Tipping The Scales: Knox (Mate Craze)(36)

Those words echoed in my mind. If I had stayed, would things be sunshine and roses now? Of course not, but maybe this hole in my heart would be smaller. I didn’t want to be that girl. The one who won the guy by being available. For him, maybe for him it was worth it. Scratch that, all things were worth it. I felt it to my marrow. Why didn’t I tell him that? Because I sprouted feathers like a loser.

The tears began to flow freely again as I thought about all the things I should’ve said, but didn’t. How I loved him, too, even if all logic told me it was impossible. How I wanted to be with him, for him, and not just because he needed me. How him needing me did fill me with purpose, but only because it was him and not all the things I now realized he worried about. How I would find a way to make my current path blend with him, not as a sacrifice, but as a way to actually have a life worth living at the end of my five and ten year goals. How the idea of little dragon babies didn’t freak me out, even though I was far too young to have them now. How he, how… darn it, my eyes were not able to see more than a few feet in front of me and a dead me would never get him back.

I pulled over using a runaway truck lane that was perfectly placed for my meltdown. There was no way I wanted to be here in winter if they needed those bad boys. Looking at the clock, I knew my mom would be just about home from work. Her hours were one of the reasons I spent so much time focusing on my future. I wanted to not be forty something and schlepping drinks for drunks, all with the hopes of filling in the holes left by a dead end day job’s salary.

One thing still didn’t come close to making sense, and that was how Gran knew about me. Or did she? She was so off the wall by then that the entire breakdown might have been a coincidence. But… what if it wasn’t? What if she had been of right mind when she flipped out on me? The only person who knew Gran with any depths was my mom, and I had a feeling I was about to pull the scab off the wound by asking her what I needed to ask her. If my brain could conjure any other way of finding out, I’d have been going that route, but alas none did. All I could think of was Mom.

Hi Mom Home yet?

She hated it when I sent texts. She never texted, only called, and true to form, the phone rang moments later.

“Why are you up?” She sounded tired. My mom was always tired. She had never been what anyone would call a perfect mom or even a good mom, but she tried her hardest so that worked for me. In many ways her inability to parent made me stronger and more self-motivated than any of those “perfect” moms I envied my classmates having growing up. Heck, on paper Rhi’s parents looked great and they were certified assholes.

“Spring break.” I reminded her. She knew I was working on my thesis during spring break. I may have left out a few details, but I hadn’t lied.

“You drinking?” Because of course that would be the only logical thing her college daughter could be doing this late at night.

Not that I wanted to tell her the truth. Na, ma, I was just breaking up with a dragon and figured I would call and shoot the shit while I let my eyes get unfuzzy from the bucket of tears I’ve been shedding. Because that would go over well and was as far from delusional sounding as you could get.

“No, mom.” I gave my best exacerbated sigh hoping to guise my now weak voice. “I just was wondering something. Was Gran crazy at the end?”

“What brought this on?”

Shit. Her voice told me all I needed to know. She knew I knew something.

“I’m sort of in the town we brought her ashes to and it got me thinking.” Lies. All lies and my mom was great at sniffing those out. I crossed my fingers and toes my excuse sounded plausible. Not that it mattered. I needed to know.

“Why are you there?”

“Thesis mom. I told you that.” I hadn’t actually told her that, but after a shift at her day job, and a shift with the drunks, I figured she was tired enough that she would at least second guess. It wasn’t like I planned to never tell her. I just wanted to do this alone. Or alone-ish, as the case turned out to be.

“Sorry, I forgot.” And now she was the one with her pants on fire. Weren’t we the pair? “No, she wasn’t crazy. She just had a hard life.”

“She called me one of them.” I let slip out. In my head I had all the good questions to lead into this, but hearing the defeated acceptance of my grandmother’s awfulness to my mom had them flowing from my lips.

“I remember.” The sound of water beating off the wall now filled my ear. She had turned on the shower, her belief that the conversation was about to end evident.

“What did she mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Mom. For serious. What. Did. She. Mean.” No more beating around the bush. No more trying to weasel it out of her. Those attempts had already gone south. I needed to know, and now I had every reason to believe she knew.

“She believed in true love and fate and all that crap.” She paused and I almost interrupted until I heard the rumple of her clothing. She was getting ready to actually get in the shower. Whatever I got from her in the next few moments would be it. She wasn’t one for discussing feelings. It would be a drop by and done. “You know that.”

“Uh hu,” I agreed, not wanting her to stop her flow. I could sense she was about to drop a bomb and I braced myself. “She and my dad were meant to be, and when he died, so did much of her.”