“I wouldn’t have loved you, not how you should’ve been loved. I wasn’t able to love you. Just being there isn’t enough.”
I ground my teeth, wanting to argue, not knowing how. I’d watched Abigail with a mother who stayed and who destroyed her with it. Which one of us had it better? It was an impossible question to answer.
I wanted my mother to regret everything.
To say she was sorry, that if she could’ve gone back in time and made things perfect for us.
“Where are you living now?” She sounded choked.
“The motel.”
She frowned at that. “Are you happy there? Do you…” She trailed off, more lines growing between her brows. “We have a lot of empty rooms in this house. I mean—this is presumptuous. You don’t even know me. You probably hate me. I should be better at this…”
She couldn’t be about to ask me what I think she was.
She didn’t know me. I didn’t know her. This was the first time we’d met since she gave me up.
I still resented her, anger still burned my throat.
She exhaled. “If you’re going to leave, at least take the diary back. It belongs to you.” She bent down, lifting it off the coffee table, and then I saw the newspaper. On the front page, an announcement for a wedding: Abigail Crowne and Edward Harlington. My mom’s voice blurred into the background.
Ned had his arm around a stiff-looking Abigail. That was just two days ago, on the fucking pier. How had I not seen him?
“Theo, I know we can’t start over, but can we try and start again?”
I headed to the door without thought.
“Theo?”
I looked back, realizing Miranda had been talking.
A wrinkle formed on her tan forehead. “Is something wrong?”
I was more torn than I’d ever been. I wanted to sit back down and talk to my mom. What if this was my only chance to ask her the questions burning cigarette holes in my soul?
This was all I’d ever wanted in life. I was moments away from no longer being the lonely boy sitting in the sand.
“I…” I raked a hand through my hair. “I have to go.”
Sadness washed her features, but she nodded. She followed me out the door and gave me her phone number at the doorstep. “Call me, please, Theo. If you need anything, anything at all.”
I took it, a foreign feeling in my gut. Hope? Then I turned my sights toward the sea, where Crowne Hall’s jutting and pointed black pepperbox turrets were visible against the sparkling sea.
They wouldn’t let me inside Crowne Hall willingly, but fuck willing. I used my servant code to get inside the gate, and my fists to get inside the main hall once I was spotted. I left a trail of catharsis, of groaning bodies and blood in my wake.
I might’ve forgotten why I’d come in the fury, if not for one single burning thought: Abigail.
I could take two on one, even three on one, but once four fully trained guards surrounded me, fists landing on my jaw, my gut, flying all at once, it was touch-and-go. I wouldn’t give up.
I wouldn’t.
“Stop.”
All at once they let me go. Tansy stood in the middle of the hallway.
“You have made quite a mess,” she murmured, looking at the blood staining her priceless black-and-gold rugs, the groaning bodyguards. I spat blood.
“You…broke…our…deal,” I said my words through heavy breaths, my shoulders dragging up and down.