Page 181 of Break Away
“But,” she continued, and the word landed exactly where she meant it to, “deserving it doesn’t mean you get to be the one who does it.”
The laugh died.
“That’s the part that scares me,” she said. “Not that you got angry. Anger makes sense sometimes. Not that you wanted to protect her. That also makes sense. What scares me is you thinking your rage becomes justice just because it loves someone.”
I stared at the crooked coffee table, my throat working around every answer that wasn’t good enough.
“She asked me to stop,” I said.
“And did you?”
“Eventually.”
“Easton.”
“I stopped when she said she didn’t want it. I was trying to make him apologize. She told me she didn’t want it, so I left him there.”
A long breath moved through the phone. “Good.”
“It didn’t feel good.”
“Doing the right thing rarely does.”
That hit too cleanly.
I leaned forward again and pressed my thumb against the bridge of my nose until it hurt. “I don’t know what to do with any of it.”
“With the fight?”
“With her.”
My mother didn’t answer right away.
Rain tapped against the window. Somewhere in the building, someone laughed too loudly at a television. The whole apartment felt colder with my mother’s silence inside it.
“What happened with Aura?” she asked.
I looked at the coffee table again. “She drove me here. We fought. Then we…” I stopped, my face heating despite the fact that I was a grown man who had no business sounding twelve on the phone with his mother.
Gayle made a small humming sound. “Broad strokes are fine.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m a mother. I know how babies are made. I prefer not to receive a technical report from my son.”
“Mom.”
“Continue.”
I closed my eyes. “It was bad. Not unwanted. Just bad in the way two people can want each other and still use it wrong.”
Her voice gentled. “Okay.”
“She told me more afterward. About what happened to her. That she was drugged and raped.” My voice roughened. “She told me I made her feel safe.”
“That’s a powerful thing.”
“It made me angry.”
