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My fucking best friend. God, did I love him.
Chapter 22
Preston
I quit.
Drake’s words echoed in my ears long after he hopped in the shower. I’d only heard the first part of his conversation with who I assumed was his best friend and employer, Sean Fox, manager of EEMM. Once Drake had turned on the water, I couldn’t decipher his words.
I laid curled into a ball, my heart in my throat, a slog of thoughts attempting to choke the life from me even though he’d taken a step toward what I told myself I wanted with him—exclusivity.
A crossroads loomed ahead of me, one with paths that led in opposite directions.
It had taken me years to find the courage to reclaim Nancy’s last name without Jacqueline knowing. It was only a matter of time until she found out I’d once more become a Gibbons rather than a Casswell.
She’d kept Casswell when she and Nancy had married, and I’d heard about the arguments they’d had over my birth when deciding whose last name would be on my birth certificate. When Nancy transitioned, Jacqueline had gone on a rampage, legally changing my surname to hers.
She’d stolen yet another part of Nancy from me when I’d been too young to do anything about it.
That feeling of being cheated had festered over the years until I’d found the balls to take it back. My first act of defiance, and I still dealt with daily anxiety over what would happen when she learned of it.
Jacqueline would shit a brick when it became known.
Or would her newfound softness toward me be forgiving of what she would have a month earlier seen as an affront?
The stress over that truth coming to light had lain like a heavy shadow in the back of my mind since I’d filed the papers to reclaim my legal name, but this thing with Drake? If allowed to continue for any length of time, it could very well be the final straw that would make Jacqueline lose her shit on me.
She’d yet to find Nancy’s truth as acceptable.
Why would she see me as anything but filthy like she’d claimed countless times the LGBTQ community was?
Even more, why did I care? How could I allow fear of the woman to control me at twenty-eight years of age? I’d been on my own since college. Caring for myself, paying my own damn bills. Sure, I didn’t have any close friends and never went out, but I was living.
Somewhat.
Since allowing myself a taste of the forbidden, I hadn’t realized how much I’d been missing out on though. There was so much more to life than merely surviving. I didn’t want to be done with Drake, but I couldn’t find the strength inside my cowardly soul to stand for what I craved.
My conscience had been too conditioned to bow down to the one who had ruled me from childhood. I ought to hate the woman who’d birthed me, but with her heart’s change toward me since the elevator incident…
Exhaling heavily, I cursed the little boy inside me who still reached for his mommy with innocent love. Younger me longed to be coddled. Held in strong arms that promised to accept me, improper thoughts and all.
Had Jacqueline truly softened to the point of change?
Could she be swayed to accept the man that I was?
Did enough evidence exist that she could be schooled in sexual identity and fluidity and see it as truth?
Yearning for all three battled with my desire for Drake. Emotional versus physical. Which would prove stronger?
The shower shut off, and I had no answer to my dilemma.
My heart raced, and I tried to slow my breathing. The last thing I needed was a panic attack that would make Drake question what was going on with me. The man was damned nosey, prying into the corners of my mind for information I wasn’t ready to reveal to the world. Too many new vulnerabilities hid inside me, shit that if found out would destroy my fragile existence.
He loved me, wanted to keep me forever as much as I did him, so I knew which way he would try to sway which path I chose.
Nancy would do the same as him, telling me that Jacqueline had given up the right to my love when I was a child.
But that fucking bond I still felt to her, that need to be loved by my biological mother, was stronger than any longing I experienced for things to be different.
