can’t seem to stop hurting each other.”

Tears burn my eyes and I rap the back of my head against the headboard and it’s then that something happens that hasn’t happened in months. Mom’s hand goes over mine, and when she links our fingers together, I choke to keep the emotion that’s been building from exploding out.