“And then you were quiet and down on Sunday, and I just thought you were pissed about it. I didn’t know what to say by that point. I felt horrible knowing you’d been outside that whole time, but I didn’t know how to express it. I have a hard time showing my feelings around you sometimes.”

I shook my head, which caused her to pause her excuse. “You don’t have a hard time showing me your anger. You never hesitate to let me know when I’ve pissed you off or I’m doing something wrong. You never tiptoe around your feelings about my grades or school. The only time you have any difficulty expressing anything is when you do something wrong. When you knock my head against a door and make me look like I’ve gone twelve rounds with Rocky. Or when you leave me alone at a closed library, and make me walk home in the freezing rain. When you make me sleep on a lounge chair in the back yard with nothing to keep me warm. Those are the only times you hesitate to say anything. Is it that hard to admit you’ve done something wrong? Is it that hard to apologize…or at least let me know you feel bad about it?” Tears had streaked my face by that point, and nothing could stop the quivering in my chin. My hands shook in my lap from the adrenaline that sucker-punched my system. I’d never spoken back to my mom before, and had it not felt so good at that moment, I would’ve feared the repercussions.

Her throat worked hard as she swallowed, probably feeling every ounce of my anger. All I wanted her to see was that I was a child—her child—and never deserved anything she’d ever given me. I deserved so much better than being ignored or treated like some household servant. I was the only family she had left, and she made me feel as if she’d rather be alone than to have me there. I wished she could see that.

“Is it so hard to be my mom?” My words were nothing but a whispered plea, begging her to show me that she loved me. In that moment, I didn’t feel like a sixteen-year-old. I felt like a small child, hungry for the love and affection from a parent.

Some kids act out to gain their parent’s attention. They say bad attention is better than none at all. Some kids seek it from other people or things. Drugs. Alcohol. Parties and sex. But not me. I never once acted out, talked back, did anything bad to be seen. I would’ve rather gone the rest of my life invisible to her than to garner the wrong kind of notice.

But Axel had done something to me. He saw me. And it made me feel special. It made me yearn to experience that from the one person that was supposed to give it to me. I didn’t need to daydream about some relationship with a man whose purpose was to prepare me for the future. I didn’t need to spend my time thinking about a guy that smiled at me, imagining what it would be like to be held by him. I didn’t need a stranger to comfort me. I needed that from my mom. That was her job. She was supposed to teach me what love meant. It was her responsibility to lay the groundwork for my future, give me an example of the way it’s supposed to be, show me what I had to look forward to. It was her job to hold me when I was scared, dry my tears, and bring me medicine when I was sick. All these things I’d buried long ago. I’d come to the conclusion when I was very young that I’d never get that…not from her. And when my dad left, I’d accepted that I’d never get that from anyone.

Until Axel Taylor came into my life.

Until I walked into his classroom.

Until he showed me he cared.

Now, after all this time, I wanted it from her. I wanted it from my mom. And I would fight to get it if I had to. I would call her out on her bullshit. Her lies. Her inability to take blame or apologize for her mistakes. I couldn’t allow it to carry on the way it was.

“Don’t you get tired of this?” I asked, studying her reaction closely.

Her eyes dropped, her hands fisted in her lap, and her shoulders pulled back, as if the muscles were taut with some kind of heavy emotion I couldn’t read. I couldn’t read it because I’d never seen it on her before.

“Don’t you want to have a relationship with me? I’m your daughter. I’m your only child.” I hiccupped a sob when I said, “Don’t you love me?” The tears had filled my vision so much that I couldn’t see her. She was nothing more than a shadowy figure in front of me.

“I just wanted you to know that I never meant to leave you locked outside. It was an accident.” Her voice was all I had to go on since I couldn’t see her, and it was filled with ice. Cold and distant. It lacked the emotion I’d previously witnessed before going blind with salty pain. “It’ll never happen again.”

And then the shadow rose from the ground and vanished. I couldn’t even find the strength to wipe my eyes, knowing if I could see her walk away from me, it would be worse than the assumption. I couldn’t handle that, even though it was all I was used to. It reiterated to me that my mother was nothing more than a silhouette. She was the closing curtain on my final act, leaving me alone on the stage of life with my grief and deep-seeded insecurities. Hell, she was my insecurity.

All this started because of one man.

Axel Taylor had ruined me.

I laid in bed and stared at my new phone, clutching it tightly in my hand. I’d gone through life alone, and dealt with the rejection my mother handed me on a daily basis all by myself. But, for some reason, I now felt the desire to share this with someone. Not just anyone, but one particular person. Axel. I wanted to talk about it, cry about it, vent to him about how my mom made me feel when she walked away from me. I had become accustomed to bottling up my emotions, not worrying about the way my mom’s rejection affected me. But now, I’ve experienced the amazing feeling of being heard, and I couldn’t go back to closing myself off any longer.

It took me close to thirty minutes before flipping the lid open and finding his contact information already programmed in. I opened a blank text message and watched the cursor blink over and over again without typing a single word. Finally, I spelled out one word: awake? And hit send. Then I freaked out as I waited impatiently for him to respond.

Within seconds, the phone beeped once, and a response came in.

Everything okay?

Again, I hesitated on what to say, typing out a word and then deleting it. I worried that I’d sound too juvenile, too immature. I didn’t want to bother him the first night I had the phone, and I certainly didn’t want to come across too eager to talk to him. Doubt began to flood my earlier spontaneity. What if he was busy? What if he was entertaining someone? Or what if I really had woken him? But before I could organize my thoughts enough to reply, the phone started ringing in my hand, making me jump.

I answered it before the sound could alert my mom—the last thing I needed was for her to come in and catch me with it. “Hello?” Even though I knew who it was, his name flashing across the small, square screen, I tried to act aloof, as if I had no idea who was on the other end of the line.

“Everything okay, Bree?” His voice sounded worried, concerned.

“Hi,” I said nervously, not sure what the right thing to say was. “Yes, everything is fine. I thought I wanted to talk, but I think I changed my mind.”

He laughed through the line and it immediately set me at ease. “You think you’ve changed your mind? What did you want to talk about? Let’s start there and then we’ll discuss why you aren’t sure about it.”

“Well, my mom talked to me after she came home, and it upset me. But now that I think about it, it seems stupid to go to you about it. You told me to call you if I needed to, and I guess I don’t really need to. I just wanted to talk for some stupid reason.”