Besides, she’s still with Spencer and I need to let her work that shit out before I go and steal her away. Tully is not a cheater. She hates people like that and I refuse to make her feel as though she has a decision to make. I know in my gut that she’s never going to accept Spencer’s proposal. So, for now, it’s a waiting game.
She’s going to end things with Spencer eventually because her hearts not in it, but it also has me wondering why she’s allowed it to go on so long.
Tully looked so fucking beautiful when I saw her in her store. I’ve never been so damn proud. She’s managed to build everything that she’s ever wanted for herself and done it with her own two hands. She’s so unbelievably strong.
Despite not wanting to bother her, I haven’t exactly been able to keep away. I’ve had an excuse to walk by her store every fucking day this week. I ran out of milk so I went an extra twenty minutes out of my way just to go to the grocery store near ‘Read My Tulips’ and check in on her. Every day it’s getting harder to stay away.
I’m pathetically and hopelessly in love with her and I need to make things right.
A loud buzzing draws my attention away from the papers and I look up to see the woman I haven’t seen in over ten years.
Gina Rivers. My mother.
How did I ever allow Henley to talk me into this shit? This woman is where my issues as a kid started. I never knew the real reasons behind what my mother was doing and why. That’s all shit Henley, Noah, and Tully were able to discover in my absence and now, I guess it’s time for me to face my demons.
I find my mother almost instantly, but not because she looks like the woman I once knew. I recognize her because she looks just like my sister, only a little older. The woman I used to know would have her hair died so dark that it would match the black makeup she used to circle around her eyes.
This woman is all natural just like Henley. She has golden hair and beaming blue eyes, nothing at all how I remember, but she looks a million times better than the horrible images stored in my memory.
As she walks my way, her eyes roam over me, taking in the man that I’ve become compared to the boy that she once knew. As she gets closer and her eyes fill with warmth and excitement, guilt pours through me. All these years she’s been rotting away in prison because of a decision that I made. If I had known the truth and known that it was my father behind it all, I never would have done it.
I have so much to make up for.
I always knew my father was a snake. He recruited me into his ranks when I was just eight years old. I saw things that no kid should ever see, but he would tell me that it makes me stronger, makes me a soldier, but never would I have thought that he’d do something like that to my mother.
Anton was always telling me how important blood is, yet that’s how he treats my blood, how he made me treat my own blood.
By the age of twelve when I’d done the unthinkable, it was water off a duck’s back. I barely had a second thought for what I’d done to my mother. I was dark. I wasn’t the kid that she once knew. She needed to be punished for her crimes and I thought it was my duty to make it happen.
I was Anton’s soldier.
I didn’t learn what it truly meant to be a soldier until I joined the Military and I was able to find some sort of peace within myself. I took my time at war as a punishment for what I’d done, and fuck, it was certainly a brutal punishment, but it’s what I needed.
I forgave myself and the second that happened, the darkness lifted off my shoulders and I was finally free. It’s the exact feeling I’m getting from my mother right now.
I expected her to come at me with anger and fury for doing this to her, but it’s as though that doesn’t exist.
As she steps up to the table, I rise from my seat and watch as she tilts her head up when I tower over her. Pride surges in her eyes and I’m oddly struck by just how similar she looks to Henley. We really are related. I never doubted it before but seeing and hearing are two very different things.
“Samuel,” mom whispers, holding back tears.
“You look good, mom.”
We both stand face to face, staring at the other for a silent moment before emotions take over and I throw my arms around her, crushing her into my chest and holding her close for all the years we missed out on.