All the Feels (Spoiler Alert #2)(79)

His voice cracked, so he swallowed and tried again.

“I introduced them,” he finally managed to say. “She was in a hurry and didn’t want to bother, but I pushed her to meet him, because I knew I was leaving right after graduation. Heading to L.A. to be an actor. My mom and I were going to be apart for the first time, and I wanted her to have someone steady to lean on while I was gone. I didn’t want her to be lonely.”

“You were trying to look out for her.” Her voice was gentle. So gentle.

He nodded. “They hit it off right away, but she wasn’t sure. After a few months, when she said she might break up with him, I told her she was too used to being alone. That he was a decent man, and she should give him more of a chance.” His breath shuddered in his lungs. “And then I left for L.A. I started working at a café and going to auditions and making friends, and I didn’t check in with her as often as I should have.”

“You were a teenager, in other words.” Her fingers in his hair, sifting, stroking, didn’t pause. “A normal teenager out on his own and trying to make a life for himself.”

His spine was melting under her touch, when he should be tensing instead. Should be vibrating with self-hatred, instead of pleasure.

Still, he couldn’t seem to pull away. “They kept dating, then eventually got engaged. I drove back to Florida for their wedding. I walked my mom down the aisle to that man.”

“I see,” Wren said quietly.

She probably did. At the ER, she’d undoubtedly heard some version of this same story countless times, and he suspected each iteration had broken her heart anew.

“I started landing more parts, better parts, and I got really busy. A lot of times, I just didn’t answer her calls, and I never visited. We’d go a week without talking. Two weeks. Eventually, we hardly talked at all, and I barely noticed.” Because he was a terrible son, which he’d only realized once it was much too late. “Now, when I think back to the few conversations we did have, I realize she stopped mentioning friends at some point. She stopped talking about Jimmy, except in this careful fucking voice, and even then, she only said he was fine. They were fine. When she told me he’d persuaded her to quit her job, because he could support them both, I thought that was great. A goddamn blessing.”

Wren’s hand stilled. “Because she’d worked so hard while you were growing up, and you wanted her to have time to herself.”

Her defense of him was kind but ill-conceived, and he didn’t bother responding.

“They were married for nine years. Nine goddamn years. They visited me twice in all that time, and I never visited them at all, and I didn’t even think about it, Wren. I didn’t even wonder if something was wrong.” His throat was thick, and he swallowed hard. “Jimmy died of a heart attack when I was twenty-eight, and I finally came home. For his funeral.”

It was a typical Florida afternoon in August, steamy and scorching, the clouds roiling overhead as the thunderstorms began to roll in. He’d looked down at his mother and finally seen her. Finally noticed, there at his stepfather’s graveside.

In the tropical heat, she was wearing long sleeves. A blouse that buttoned to the neck. A thick layer of makeup on one cheek, heavy enough to call attention to itself if anyone studied her carefully. Which he hadn’t, until that moment.

Years later, he’d recognize the way she moved that day. Gingerly. Slowly. The same way Marcus had moved when he’d fallen from his Friesian on set and cracked a couple of ribs.

She looked decades older than her actual age, and maybe a casual observer would think that was grief. But those weren’t temporary creases on her face. Her gaunt, sunken cheeks weren’t the result of a single week of mourning.

“She said she was fine, just sad, but I didn’t believe her. That time, I didn’t believe her, and I begged her to roll up her sleeves and unbutton the first three buttons of her blouse, and—” His breath was hitching, and his cheeks were wet, and Wren was wiping away his tears with a clean tissue, and he hadn’t earned her kindness. Not at all, but he was so fucking hungry for it. “Then I drove her to the hospital, because that motherfucker died of a heart attack in the middle of beating the living shit out of my mother, and not for the first time.”

“Oh, Alex.” She stroked his neck. “I’m so sorry. For her, and for you.”

When he eased away and stood to pace, she didn’t try to hold on. “I don’t fucking deserve your sympathy, Wren. I introduced my own goddamn mother to her abuser, convinced her to stay with him when she wanted to leave, and couldn’t be bothered to notice when he isolated and beat her. For years, Lauren. I didn’t notice for fucking years.”

“But …” Her brow was furrowed, her expression pained and soft. For him.

What wasn’t she getting here? What hadn’t he explained clearly?

Ten steps up, ten steps back, as his heart thundered anew. When he passed the couch, he whirled to face her, hands spread in an appeal for her to understand. To finally, finally get just how unfit he was to be her lover, and how selfish he was to pursue her anyway.

“I couldn’t be bothered,” he repeated, his voice ragged. “I couldn’t be bothered to ask how she was really doing and press her for more details, or wonder why all her friends seemed to vanish, or check that she wanted to quit instead of being pressured into it by her asshole husband so she’d be as isolated and dependent on him as possible.”