“Oh no, you’re—” Logan went to say, looming larger and bristling with anger but Colt’s voice cut through the reception area.
“No one tells a woman where she will or won’t go in this building.” His voice was like a thread of steel, cutting through all the bullshit and leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind about how this was going to go down.
“Evie.” My head jerked up then to see Haze standing beside us and so did Evie’s. “You’ve had a big shock, but you need to go with your mum now.”
“No!” she shouted.
I swallowed hard, knowing what was coming. An Evsplosion is what Sophie and I called them, when she wasn’t around to hear us. Her body vibrated with emotion now, her lungs sucking in a breath, ready to unleash, when Haze replied with just one word.
“Yes.” I blinked, feeling Evie go still as Haze’s eyes stared into hers. “This is a complicated situation. You have big feelings about this, but it can’t be resolved right now. Mum is going to take you home, get you settled, and then you’ll come and see us soon. After you’ve had a good rest, then we’ll talk some more about this.”
I bristled. I shouldn’t have. I contacted this place for help and here was Haze doing just that. But when I felt my daughter’s hand relax in my grip, the immediate crisis averted, I felt stung. Why couldn’t I do that? Why wouldn’t she listen to me when I said the exact same thing? Then my rumination was interrupted when he pulled a card out of his wallet and handed it to me.
“Take her straight here,” he said.
“To axe throwing?” I said, staring at the card.
“To the rage rooms they have next to it. It’s a safe place for her to unleash. She’ll need it.” Then Haze’s attention switched to the other alphas. “You can go through with my mate and attend your appointment, or you can leave now. Those are your only options today. Whatever you think you want, this isn’t the way to do it.”
I watched each one of Ben’s brothers erect a cool façade, packing all that emotion away as if it never existed. Jasper looked to Logan, who just nodded, then walked silently off through the doorway Riley indicated.
“I’ll leave my contact details here if you want them,” Ben said to me, his voice like ashes, before he shook his head slowly. “You look good, Lils.” But any calm he might have maintained fractured when he looked down at Evie. “He’s right.” He tipped his head towards Haze. “You need to listen to your mum right now. We’ll sort things out, I promise.”
When he left the room,it felt cavernous inside. I half expected to hear the whistle of wind through its impressive emptiness.
“Thank you,” I croaked, holding up the card, not directing that to anyone in particular, before striding out of the waiting room, down the corridor, and into the lift.
For the first time Evie followed without questioning me, which had tears welling in my eyes. But she was silent, stony silent, until we got to the car. She’d learned to do this, to contain the explosion until she was in a safe space and she obviously decided that was established as soon as the door was closed.
Her scream was muffled by the car interior, I’m sure, but my eyes flicked furtively around the carpark, sure someone was seeing this and reporting me to Child Services. This was the terrible ambivalence of motherhood of a child with additional needs. My first instinct, my true one, was to wrap my child up in my arms and hold her tight, even as she kicked and scratched me, leaving me bruised and battered, just wanting to hug the pain out of her. But overlaying that, and forcing my natural maternal impulses to one side, was the finely tuned sense of what was acceptable in a public space and what wasn’t. Society watched mothers like hawks to make sure we weren’t hurting our kids, but the weight of that sometimes felt much too heavy to bear. Just like it did now.
“I’m sorry, Evie,” I said quietly as I turned the car on. “I’m sorry—”
“You—! He’s—!”
When she couldn’t even form words to accuse me, that’s when I knew this would be bad. I blinked away my tears, not feeling like I had a right to them, before punching into the GPS the address Haze had given me. I drove with a kind of steely calm that was utterly hollow, the ache inside me just growing and growing. As I listened to Evie scream, as I watched her thrash and smack at the upholstery, as her feet slammed into the back of my chair so hard it slid forward slightly, I just held on.
“Not long,” I told her, told myself, because my voice couldn’t be heard above the din. “Not long.”
I pulledup at the back of the place, got out and shut my door, ready to run in and try and explain the situation to the owners before I even attempted to get Evie inside. Always explaining, that seemed to be my job. A man sitting out near the back door, having a cigarette, pushed himself off the wall and ambled closer.
“Haze send you?” he asked me, eyeing the car but not reacting a bit.
“Ah yes, I—”
“Just bring him through. We’ve got a safe space set up. He can let everything out while you have a cuppa and relax.”
“Her,” I corrected, striving for calm and failing utterly.
His eyebrows shot up at that, but he just nodded, flicking his cigarette away and then walking over to the car.
“I’ll do that,” I said sharply, marching over and waving him away.
“You might get hurt if you do,” he said, backing up. “There’s no shame in getting help. That’s what you’re here for, right?”
“She’s my daughter,” I insisted, my voice vibrating with everything I was trying so hard to stuff down.
Because that’s motherhood, isn’t it? It was for me. My tiredness, my anger, my fear, my resentment, my sadness, it was all routinely shoved to one side, because how the hell could I let even one drop of that poison touch my baby? Evie was just a fucking child. She was small, vulnerable, innocent, as well as being a force of nature, and I would protect her with everything I had.