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I laid down on the bed, cradling my head with my hands as I laid on my side. Chill. I was perfectly capable of acting out the concept. I stared at the screen and ignored the way my stomach swooshed with unease until, finally, my eyes started to drift closed.
Panic gripped me once again as I felt strong arms wrapped around me. What the hell was Fox thinking? I was about to leap up from the bed and belt him with…something, when I recognized the scent wrapping around me.
“I thought you weren’t touching me until I told you I was yours,” I said quietly.
“Fox said you were freaking out. I thought I’d check it out.”
“Why?”
He was quiet for a moment, making me think he was going to give me some lame answer. Instead, the question I got shocked me. “What happened to your mother?”
My mother. The question threw me for a loop. I didn’t think of my mother often. I tried not to think of her often, but she crept into my thoughts with every step I took outside the door. She was always correcting my stance or helping me pick out the appropriate outfit. She was there in every decision I made.
“She died,” I finally said.
“I know that.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Because I want to hear your version of it.”
My version…I didn’t have a version. She died. End of story. What did he think I was going to tell him?
“There’s nothing to tell. She died.”
“Do you still think about her?”
Every day. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was a long time ago.”
“It was five years ago. That’s not that long.”
It felt like a lifetime to me. “She—” For some reason, my breath hitched in my throat as I tried to speak and a painful stabbing sensation filled my chest. I pressed my hand to it, trying to rub the ache away. “She had an aneurysm. She was there and then she wasn’t,” I said in a rush.
“That must have been hard.”
But it wasn’t. I pushed through it just like my father. Keep your relationships simple, straightforward. Love is a messy emotion that will only hinder you in life. People die all the time. You say goodbye and you move on.
“People die every day,” I repeated what he told me woodenly.
Brock rolled me over, looking down at me in confusion. “She was your mother.”
I knew that. I should feel something other than this hollow feeling, but my parents raised me not to feel emotional about these sort of things. “And she died. It happens to people every day. If I spent my time crying over someone who died five years ago, I would never be able to move on with my life.”
“So, you just don’t care about anyone, is that it?”
“Look, it’s not that complicated. You can’t control life, but you can control how you handle things.”
“And that’s why you want to marry Bryce. Because you don’t love him.”
“Exactly.”
“And if you don’t love him, you can never be hurt by him.”
He was so frustrating. “It’s not like I’m running away from love. I’m just keeping things under control. I’m…foreseeing the outcome and choosing a path that won’t drive me insane.”
