The Best of Winter Renshaw - An 8 Book Collection - Winter Renshaw Page 0,554

they’re all managed remotely and we’re only notified when there’s an issue, like a trigger or an alarm or unusual activity.

She must have called the company today and specifically asked them to check and see whether I’d come home last night.

“I ran into Honor this morning,” she says. “At the coffee shop in Brookhill.”

Shit.

“She says she’s been home for weeks and she hasn’t seen you once.” My mother’s lithe arms fold across her chest, her manicured fingers rapping against them. “What is going on with you, Brighton? Why are you sneaking around? What are you not telling me?”

The pitch of her voice gets higher and higher, laced with a frenetic undercurrent of terror. She truly believes something God-awful is going to happen to me if she lets me out of her sight for more than two seconds. I suggested to my father once that we send her to see Dr. Greenberg, but he brushed me off.

He told me I wasn’t a mother and I wouldn’t understand. He tells me that the night of my grandparents’ murder was a turning point for her, and clinging to me is the only way she’s been able to cope.

To this day, I’ll occasionally hear my mother wailing in the middle of the night, followed by my father’s hushed voice as he attempts to calm her down. It’s been over ten years and she still has nightmares about The Incident.

“Well.” She taps a house-slippered toe. “Explain yourself. I didn’t raise you to be a liar. And you will not sully the Karrington name all because you want to run around like a street child.”

My legs ache, the muscles trembling and threatening to give out. And my lips are swollen from hours of kissing Madden. I need a shower. A long nap. And time to come up with an explanation that won’t send her to the emergency room with palpitations like that one time she went to pick me up from school and went to the south door instead of the west and was convinced I’d been kidnapped because I wasn’t there.

I tug at my damp, sweaty clothes. “Can I take a shower first? Before we talk?”

Her eyes widen, as if she’s appalled at my nerve to make such a request.

“No,” she says. “I’ve waited all morning to have this discussion with you, and we will have it now. So tell me. Tell me what’s going on, Brighton. And don’t you dare lie or there will be consequences.”

I begin to say something and then I stop. While I hate to lie, I can’t tell her the truth. She won’t be able to handle it. It’ll traumatize her.

“Are you … are you seeing someone?” she asks. “A boy?”

I suck in a breath, quashing the urge to correct her usage of the word “boy.”

I’m a woman. I don’t talk to “boys.”

“No,” I say. “I’m not seeing someone. But would it be so bad if I were?”

She's quiet, which probably isn’t a good thing.

“I’m twenty-two,” I remind her. “A college graduate.”

Her eyes narrow, like she doesn’t understand my point.

“You realize how ridiculous it is that you monitor my every coming and going at all times, right?” I ask. “I don’t know any other person my age who has to get permission from their mother to go somewhere, who has to check in or adhere to curfews, whose mother controls the vast majority of their wardrobe.”

“You’re embellishing, Brighton.” She rolls her eyes, scoffing. “It isn’t that bad. You’re making it seem way worse than it is.”

“Am I?” I cross my arms. “Because if you want to go there, I’d be more than happy to run you through an extensive list of examples.”

“That won’t be necessary,” she says, shutting me up because deep down she knows this is one argument she won’t win. “Transparency and honesty are not only an expectation in this household, but a requirement. You will not continue to sleep under this roof and enjoy the privileges you’ve known if you choose to stay on your current path of deception.”

She’s bluffing.

Letting me out from under her thumb would punish her more than it would me.

“I know you almost lost me once,” I say. “But you can’t spend the rest of my life punishing me because you’re scared something’s going to happen again. You’re not going to lose me, Mom. It’s okay to let me grow up. It’s happening. In fact, it’s already happened.”

She gasps. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I’m not a little girl anymore.” I linger