Page 123 of Chasing Hope

Knock.

His forehead drops to my shoulder. “When the fuck is everyone going to stop interrupting and let me kiss you?”

Ripping himself away, Matteo flings open the door.

“Oh, Matteo! Nice to see you. It’s been far too long.”

My mother stands on the other side, her hand raised to knock once more.

My feet root to the kitchen floor like a deer caught in headlights.

Panic encases my body, my hands shake at my sides, and my heart no longer feels the peace and serenity it had moments before when wrapped in Matteo’s arms.

I can see his confusion, clock the way he catches my panic, but my mother bulldozes her way in before he can protect me.

This is the first time I’m seeing her since I told her. Every other conversation was on the phone, every moment I begged her to believe me was through a device that heard my deepest secrets.

I could have gone my entire life without hearing her say she doesn’t believe me.

And yet here I am.

Afraid of my own mother, and more so, afraid whether she brought someone else with her or not. Matteo closes the door, leaving only us three, and a small part of me is relieved, but I’m not done yet.

“What are you doing here?”

I sound cold, so incredibly cold Matteo’s back stiffens. He isn’t the only one. My mother halts as if she hit an invisible wall.

“Caleb called me on the way back from the airport and toldme how he was going to surprise everyone. Figured I could come and see my daughter.”

Arching a brow, I cross my arms over my chest. “What’s the reason you’re here, Mother?”

She swallows, her brown hair swishing over her shoulders. Caleb and I got our blonde hair from our father, but my eyes, they’re all hers. The crystal blue of them pierce my soul as she says softly, “I just want to talk.”

My gaze flicks to Matteo then back to her perfectly done makeup and hair.

“In private,” she adds.

Of course in private.

She’d be very pleased to know that I haven’t told anyone else. She all but begged me that day not to speak a word of it again.

I take it back.

Matteo didn’t break my heart when I was sixteen. That was my mother’s doing all those months ago when she took the side of my abuser and asked me not to tell anyone. When she did exactly what he did and tried to silence me.

And then again two weeks ago when she said she believed him over me.

I’d try and describe the visceral pain of that moment, but nothing is capable of conveying the sheer destruction of her words. The utter heartache of my own mother telling me that I wasn’t raped. That it never happened, that I must have made it up, that my imagination ran rampant.

And that’s not the worst part.

She still speaks to him.

She still speaks to the man that pinned me to my mattress when I was three years old and forced himself on me. She still speaks to the man that placed his head beside my ear and grunted in pleasure as he kept his hand over my mouth to quiet my screams of agony. She still speaks to the man that makes me hate being touched, that took every shred of innocence from me.

She still speaks to the man that made me think it would be easier if I were dead.

And it’s a choice that she does so. It’s not naivety.