I pushed away from the breakfast bar, walking toward the front door.
“You’re always going to be my mother. My children’s grandmother. You will always have a place at my table, be welcome in my home. But only on the condition that your figure out how to keep your opinions to yourself. I know it’s hard. I know you might even mean well, in your own way. And I know you love the kids. Kids who have had something horrific tear apart their childhoods. So I won’t cut you out of their lives. They’ve lost enough already. You can continue to be nasty, but I won’t take it. I promise, you’ll lose my respect. That if you continue this way, our relationship will break. It’s up to you.”
Then I walked away, hating that I wished for Olive instead of my mother. Hating that she might be right, just like she had been about Ranger leaving me.My mother didn’t call for a week. I hadn’t expected her to. She was far too proud to make contact any earlier. I half expected her not to make contact at all. It wouldn’t have surprised me.
But she called, inviting herself to dinner the upcoming Saturday. “If that suits the kids and you and... your male companion.”
I had stifled a giggle at my mother calling Kace a ‘male companion’ like I was eighty years old and had some widower courting me.
But I told my mother that it would be ‘lovely’, even though that was not a word to describe what it would be. It was her extending an olive branch. Even if afterward, she counseled me on what to cook and urged me not to try anything new.
I tried to give Kace a way out. Even offered to break a limb for him so he could end up in the hospital.
“Babe,” he said, pulling me to him. “I’m not going to fight anything that brings us closer together, that stitches me tighter into your life. That’s your job. I’m gonna have dinner with your mother. You can try and get out of it if you want, but I’ll be here Saturday, suited up and ready for battle.”
And he was.
Wearing a black shirt, dark jeans. Motorcycle boots. Looking absolutely delicious.
My mother looked at him like he was going to steal her jewelry right off her hands. Kace wasn’t fazed. He shook my father’s hand. Met his eye, answered all of his questions. He expertly handled my mother’s jabs, which hadn’t been too sharp since the kids were present.
I wasn’t sure if my mother was charmed by the end of the night. She was trying too hard to hate him. Not because she was a terrible mother. Because she was trying to protect me in her own way. Because she’d seen how Ranger’s death had broken me. How the MC life had changed me. She wanted to spare me from all pain. Much like I wanted for Lily.
It was what any mother wanted for their child.
But it was too late for me. The world had cut me, marked me. There was no other path for me. Kace had been right. I was my own kind of outlaw. This was the only life I knew and the only life I wanted.
My father tried his best to accept Kace. To support me. I knew it was hard for him too. He didn’t want this danger, this pain either. Nor did he want to change me.
They left with air kisses—my mother—real kisses and handshakes—my father. There were no more dinner plans made. My mother had fulfilled her obligation and had formed her judgement.
The kids didn’t seem to find it weird that Kace was now present at dinners with their grandparents or that he participated in the movie nights afterwards. He was cemented into their world now. He and Jack were almost done with the car.
They were ready for a future with Kace.
It was me who was fighting it.
“We should break up,” I said.
Kace kept drying the dishes, his eyebrows raising ever so slightly. “Break up?”
I nodded. “My mother has accepted you, and that is too scary. That must mean there’s something wrong with you.”
Kace grinned. “Babe, your mom didn’t look at me the entire night, and every time she said my name it sounded like she was trying to spit out something she really, really didn’t like the taste of.”
“Yes, and that is my mother’s version of acceptance.”
Kace kissed me on the mouth. “Well, I’ll take it. Plus, I’m planning on having plenty of time to win her over.”
His words scared me.
Terrified me.
But I held fast.
Held on to him.Kace had survived dinner with my mother.
Olive had hesitantly asked whether she could meet him. She’d done it in a way that made me feel comfortable. That made it seem like it wasn’t a betrayal to her and Ranger.