Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(110)
And there was the crux of so many of the issues Keira ever had with her mother. She blinked at the woman, measured the set of her impassive expression, the cold shift of her eyes and Keira was left helpless, struck dumb by the cruelty her mother held in every blink of her eye and unrestrained expression. Keira would always be nothing more to this woman than a visual shell, nothing of substance; women were to her nothing but pretty pictures fashioned by instance and urging.
“My limited attributes? You mean my face? My body?”
Her mother leaned forward, touched Keira’s chin, fingers soft and surprisingly kind against bruised skin. “We’ve worked so hard to make sure you grew into that face. How many times have I told you…”
The slap came sharp, loud; Keira’s palm against her mother’s hand and the woman jerked back, shocked, surprised that her daughter had lashed out. “Limited attributes?” Keira said again, her voice loud. “My face, my body, what I look like? Not what’s in my heart? Not if I’m kind or good or generous? Not my mind, God, no you don’t care if I’m smart. You just want me to smile and agree with whatever * you find suitable enough for me, right?” Her mother sat up straighter, glaring at Keira as though she didn’t recognize her. “You don’t care that I live and breathe and exist for music. You don’t care if I’m the Valedictorian a hundred times over or if I know Chaucer or Shakespeare or the stories a thousand years old that have changed what I feel, what I believe in. Those aren’t attributes to you, Mother.
“You only care that I’m pretty and all I’ve ever, ever wanted for you to say to me is that I was pretty smart, pretty talented, pretty kind, anything, Mother, anything than just plain pretty. But you can’t do that. You don’t know how. You live inside your little box where everything is white and traditional and frozen in a time that died a long time ago.” Tears streaming over her cheeks, Keira wiped them away, annoyed. “You don’t struggle, you don’t need, you don’t want and all you care about is that I become a carbon copy of you. But I won’t be. I can’t be. There is too much of my father in me and he taught me something you could never beat out of me; he taught me to love blindly. He taught me that there is magic in music, that every single important purpose in life is about finding that magic and holding it inside you. And I took that magic and embraced it and it led me to a boy who is nothing like you; who is loud and large and beautiful. I love him. I love him more than breath and I will not walk away from him and there is no way in hell I will kill his baby.”
Her mother kicked up from the chair, sending it sliding behind her. “You’re being irrational, Keira, just like your father. I knew this would happen. I knew it the second that boy walked into my house. That’s why I did what had to be done.”
The ache in Keira’s chest shifted, dropped like a stone into her stomach. “What are you talking about?” Her mother looked over her head, to the I.V., over at the monitor that timed Keira’s heartbeat and she knew, just by the way her mother avoided her glare, how she rubbed her fingers on the bedrail, that the woman had somehow set the entire mess at North Rampart in motion. “What did you do?”
Shoulders lowering, her mother still refused to look at Keira. “I heard you talking about North Rampart and I knew what he was doing.” A small glance at Keira’s face and then her mother’s voice rushed out, full of excuses, rationale that probably sounded sensible in her mind. “I knew it was something you didn’t need to be around so I left a message with Steven’s golf buddy Detective Wilson. He took care of everything else.”
Keira let her eyes dip closed, unable to look at the woman for another second. “You called the cops.”
“I was protecting you.”
Her mother’s protection had cost them all, Kona’s twin most of all. When she opened her eyes and spoke, Keira’s voice sounded flat, resigned. “You killed Luka.”
“I didn’t do a damn thing to that boy.” The bedrail raddled against the mattress when her mother hit it. “Kona killed Luka the moment he decided to be a thug.”
“Get out.”
“I most certainly will not…”
“Get out of my room,” she told her, voice even, steady, brimming with a threat. Keira watched her fingers, the rough musician’s calluses on the tips and she wished she had her Gibson. She needed the calm it brought her. Her mind was set and she promised herself she wouldn’t look at her mother again. The lies, the betrayal, the smothering dominance the woman had always settled over Keira felt too full. “Get out. Now.”
She didn’t rage at her mother liked she wanted. Keira didn’t even enjoy the way the woman’s chin wobbled or how she visibly released her fight. Cora Michaels didn’t move, seemed incapable of doing anything more than stare at her daughter as though she was finally seeing her clearly for the first time. But it was a reaction that had come too late for Keira; an honest expression of respect she no longer needed.
Three slow pumps onto the call button and Keira’s nurse entered the room, that bright smile vanishing when she watched Keira and her mother staring back and forth. “I want her out,” she told the nurse. “I don’t want to see her anymore and I damn sure do not want an abortion.”
“She’s your mama…”