The Rebel Queen (Outlaw #1) - Lexi Blake Page 0,102
had pushed him too far. I suspected Rhys was the one who was truly satisfied with not having to deepen the relationship. He’d tried and gotten shot down and wouldn’t try again. My son was locked in routine, and that could be hard to get out of. “I don’t mean to pry.”
A brow arched over his emerald eyes, an expression I’d seen many times on his father’s face. “Really?”
“Okay, maybe I do, but I’m your mother.”
“Well, I’ve done okay without you for years. I don’t need you to tell me what to do.” He stopped and took a long breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
I forced myself to stay steady when emotion rushed through me. “But you did mean what you said.”
“I should have been more politic,” my son allowed.
I needed to make him see the truth. “Rhys, I didn’t mean to leave you. I never meant to leave you.”
“I understand that.”
“On a logical level you do, but there’s still a little boy inside you who wonders why I lied. Who wonders why I would have promised him I would see him in the morning and then disappear. I can understand why it might be easier to be angry with me.”
“I am not angry with you.” He stood and slid his gloves on again.
It was so plain to me that he was angry. “Baby, I can’t even start to deal with the problem if you don’t acknowledge that it’s real.”
He leaned over and waved a hand over our fire, the eternal flame going out like he’d hit a switch. “Let’s talk about it in the car if you insist on pushing the subject. I believe we have a storm coming in. I want to avoid it if I can.”
I was what he wanted to avoid, but then I was getting the suspicion that Rhys avoided anything vaguely emotional. “Not talking to me won’t help the problem.”
He placed the eternal flame back in his pack. “I’m talking to you. I wouldn’t dream of not talking to you. That would be impolite.”
He stood and bit back a growl. He was so much like his fathers. He had all of Dev’s courtly ways of letting me know he was upset, combined with Danny’s stubborn will to not acknowledge there was a problem at all.
The wind rushed back in, and I felt the cold again. I was standing in that patch of spring Rhys had made, but there was no doubt it was wintertime again. Rhys stalked off toward the car and I stood there, watching him walk away from me.
How could I get him to open up? How could we heal if we didn’t acknowledge the wound?
I started after him, my boots crunching against the snow. My rage needed a place to go. I worried if I got into that car with him right this second I would say something I shouldn’t. I needed to let off some steam.
I screamed. I let it out, let go of some small part of my rage and fear, let it spread across that snowy white field.
“Mom!” Rhys’s eyes had gone wide.
I made a quick snowball and held it in my hand. Maybe if we lobbed snowballs at each other we could find some balance.
“Do not throw that, Mother.” Rhys started my way. “I am not joking. Put it down this instant or there could be hell to pay.”
“Come on. Pick one up and throw it at me. You’re mad. I’m right here and you’re still angry. Take it out on me.”
I could handle a couple of snowballs way more easily than I could not speaking to him, not feeling connected to him. Rhys had been the one to bottle things up. If I let him, he would shut me out forever.
Rhys pointed a finger my way. “Put it down. Put it down right now, Mother.”
Yeah, he should have known me better than that. I reached back and lobbed that sucker his way.
It was going to thud straight into the center of his chest. Well, it should have. Something stopped it in midair. It hit something invisible and then slid to the ground.
Rhys’s face had gone a chalky white. “I wasn’t scared of you hitting me with a snowball. I was scared of you hitting one of them.”
Before I had a chance to ask what he’d meant, I felt something grab my arm and I knew we were in trouble.