Kristen Ashley - Fire Inside

Exclusively.

Because I stupidly picked up.

I got to the bed, saw the display on my phone told me I was right and still—stupid, stupid, stupidly—I picked up.

“Hey Mom,” I answered.

“Lanie, baby, howeryoudoin?”

I switched on the light, turned, sat on the side of the bed, lifted my feet up to the padded footboard, knees closed, and dropped my forehead to my knees because I could hear it.

She was gone.

Sloshed.

Well past three sheets—she was five sheets to the wind and sailing.

I was “darling” when she was sober. When she had it together to keep up appearances. When she expended all her energy to be the Connecticut banker’s wife and buried the Tennessee farmer’s daughter. Even if that Tennessee farmer had enough acreage to build three malls and had been the richest man in the richest family in town, she was still a farmer’s daughter and that didn’t do, according to her, in Connecticut.

“Good, Mom. It’s late. What’s up?” I answered.

“Oh, nuthin’. Just wan’ed to talk to my lil’ girl.”

“You’re talking to her, Mom, but it’s nearly midnight here. I’m really tired and I should get some sleep. It’s even later there so you should get some sleep, too.”

“Doan need sleep but you need some fun, Lanie. What you doin’ home? You shud be owd on the town, paintin’ it pink or, bedder, on a date,” Mom told me, a bit of what I thought was the cute, countrified twang she’d worked for decades to get rid of coming out in her voice.

This was a constant refrain even when she wasn’t drunk out of her mind. Heck, she’d started in on me about five days after I left the hospital, after everything happened with Elliott and the Russian Mob.

Then again, she’d never liked Elliott. “He may be brilliant, darling, but men like him never get very far. Middle ground. My girl? My Lanie? Looks like yours?” She had flicked my hair off my shoulder before she finished by declaring, “Breeding and beauty like yours, darling, you deserve to be on the arm of a star!”

I shoved this memory down and replied, “I’ve had a tough week at work.” This wasn’t a total lie. “So I need a quiet weekend.” That wasn’t a total lie either.

“Okay, quiet is good,” Mom returned. “Bedder than you rubbing elbows with Tyra’s family. Whad she was thinking, I will nod ever know. Such a priddy girl, too. Total waste. Her parents must be devastated.”

Suffice it to say, not only the Connecticut banker mom but also the Tennessee farmer’s daughter mom did not approve of the Chaos MC.

“They’re good people, Mom,” I told her for the four hundred and fiftieth time.

“They’re bikers , Lanie.”

She said the word “bikers” like uttering those two syllables spontaneously filled her mouth with acid.

“Can we not talk about this?” I asked on a sigh. “Really, it’s been a tough week and I’m exhausted.”

“Okay, wad d’you wanna talk about?”

I didn’t want to talk at all.

I didn’t want a lot of things and I hadn’t wanted most of them for a long freaking time.

I didn’t want my fiancé to be dead.

I didn’t want my fiancé to be dead by being whacked by the Russian Mob.

I didn’t want to live with the knowledge, and the guilt, that his antics with the Mob got my best friend kidnapped, twice, and the second time it got her stabbed. Repeatedly.

I didn’t want to be alone.

I didn’t want to be so damned lonely.

I didn’t want to live like I was living—the nightmares, the fear, something no one would understand, something I had to hide so people I cared about didn’t get worried.

I didn’t want my Mom to be wasted… again.

I didn’t want to know she was sitting alone in the big house on all that land in that exclusive estate where I grew up, close to the country club, every single resident a snob.

I didn’t want to know she was alone because Dad was either working or on a business trip.

I didn’t want to know these were his ready and oft-used excuses, otherwise known as flat-out lies, for leaving Mom alone for a night, a weekend, a very long weekend and all of this so he could be with his mistress of thirty years.

I’d seen him with her more than once. He wasn’t careful. He was arrogant. He kept up the pretense of the secret even knowing it wasn’t a secret and hadn’t been for decades. He even gave Mom filthy looks when she was drinking even though she was drinking because the love of her life had two loves of his and he expected her to share though he’d never asked if she would. So she’d made the decision to do so because he was the love of her life but also because, without him, there would be no big house close to the country club and she wouldn’t be getting slaughtered on forty dollar bottles of wine and top-shelf martinis.

“Mom, how about you call me tomorrow? We’ll talk then. Now, I really have to get some sleep.”

This got me nothing and I knew what that meant. She was pouting. When I was a kid, I wondered if Dad wouldn’t have found another woman if Mom hadn’t acted like a spoiled brat. It was only later, when I grew up, that I knew it didn’t matter if she pouted or was spoiled. You didn’t do that to someone you loved.

Not ever.

Elliott would never have cheated on me. Other boyfriends had and it hurt. No, it killed.

Elliott did not, would not. He didn’t even glance at other women when we were out.

For Elliott, it was only me, and if I’d had him for the lifetime I was meant to have him, I would have lived that lifetime knowing, without a doubt, it would always only be me.

“Okay, baby girl,” Mom slurred, bringing my thoughts back to her. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She didn’t sound disappointed, she sounded crushed. She was hurting. She was lonely. She was wondering, as she had been for decades, where she’d gone wrong.

So, of course, I felt daughterly guilt. I should be there for her.

I just couldn’t help. I’d tried. I’d failed. Taking these phone calls. Having gentle discussions trying to bring her around to talking about what she was drowning in booze, discussions she always firmly veered in another direction. Sensitive talks about how she might want to lay off the wine a bit, more talks she firmly took in another direction.

Years of it.

I had nothing left to give.

Still, I tried again, “We’ll have a long chat, Mom. Promise.”

“Okay, baby,” she whispered.

“Love you, Mom, to the moon and stars and beyond,” I whispered back what I’d whispered to her since I could remember, since I was little and she tucked me in my pink bed with my pink sheets and pink, filmy canopy, my stuffed unicorns all around.

“Love you, Lanie, to the moon and the stars and beyond,” she replied quietly the words she’d taught me to say.

“ ’Bye, Mom.”

“ ’Bye, baby girl.”

I sighed, hit the off button. Then, with my fingers curled around my phone, I put my forehead to my knees.

My life stunk.

Every bit of it.

Therefore, I started crying and did it like I did just about everything. I let it all hang out and thus, got lost in it.

This meant, when a hand curled warm and tight around the back of my neck and I heard Hop mutter, “Jesus, baby, what the fuck?” I jumped a foot, screamed a little bit as my head flew up.

He was crouched in front of me, staring at me with his usual intensity but there was more, a lot more, and all of that was about concern.

When my head came up, his hand didn’t move. It tightened.

Warm.

Warm and sweet.

Do… not… process, Lanie!

I stared at him.

Then I blurted, “What are you doing here?”