Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 98755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
And she certainly doesn’t get to look at my woman. My mother is the type of person who would try to use Hope in some way once she found out about her family’s wealth. My mother only ever takes, and I certainly won’t have her associated with something that I’ve found for myself. Something to call my own, even if Hope won’t have me. My mother doesn’t get to contaminate this any more than I already have.
“What do you need?” I grit, partially closing the door behind me.
“Can’t a mother see her son?” she hisses. Actually, hisses like a cat. Fuck me. Only God knows what she’s on right now.
“That depends if the mother actually wants to see her son or if she’s only here for money or help getting out of trouble.”
She throws her hands in the air. “Always thinking the worst of me you are. It’s neither.”
I stare at her, and she fidgets uncomfortably. Because it’s always something with her, it reminds me of why I envy a family like Hope’s. How undeniably they have each other’s backs, whereas mine would tear me down in a heartbeat if they knew they could get even one cent from doing so.
My mother is many things, a coward, mostly. She and her boyfriends would beat me until I got big enough to defend myself. I never hit her, but when I was thirteen, I fought with her to get her to drop the belt she’d been whipping me with, and she landed on her ass. It had crossed my mind to hit her back. To inflict the same pain that she had on me for all of those years. But I refused to stoop so low. At that moment, I saw her for what she was—a broken, cowardly woman.
I didn’t want to be in that life anymore. I didn’t want to turn into her.
Hope was the first woman I met who showed me what true power is in a woman. As quiet as she might be, her presence always called to me with confidence and a lethal edge.
“I need something else,” she finally blurts.
“What?”
“They arrested Teddy!” she cries out, and crocodile tears spill from her eyes as she tries to explain how he’s the victim in the situation. Teddy is her on-again, off-again man who likes to beat her and fuel her addictions. I tried to get her to leave him many times. Even paid for her to go to rehab twice. But I concluded that it’s better to cut some things off. If it’s poison, it’ll eventually infect everything. But I haven’t been able to completely cut her off. Yet.
“Good. I hope he goes to jail.” I smile because I absolutely hate the fucking guy. I’d even considered killing him myself but decided against getting further involved in her life. I can’t control my mother or change her path. But this hatred I harbor for her still festers.
Her mouth opens in shock. I don’t know what she expected from me. I hate that man. The man she claims to love more than her “useless” son. I’ve heard it all. How disgusting I am to her. How I’m less compared to the scum she lets beat her daily. And she holds the resolve that that’s the absolute truth.
I feel the anger rise in me again, sparking to life that small part of me that was a fourteen-year-old boy thrown onto the streets because he wanted something better for his family. I bury that back down, though, because it has no place here. Not in this life of mine.
“Have a good day, Mother. And don’t ever fucking come back here again, begging me to help that man.” I go to shut the door, but she throws herself against it.
“Come on, Braxton. One call from you, and it can all go away,” she says desperately. “You have that kind of power, don’t you?”
“No,” I tell her again. Because she only contacts me when she finds it convenient to have a cop in the family.
“Now, leave before I have you arrested.” I push her back, and this time, when I go to shut the door, she’s too stunned to stop me.
I take a deep breath and look through the peephole to see her still standing there.
My teeth grind. I feel a part of me has been exposed as I focus on the only other presence in the room. Someone who I didn’t want to see this side of me, completely in denial about my roots. Hope and I come from different worlds entirely, and though she certainly isn’t here for my money, it’s the understanding in her gaze that rocks me when I turn back to her. She looks… sympathetic, and it pokes at something ugly inside me.
I don’t want her to see my past. I don’t want her to see me as weak.