Hook, Line, and Sinker (Bellinger Sisters, #2)(90)

Fox had to stand up. Had to move.

He remembered his parents saying those things to him. Of course he did. However, all the way up until this moment, it never once occurred to him that all parents weren’t saying those things to their kids. Never occurred to him that he’d effectively been brainwashed into believing his identity was the sum of his success with women. And . . .

And his mother didn’t wince when she saw him because he reminded her of his father. It was guilt. Fox didn’t like that, either. He owned his actions and didn’t want his mother claiming responsibility for them, because that would be cowardly. But, God, it was a relief. To know his mother didn’t dread seeing his face. To know he wasn’t broken, but maybe, just maybe, he’d been wedged into a category before he even knew what was happening.

More than anything in that moment, he wished for Hannah.

He wished to burrow his face into her neck and tell her everything Charlene had said, so she could sum it up perfectly for him in her Hannah way. So she could kiss the salt from his skin and save him. But Hannah wasn’t there. She’d gone. He’d sent her away. So he had to rescue himself. Had to work this out for himself.

“People will think she’s crazy to take a chance on me. People will assume I’m going to do to her what Dad did to you.”

When no response was forthcoming, Fox looked back over his shoulder to find Charlene aggressively stubbing out her cigarette. “Let me tell you a story. Earl and Georgette have been coming to bingo for over a decade, sitting on opposite sides of the hall. As far away from each other as they can get. They might look like sweet little seniors, but let me tell you, they are stubborn as shit.” Charlene lit another cigarette, comfortable in the middle of her storytelling. “Earl used to be married to Georgette’s sister, right up until she passed. Young. Maybe in her fifties. And, well, through comforting each other, Earl and Georgette got to falling in love, right? Both of them worried about people judging them, so they stopped seeing each other. Cut each other right off. But hell if they didn’t stare at each other across the bingo hall like two lovesick puppies for years.”

“What happened?”

“I’m going to tell you, aren’t I?” She puffed her smoke. “Then Georgette got sick. Same illness as her sister. And there was Earl, not only left to realize he’d missed out on creating a life with the woman he loved, but having no right to help her through the rough time. No right to care for her. Did it matter what other people thought at that point? No. It did not.”

“Christ, Ma. You couldn’t have picked something a little more uplifting?”

“I haven’t finished yet,” she said patiently, enjoying herself. “Earl professed his love to Georgette and moved in, nursed her back to health. Now they sit in the front row every time I host bingo in Aberdeen. Can’t pry them apart with a butter knife. And you know what? Everyone is happy for them. You can’t live life worrying about what people will think. You’ll wake up one day, look at a calendar, and count the days you could have spent being happy. With her. And no one else, especially the ones wagging their tongues, are going to be there to console you.”

Fox thought of waking up in fifteen years and having spent none of it with Hannah, and he got dizzy, his mother’s kitchen spinning around him, his lungs on fire. Crossing to the living room, he fell back on the couch and counted off his breaths, trying to fight through the sudden nausea.

Exhaustion crashed down on him unexpectedly, and he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was having his long-standing issues unraveled, explained, and the subsequent weightless feeling in his stomach. Maybe it was the emotional excess or the utter depression of losing Hannah and making her cry, plus knowing his mother didn’t secretly hate him. All of it wrapping around his head like a thick, fuzzy bandage, blurring his thoughts until they were nothing more than a fading echo. His head dropped back against the cushion, and his roundabout worries eventually sent him into a deep sleep. The last thing he remembered was his mother laying a blanket over him and the promise he made to himself. As soon as he woke up, he’d go get her.

Hang on. I’ll be right there, Freckles.

*

Fox woke up in the sunlight to the chatter of voices.

He sat up and looked around, piecing together the night before, trying to clear the cobwebs that clung harder than usual. Tchotchkes on every surface, the lingering smell of Marlboro Reds. This was his mother’s living room. He knew that much. And then their conversation came back in precise detail, followed by a sinking feeling in his stomach.

It was morning. Eight in the morning.

The bus . . . the bus back to LA left at seven.

“No.” Fox almost got sick. “No, no, no.”

He was off the couch like a shot, his stomach pitching violently. Several pairs of eyes stared back at him from the kitchen, belonging to the senior ladies who’d apparently congregated in Charlene’s kitchen for coffee and donuts.

“Morning, honey,” his mother sang from the table, in the same place she’d sat last night. Same mug in her hands. “Got a bear claw over here with your name on it. Come meet the lady gang.”

“I can’t. I . . . She’s leaving. She’s . . . left?” He patted the pocket of his jeans and found his phone, the battery at 6 percent, and quickly tapped Hannah’s number, raking a hand through his hair and pacing while it rang. No way. No way he let her get on a bus back to California. He didn’t have a plan yet, didn’t have a strategy for keeping Hannah. He only knew that the fear of God was rattling his bones. That—the reality of her actually being gone—along with what his mother had said to him last night, had damn well put Fox’s priorities in order.