“You think you’re in love with her, don’t you?”
I don’t entertain her, keeping my mouth shut.
Think I’m in love with her?
Woman, I know it in my fucking bones.
“I know that look.” She laughs. “Hell, I had that look. Back when I first met your dad.”
This nonsense has to stop. I have to try and appeal to the last shreds of her humanity.
“Mom, she doesn’t deserve this,” I breathe. “Vee’s going to lose everything. Her dreams, everything she’s worked for. All because you had to go and fuck a student.”
“Me?” Her features twist in anger. “You wrote the confessions. I’m sorry, honey, but this is your doing. If you hadn’t blabbed to this Harper girl, none of this would be happening.”
Annnd she’s trying to pin it on me.
Great.
“I never meant for the confessions to get out.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you meant to or not. They got out anyway. This is your fault, Xavier. Not mine.”
A resentful laugh stirs in my throat. “Funny. Somehow, I doubt the police would feel the same way.”
Only then does the fear take hold.
I see it in her eyes.
She’s just realized I’m not messing around.
“Sweetie, y-you can’t be serious.” She pads over to me, capturing my face in her hands. “I know it seems like love because you’re young, but this girl… She’s nothing. A fling. We’re family.”
Her panic soars when I don’t cave in to her manipulation.
“Baby, look at me.” She forces our eyes to meet. “I’m your mother. I carried you, gave you life, tended to every fit. There are a million girls just like her out there, but there is only one of me.”
She’s wrong.
So fucking wrong.
There aren’t a million Aveena Harpers out there.
My angry girl.
My pen pal.
My Love.
Just one.
And she’s getting on a plane tomorrow.
“You can have any girl you want in college, Xavier.”
“I don’t want another fucking girl,” I fire back.
“You also don’t want to be responsible for destroying your family, do you?”