“If that’s how you feel, yes.”
He shook his head. “Of course it is. I’m not an idiot.”
“Okay, well, at least if I know how you’re feeling, I won’t feel used.”
Weston’s face softened. “You felt used?”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.”
“It’s fine. Obviously, we both have a tendency to jump to conclusions.”
Weston nodded, looking down.
“Was your trip to Florida planned? Did you know about it when you left my room the other day?”
He shook his head. “I needed to speak to my grandfather about a few things. My grandmother isn’t well, so he doesn’t travel unless it’s necessary.”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you.”
We were quiet a long moment. We’d cleared the air, but some of what he’d said bothered me. I was probably just as hesitant as he was about getting involved. But none of the things that gave me pause had to do with him not being good enough, and I wanted him to know that.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“What?”
“Do you have one person you look up to more than anyone?”
He nodded immediately. “Caroline. She never felt sorry for herself, complained, or stopped smiling.” He shook his head. “Hell, she spent more time listening to my problems and trying to cheer me up than bitching.”
I smiled. “I wish I’d gotten to know her better. She sounds very special.”
“She was.”
“The person I look up to more than anything is my mom. She was an alcoholic.”
“Really? I had no idea.”
I shrugged. “Most people don’t. God forbid anything real get out about the Sterling family. My father walked out on us without looking back, but he always made sure to cover my mother’s tracks. After all, her last name stayed Sterling even after they divorced.”
“Did she start drinking after they split up?”
I shook my head. “I wish I could say she did. It would give me something else to despise my father for. I had no idea she was an alcoholic until I was a teenager. After she found out she had cancer, I went to a bunch of doctors with her. A few suggested she go to rehab before she had her first surgery. Believe it or not, that confused me, even though I saw her drink every single day. My mom drank martinis out of expensive crystal glasses, so somehow it never dawned on me that she had a problem. Alcoholics swigged from the bottle, wore dirty clothes, and got sloshed and fell down. They didn’t wear pearls and bake pies.”
Weston nodded. “When I went to rehab, I was pretty surprised that half the people in there were over fifty and looked pretty damn normal.”
“My mother did a different kind of scared-straight program. She kept getting headaches and blurry vision and probably attributed both to hangovers. It’s what delayed her diagnosis. She had a tumor the size of a golf ball in her brain by the time she told the doctor about her symptoms. She was just so used to hiding things related to her drinking.”
Weston took my hand and squeezed.
“Anyway, my point is, my mother was loyal, loving, kind, smart, and generous to a fault. She was the first person in her family to go to college, and even after she married my father, she continued to work part-time as an adjunct professor. Most people probably thought it was a fluff position, since she married into more money than she would ever need. But she took her entire paycheck and sent it to her parents every single week because they needed a little help. And when my father left us, she started teaching more classes and refused to take one dime from him, except for the cost of my education.”
“Wow.”
I smiled. “She was all those wonderful things. And she was also an alcoholic. I’m not gonna pretend there weren’t days that sucked. Because there were plenty of those. But alcoholism is a disease, not a character trait, and it doesn’t define who she was.”
Weston stared at me. I could tell he was lost in thought, but I couldn’t tell if he understood why I’d shared this. The look on his face was intense, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
“Did you approve a fifty-thousand-dollar increase to our budget for the Boltons’ construction?”
My forehead wrinkled. I had no idea what I’d expected him to say in response to my heartfelt admission, but this was certainly not it. “Yes. They needed an answer to avoid a delay, and you weren’t around.”
“Is your phone not working?”
I got angry. “I had called you once. You were supposed to call me when you got in, which you never did. They needed to add steel headers to a weightbearing wall in order to accommodate the extra weight on the roof above. It’s not like I approved an invoice for decorating. If you want to be involved in every decision, I’d advise you to be here.”