Mother, Please! - By Brenda Novak & Jill Shalvis & Alison Kent Page 0,71

with her mother was difficult when a third party hovered. Not that David hovered. “Besides, David and I will never be anything but casual friends.”

“Kissing friends.”

When Avery glared, her mother capitulated.

“Okay, okay. No more matchmaking.”

“Thank you.” Avery breathed a short-lived sigh of relief, because her mother’s next words hit her like a blow to the chest.

“I suppose it would be difficult anyway for you to have a relationship with David considering your history.”

Avery stared at her mother while Suzannah sipped at her coffee. It was as if now that she’d dropped her bomb, nothing mattered but the caffeine.

Ooh, it was unfair how sneaky mothers could be.

“I’m not falling for your tricks, Mother. You can’t possibly know anything about what history I might or might not have with him.”

“Of course I do. I visited David when he was in the hospital, you know. Before he returned to school from his suspension.”

“What did he tell you?” Avery demanded after swallowing the lump of dread in her throat.

“Nothing, really.” Suzannah shifted on the sofa, leaning back against the overstuffed arm opposite Avery who said, “Okay, then,” right before her mother added, “But Johnny Boyd told me everything.”

God. What was happening here, and could it please stop? “When did you talk to Johnny?”

“I tutored him at the alternative center before he was allowed back to regular classes. He talked about the girl who had been with him and how David had been jealous and tried to take her away.”

Avery let her head fall back into the cushions, closing her eyes and bouncing her head as if beating it against a brick wall. “He was such a liar.”

“I know, Avery,” her mother said softly. “Anyone who knew David knew he would never go after Johnny Boyd out of jealousy. Which meant he went after him for another reason. Knowing a girl was involved made the rest of the puzzle fall into place. There was only one girl over whom David would have been so protective and reckless.”

“Me,” Avery said softly. She hadn’t breathed a word about what had happened that night to anyone. Not even directly to David until this morning.

She’d been wrong not to tell all then, thinking her silence would prevent Johnny from going after David. Young and selfish and deathly afraid of rumor. Fearful of anyone knowing how close she’d come to being truly hurt because curiosity had driven her to find out how much of Johnny’s bad-boy reputation was rumor, how much was truth.

Stupid and selfish and very, very ashamed.

Yet all the time she’d thought her secret safe her parents had known. And never said a word. Who else? she wondered. How many others were aware of what had happened beneath the bleachers that night?

“I need to say something, Avery.” At the wounded sound of her mother’s voice, Avery opened her eyes. “I should have asked you about it, but I didn’t. I wanted you to come to me. I knew that was wrong, but mothers are not always sensible when their own children are hurting.”

“It wasn’t that I was hurting…” Another half-truth because, of course, she had been—as much for David as for herself.

“Yes. You were. But I think you were more confused than anything.” Suzannah paused, her caring eyes meeting Avery’s, which had become watery and blurred. “I watched you for signs of depression, for signs of drug use—”

“Mom!”

“I know, I know.” Suzannah waved a hand. “It sounds so dramatic now when I speak of it. At the time, however, I was worried that you might need help to cope, and had I hovered or been too insistent I feared that you wouldn’t have come to me if you did.”

Avery’s coping had been dealing with the unbearable guilt over what had happened to David as much as anything. Or perhaps knowing what he’d gone through had kept her from thinking of her own near miss.

At this point in time, she wasn’t sure her past mental state mattered. She wanted her mother to know the truth so they could both put away all that had happened.

She reached up, unbuttoned the top two buttons of her tunic and pointed to the old scar along her collarbone. “Do you remember asking me how this happened?”

Suzannah frowned, studying the narrow strip of light skin. “Of course I do, sweetie. You caught the top of a chain-link fence while papering a house. I remember telling you that you could pay to replace your own uniform top.”

Avery smiled ironically at the lie she’d told. She’d