Caught Between Two Billionaires - Skye Warren Page 0,73
around like nothing can surprise him, like nothing can shake him. He’s so freaking capable, it’s like vibrating in him. It would be just a day’s work to make a business deal and then build a house.”
“I see,” Mom says, in this speculative voice like maybe she does see. Maybe her motherly instincts have somehow told her that her daughter had a wicked threesome in a French hotel.
“But I left, and worse than that, I think I let him down. He wanted me to save that library. He never told me that, not with words.” He spanked me with a nonfiction book over the counter, though. “It’s something I felt from him.”
“Wasn’t it his company?” she asks. “He could stop the construction if he wanted.”
There was that story about the horse, though. About Cinnamon. You didn’t throw away a horse because it was wild. You kept it, even when you weren’t sure what to do with it. And then one day someone came along, someone no one expected, to tame her.
That old library lives and breathes as much as any animal. Christopher doesn’t feel that. For all that he genuinely cares about me, he sees the building as a commodity. Real estate.
“I think maybe… finding me was his way of stopping the construction.”
It meant he put his faith in me. There’s a knot in my stomach that says I let him down.
And I let that old library down.
“I didn’t get you into the treatment study.”
“And I didn’t want to do it. I would have, for you, but I didn’t want to.” She would have put herself through the pain of needles and chemicals, because I want her to get better. Does that make me selfish or stupid? Maybe both. Or maybe I’m just a little girl who wants her mother.
“Daddy would have paid for the treatment,” I say, feeling stubborn.
“Yes,” she says, simple and certain. “He would have insisted that I do it, too, even if I didn’t want to. You and he are a lot alike.”
“I don’t know whether that’s a compliment.” On some level I’ve been doing to my mother what Christopher does to me. Using my protection of her as a crutch. She did need me once, the way I needed him to dive in after me and rescue me. But she doesn’t need me to make smoothies or buy butterfly gardens in her name.
“Of course it is. I loved your father.”
“He loved you back.”
“He asked me out, you know. That night at the art gallery. Asked me on a date, like we were young and foolish. I said yes, of course. I could never say no to him.”
My throat burns. No wonder she had thought he wouldn’t leave her out of the will, among many other reasons. And we’ll never get to ask him why he did. Was it a moment of anger toward my mom? Was it a lesson for me? But he didn’t have any answers for me.
“Do you wonder why?” I ask.
“Sometimes. Not much, these days. He was a complicated man. Ambitious. Afraid.”
That makes me look up at her. “Afraid?”
“Afraid that someone was using him for his money. He couldn’t let it go. He never really trusted anyone.” She’s looking into the past now. “He loved me the same way I loved him, without being able to help it. That kind of love, it takes away your control, and he hated that.”
It breaks my heart to think of how different we could have been. If she and Daddy had gone on a date and then another. If they had finally been able to reconcile their love into building a life together. So many possibilities ended the night of that exhibit.
I close my eyes tight. “I think I have to go back.”
It was fear that sent me away from Tanglewood like a scalded cat. But I can’t wait the rest of my life wondering what might have been. Love is outside our control, but we aren’t defined by love. We’re defined by our choices. Our actions. By the willingness to do what’s right even when it’s hard.
I’ve always been hurt that Christopher didn’t fight for us, but how can I walk away without fighting for him? Without fighting for the library? Somehow those two things are the same.
Mom smoothes my hair back. “You always were my warrior. Even in school, with that Medusa painting. Even when it seemed impossible. You never gave up.”
“I gave up this time.” The words are acid in my mouth.