It’s the first real sign of emotion I’ve gotten from him. Even though he’s snapping at me, I cling on to that as hope.

“That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m just…I’m trying to make you understand why I couldn’t tell you back then.”

“You could have told me the instant you got back.”

“You’re right. But when you’ve held something in for so long, kept a secret…it’s hard to get the words out. It’s hard to say them. And even still, I felt like I owed Ava. And…I know your relationship with her was difficult, but she’s your mother. I didn’t want to be the reason your relationship with her ended. I know what it’s like to lose a mother, Adam. I didn’t want that for you, no matter how she is. I couldn’t be responsible for that.”

“But you could be responsible for obliterating my heart?” He stands abruptly.

My eyes follow him. Then, the rest of me does until I’m standing in front of him. “Adam—”

“I don’t know what to do with this, Evie. It’s too fucking much. Too fucked up. I want to be angry with you. I am angry with you. So very fucking angry.” He turns his face away.

When he brings it back to me, my heart splits in two. I see it there in his eyes. I’ve lost him again, and this time, it’s for good.

“Last night, I asked you for the truth. I told you, if you gave it to me, I would see if I could get past it. Today, you’ve given me that truth. Now, I’m telling you…I can’t get past it. And I don’t mean what you did—choosing Casey and saving her life. Hell, I would have told you to go, had I known. I would have told you to leave me, if it meant saving Casey’s life.

“But the moment you knew Casey was better, whether it was one year or five or ten, you had the chance. Countless times, you had the chance to tell me throughout those years and all these weeks since you’ve been back. But you’ve chosen not to because”—he lets out a disbelieving, painful-sounding laugh—“you owed my cunt of a mother. You left me here in the dark all of that time, knowing what she’d done to me, what she was still doing, what she’s always done to me—controlled my fucking life! That”—he points a finger at me, taking a step back—“I can’t forgive.

“So, now, I’m telling you, Evie, leave me the fuck alone. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to breathe the same fucking air as you. I want you gone from my life. I want you to disappear just like you did ten years ago. But this time, I want you to stay gone.”

Then, he turns and walks away down the street.

All I can do is watch him go, my arms wrapping tightly around my stomach.

Whoever said the truth would set you free was a fucking liar.

I don’t feel free. I don’t feel better. I feel like I’ve just put a gun to my own heart and pulled the trigger, and now, I’m bleeding out, slowly and painfully.

I walk for a long time, just wandering around Beverly Hills, because I don’t know what else to do. There’s too much in my head, too many thoughts, and I don’t know what to do with them.

And when I finally do know, I find myself standing outside the place I once called home.

Only, it was never a home. It was just a house I lived in.

It might be a big, beautiful glamorous house that most people would give their right arm to live in, but I hate this house. It reminds me of the loneliness I felt growing up. It was the place where I learned I was never wanted. I was needed for the studio and nothing else.

This house represents the emptiness inside of me, the emptiness that Evie used to fill—before Ava stole that from me, too.

Using the key I have, I let myself in through the main gate.

Millie, my mother’s longtime housekeeper, is waiting at the open door for me.

“Adam, so good to see you. It’s been so long. Your mother never said you were coming. I would have prepared some food for you.” Millie always has the need to feed me. Maybe it was her way of trying to make me feel better while I was growing up, trying to fill the lonely empty void she could see in me.

Maybe she still sees that now.

“She didn’t know I was coming.” I force myself to smile at her.

“Well, she’s out back, on the terrace. I’ll let her know that you’re here.”

“No, it’s fine.” I stop her with my hand. “I’ll surprise her.”

“As you wish.” She smiles. “Can I get you anything to drink? Your mother’s having her afternoon cocktail. You know how she likes them.”

“No, I’m fine, Millie. I won’t be staying for long.”

I walk through the vast empty house. The house that is void of family photos. The only pictures hanging on the walls are of Ava—portraits, photos of her movies, pictures of her with other celebrities.

But none of me—no baby pictures, no school pictures.

No family photos of me, her, and Eric.

But why would there be? We were never a family.

Neither of them ever gave a fuck about me. I was a means to an end for both Ava and Eric.

I step out onto the terrace. Ava is sitting on a chair at the table, sipping on a cocktail. Her cell is in her hand, and she’s reading something on it, like she doesn’t have a care in the world. Maybe she doesn’t.

“Hello, Ava.”

She jumps at the sound of my voice, nearly spilling her cocktail.

“Jesus, Adam. You startled me. What are you doing here?” She shoots me a cool look as she puts her glass and cell down.

I stand for a long moment, just staring at her, trying to understand. I know why she did what she did. I just can’t understand how, how she’s done any of the things she’s done to me.

She might not have beaten or abused me, but she has broken and hurt me over the years. Left me alone as a child. Starved me of love. Tore me down. Had me do her bidding. Take care of things no kid should have to take care of. Had me see things no kid should see.

She might not be an abuser in the physical sense, but she’s an abuser of the heart and mind. Yeah, she’s definitely one of those. A fucking expert at it.

“I know, Ava.”

“You know what?” she snaps. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that, Adam.”

And that’s because there are probably so many things that she’s done to me, taken from me, that I don’t know about. Probably never will know about.

But this is the big one, the one that mattered.

The only thing that ever mattered to me, Ava stole from me.

I take the seat on the other side of the table from her, so I can look her directly in the eyes when I say what I have to say.

“I know about Evie and what you did.”

She freezes. And even though I knew it was the truth, seeing her reaction slides that knife in a little deeper.

I don’t love Ava, but she is my mother.

To a small child, a mother is a god. No matter how awful that mother is to the child, no matter the shitty, wretched things she does, the connection that child has to his mother just can’t be severed. It can be broken but never severed.

And that’s where her power lies.

It’s the power that Ava has always had over me.

She has always had the ability to cut me hard, and there is fuck all I can do about it. I can hate her, loathe her, but at the end of the day, buried deep down in there, I’m still that little kid who just wants his mother to love him. And I’m the one who gets cut each time he remembers she doesn’t love him and never has.

I know that. And I’ll live with that.

Because living my life without Ava in it will make things a whole lot easier.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She frowns.