Page 18 of Back To Our Beginning

“You say potato, I say po-tah-toe.”

I laughed. This time it sounded right.

“So how long did that last?” she asked.

“Who says I still don’t feel like that?” I sighed.

“You must be feeling a little more put together if you’re comfortable becoming my stalker.”

“I’m not, though. I’m still fucked in the head. Eight months ago, everything was spinning. I did want to reach out to you, but for all the wrong reasons.”

She frowned.

“I needed a safe place to land. Here I was, falling apart. Ten times worse than when I was dealing with the mom shit, and all I wanted to do was use you after fifteen years of no contact. That’s the kind of bastard I was thinking about being.”

“So why didn’t you?”

Damn it. She was no longer angry, she looked hurt.

I grabbed both of her hands, my thumbs circling her palms. “Because then I would have been my mom. If I was going to come back to you, I was going to come back to you a whole person, not some needy bastard.”

“And now?” she asked quietly.

“Now I believe in Brady. I mean, Kai. I figured out that life can just be shitty, and then it can be absolutely wonderful. And I can believe in it. Trust in it. It took the last eight months for that to become clear.”

She nodded and pulled her hands out of mine. “I need to go.” She started past me.

My heart jolted. “Hey, wait a minute. Why are you going?”

“You’ve explained things to me. I have my answers. I have my closure. So, thank you.”

She was halfway to the front door before I had enough sense to get in front of her.

“Get out of my way, Beau.”

“No. I want to know why you’re leaving. I told you why I didn’t contact you eight months ago. Why are you leaving?”

“Yeah. You explained what was going on eight months ago. Then you said you wanted to come back to me as a whole person. But for eleven days, you didn’t call me. Not one word, Beau. You’re either a liar or you need to see a psychiatrist. Either way, I’m not interested.”

Panic slammed into me. Shit, she was right. Why hadn’t I contacted her? Why wasn’t she the first call I’d made? What the fuck was my problem?

“Don’t leave, Maddie. I’m begging you.”

“Beau, eleven days.”

“Does it count that I spent those eleven days finding out everything about you? I spent that time finding out everything you’ve been doing? What your job was? Whether you were in a relationship? Whether you had a pet? What books you checked out from the library? By the way, I think it is cool that you do so many do-it-yourself projects.”

Oh fuck, I could see her cheeks turning red, and her eyes turning black. She was about to go ballistic on my ass.

“Eleven! Fucking! Days! Beaumont!” she screamed in my face. “Then you make me come to you! You are so out of your goddamn mind.”

“Maddie, please.”

“Don’t you Maddie please me,” she yelled.

Yelling was better than screaming.

“Don’t you dare get me to almost cry for you about finding Brady, and how twisted up you were, and how you want to come to me whole, and then not… not… not… call me for eleven days!”