“Why would you feel guilty?”
“I disappointed them. This isn’t what they wanted me to do with my life.”
“But it’s what you wanted to do with your life, so that has to mean something, surely?”
“Maybe. Doesn’t change the fact that I haven’t been home for a month, and I’m living down the road.”
“You have a full-time job.” He locked his hands behind his head and grinned. “And now you’re cooking for me, too.”
“I’m not planning on revealing that part.” She turned the heat down under the pan and let it simmer. “And I’m going for breakfast because that way I have an excuse to leave for my ten o’clock class.”
“Just make sure you don’t let them walk all over you. Want me to run you over there?”
“You’re offering to stand between me and my mother?” A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “I always thought you were brave, Tyler O’Neil, now I know it for sure.”
“I’m not scared of your mother.”
“You should be. You’re not her favorite person.”
“She thinks I’m bad news.” She was probably right. “How’s she going to react to the fact you’re living with me?”
“I’m not living with you. I’m staying in your house. It’s not the same thing.” Her gaze slid to his and away again. “I’m still living at Snow Crystal. She doesn’t need to know more than that.”
He thought about her walking barefoot around the house and sleeping next door to him. “Probably a good decision.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS STILL DARK when Brenna slid into her car the following morning.
The drive to her parents’ house took around twenty minutes, and there wasn’t a single second of that time when she didn’t feel like turning around and driving back to Snow Crystal. It had been snowing steadily for days, but not enough to make the journey treacherous, and the road had been cleared so she had no reason to postpone her visit.
Her mood plummeted along with the temperature.
Visiting her parents was a duty, not a pleasure, and it was a duty that always left her feeling flat, depressed and more than a little guilty.
Compared to Kayla and Élise she was lucky, wasn’t she? She had two parents still married and living together.
She pulled up outside the vintage brick colonial that was her mother’s pride and joy. To Brenna, a house was somewhere to be indoors when you couldn’t be outdoors. She’d as soon live in a tent. Occasionally in the summer, she’d done just that, erecting her little tent in the backyard until her mother had forced her back inside, worried about what the neighbors would say.
To Maura Daniels, the opinion of the neighbors came second only to God’s.
Brenna sat for a moment, bracing herself for what lay ahead, promising herself that she wasn’t going to get upset.
She had a key in her pocket, but she rang the bell and then waited, tense as a deer scenting the wind. She would have walked straight in to any one of the O’Neil propert
ies and been sure of a warm welcome. Here, in the house where she’d grown up, she hesitated to cross the threshold without permission. Nothing annoyed her order-obsessed mother more than people dropping in without warning or invitation.
To Brenna, it had been like growing up in a straitjacket.
She heard the rhythmic tap of her mother’s low heels on the cherrywood floor and then the door opened.
“Hi, Mom.”
“You’re wet!”
“It’s snowing.”
“Leave your boots outside.”