Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77292 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77292 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“Mum…”
She pounces on me, and I fall back onto the unforgiving bathroom tiles. The back of my head hits the granite hard.
Pain springs into me. Blood trickles from the wound and puddles on the floor.
I’m stunned. I try to touch my head, figure out what’s—
Mum jumps to her feet. “Children take the best years from you, pumpkin. Then, after you’ve sacrificed everything, watched your body transform from lean muscle into soft fat to give them life, carved wrinkles in your face from worry… They betray you. Like you did, my angel.”
I’m lightheaded from the fall, and I’m losing blood, but I scramble backward like a crab, away from her. “Mum, don’t do anything rash.”
She lets out a shrieking howl of laughter. “That’s something coming from you, darling. You’re leaving your poor mummy, going all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to pursue a degree that will leave you penniless and alone.”
“It’s my dream.”
“And it’s my nightmare!” Mum bends over and picks up a shard of glass, not wincing as her own blood trickles down its reflective surface. “But of course, no one thinks of dear, sweet Mummy. How lonely she’ll feel when the person she loves most in the world leaves her forever.” She raises the shard of glass. “Well, maybe Mummy can stop you.”
“Mum… Mum… What are you doing?”
No. No. No.
I will not allow her to win.
My mother did what she did that day to exert dominance over me in the only way she felt she still could.
Gone were the days when she could tie me up to the lemon tree.
So she used the last tool at her disposal.
And if I continue to think of that wretched moment in her bathroom, if I allow that to dictate my actions… She’s getting exactly what she wanted.
I don’t know why I keep thinking back to that awful day. Everything with May has dredged up old memories—memories that are best kept swept under the rug.
I need a moment to clear my head.
I walk into the employee break room. Usually this is where nurses and doctors break down after a particularly grueling day—sometimes when there’s an unexpected influx of patients after an accident, or sometimes when we’ve lost a cherished patient.
The room is full of sofas in muted colors and a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. A coffeemaker sits in the corner, its pot still half full.
I pour myself a cup. It’s lukewarm, but just having something to sip on will calm my nerves.
Something basic, something human, something normal.
I slowly draw in a breath through my nose, hold it for ten seconds, and then exhale through my mouth.
I repeat it. Again. And again. I take sips of coffee between each cycle.
The coffee is nice, but I’d prefer something hard.
And by hard, I don’t necessarily mean a drink. I mean Maddox’s hard cock.
The only thing that could make me feel human after what we went through last night.
A night with him would cleanse me from the inside out.
At least…it would for a moment. For that moment.
But our problems would be waiting for us as soon as we came back to earth.
I’m not supposed to check my phone while I’m on the clock, but the news of Rouge being on the hospital board has me on edge. I need to at least text Maddox and let him know this new slice of information.
Of course, if I do that, he might insist that I stop working at the hospital.
That would only alert Rouge. We have to keep acting as if everything’s normal if we’re going to get away with this.
I open my locker and grab my phone.
My heart lights up when I see I have a text from Maddox.
I unlock my phone and read it.
Hey. I know we said we’d hang Thursday—turns out that’s the date of the Shostakovich symphony at CSO. Got us tickets. We can meet there or grab dinner before. Whatever works. Have a great day at work.
I raise an eyebrow.
What on earth is Maddox doing, buying concert tickets after everything we’ve been through?
Then I recall a quote that was hanging on the wall of my private flute professor’s wall in her studio at Northwestern.
It’s a quote from Leonard Bernstein—he’s best known as the composer of West Side Story, but he was also a famous symphonic conductor. I have several recordings of his on vinyl.
The words were initially spoken in reaction to the JFK assassination. People in my community repeat them often in the face of senseless tragedy.
“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
May is gone. Nothing can bring her back.
We’re doing everything we can to see that justice is served for her.
But Maddox and I are alive. Air still fills our lungs, blood our veins.
I can still enjoy beautiful music while holding onto the arm of a beautiful man.