The Arrangement (A Real Man, #23) - Jenika Snow Page 0,3

stared at him as he watched me. “Believe me,” I said when he had yet to respond. “I wouldn’t have called you if I wasn’t at absolute rock-bottom.” I was humiliated admitting that to him.

I ran my free hand down my jeans, willing it not to shake.

“You’re fine, Lenora. Everything will be fine.”

I cleared my throat. I wanted to believe him.

“How is your mom?” There was no accusation in his voice, just genuine curiosity. Or maybe he was just trying to start a conversation. Although that was the last thing I wanted to talk about, and I’m sure it was the same for him.

I scoffed before I could stop myself. “The same,” I said with disgust. “But I haven’t really spoken to her since that all....” I stopped myself and cleared my throat. Although my mom did reach out every now and then, she was far too consumed with her own life to care about much else other than herself, even if that something else was her only daughter.

And as Beckham stared at me, I knew I shouldn’t have said anything, shouldn’t have even went on about it. There was this thickness hanging between us, this never-ending pressure. And as I stared into his amber-colored eyes, I found myself whispering, “You weren’t the only one she hurt, Beckham.”

After my mother’s infidelity had come to light, the fact that she had a lack of remorse, even her arrogance over it, had shifted everyone’s life for the worse. At least I felt this shift inside me for the worse where she was concerned. She’d never been a very present mother to begin with, throwing herself into work, away more time than she was present.

Hell, I hadn’t even been a planned pregnancy, but instead a wrench thrown in her young life after she’d had a short fling with a wealthy, much older man. And the latter had been the only piece of information she’d ever given me about who my father was.

Self-absorbed—my mother’s picture would be under the definition in the dictionary.

I suppose that’s why she found herself in the situation she was, in a torrid affair with one of her university students, who she was currently still seeing and living with in another state. Her affair had been quite public, very messy, yet she refused to apologize, to even acknowledge that she’d done anything wrong.

And her moving away hadn’t just been about her wanting to have this whirlwind romance with her new beau. It had been a scandal. She’d lost her position at the university, and she’d been humiliated.

She’d never admit it, but she’s the one who lost the most.

But the truth was—and it was depressing to admit this about my own mother—but her being gone was a blessing in disguise. It gave me freedom. It let me breathe for once in my life.

Even if said life was currently up shit creek and I didn’t have a paddle.

Beckham gave a short nod, and I pulled myself back to the present. I saw his expression soften a bit, but neither of us spoke. Maybe he saw the look on my face, knew where my thoughts had gone.

He finally cleared his throat and lifted his hand to rub the back of his neck. “Let me show you where you can stay.” He walked past me, and I got a smell of the cologne he wore, the scent reminding me of when we lived together, of all the memories I shared with him.

I missed him.

I loved him.

I followed Beckham down the hallway, looking to my left as we passed the bathroom, and to my right were two smaller bedrooms. The room he took me to was at the end of the hall on the left, and he pushed the door open and stepped aside, letting me walk in.

This house had been one of the rentals his father owned, one of three properties they had before his father married my mom. I wasn’t surprised Beckham now lived in one of them.

“You’ve really made this house nice, Beckham,” I found myself saying and then snapped my mouth shut, my jaw aching from how hard I clenched it. I didn’t want to pretend things could be pleasant between us, but I also reminded myself he didn’t have to help me. He didn’t have to give me a place to stay. He could have told me to fuck off. He didn’t even have to answer the damn phone when I called.

I looked over at him when he didn’t say