Page 43 of Anger Bang
“Actually, walking away at all was my only option,” she said, blinking away unshed tears. “I knew if I didn’t stop drinking I was going to die, and the only way I could get sober was to leave. Your father—well, you know what your father was like.” She clung to the napkin ring, holding it tight enough that her knuckles were turning white. “So I packed three bags—one for each of us—and made a plan to get out.”
She paused, turning her head and looking up at a spot of nothing on the wall as she blinked rapidly.
Then, after a few moments, she let out a shaky breath and turned back to him. “Your father found out. He told me I’d never get custody, that everyone knew I was just a drunk and was obviously an unfit mother. He said you’d both be better off without me.”
She leaned toward him, her hands hovering in the air above the table. His first instinct was to reach out, but he squashed that with the force of a man who did what needed to be done. She let out a small sigh and dropped her hands.
“I have spent years of my life wishing that I had done things differently,” she went on, no longer looking at him but down at the untouched burger on her plate. “I wish that I’d thought to set aside money so I could hire lawyers to fight your father in court. But I didn’t, and with his connections and access to his family’s money, I knew I couldn’t win.” She looked back up at him, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. “Plus there was a part of me that thought he was right. What kind of mother picked vodka or rum or a bottle of merlot over her own kids? The same kind of mother who left her children. The kind of mother that walked away.”
This was the perfect moment to slide the knife home. To tell her she was right. That only a bad mother would do that shit.
But he couldn’t.
All that hope and want and belief that one day his mom would come back surged to the surface, decades after he thought he’d gotten rid of them for good.
What a fucking sucker you are, St. James. What a fool.
“By the time I’d finished my second stint in rehab and tried to reconnect,” she continued, “your father wouldn’t even let me talk to you.”
“Bullshit,” he said, his voice exploding from him, powered by the fact that she’d almost had him. Again. “I heard him. He kept saying you should at least say goodbye and explain why you left.”
“No,” she said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “You heard him mocking me as I begged to do just that. I never stopped wanting to see you and Dex, to be a part of your life, to make up for how things were when I was drinking. I love you, Kade. I always will.”
How many nights had he waited up to hear just those words? So fucking many. And he wanted to toss all of this into the trash, light the damn thing on fire, and then salt the earth after it was nothing more than ashes. But Mom wasn’t wrong. Dad was a prick. He always found fault, always micromanaged every move his sons made, always intimated that whatever they were doing it wasn’t enough and never would be. Kade had always chalked it up to the fact that Mom had left, leaving Dad a bitter shell of himself. But thinking back, he realized that wasn’t the truth. He’d been like that even before Mom left.
The contradiction knocked him sideways, making his lungs tighten enough that it was hard to breathe, impossible to think, and way too fucking easy to just feel. Fuck that. It was not what he did. So he fell back into what was more comfortable than the uncertainty tearing through him like a tornado of guilt and shame and hurt—so much fucking hurt.
“Is that all?” he asked, keeping his voice cool and even. “Is that everything you wanted to say?”
Mom winced as she wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Okay, then I fulfilled my part of the bargain. I listened.” His chair squeaked against the linoleum floor when he pushed it back and stood. “Now, I’m leaving.”
Dex snarled, “You giant pain—”
“No.” Mom put her hand on Dex’s forearm, silencing him. “It’s okay. Let him go.”
His brother looked like he was going to argue, but instead he crossed his arms and glared at Kade.
Whatever. Dex would get over it.
Just like you did with your mom?
Shut the fuck up, brain.
Kade strode out of the barn, ignoring the camera crew coming in for the after-the-talk shot, and made a beeline for his bike and freedom from this fucking disaster of a wedding. He was five miles down the road before the irony hit him. He’d spent his entire life swearing he’d never be the one to abandon the people he loved, and yet here he was with half a mind to keep going and never look back.
But he couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that to Dex.
And Thea?
He wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready for that goodbye.
Chapter Nineteen
Thea sat up in Kade’s bed with a start, her heart going about four hundred miles a second.
Bridesmaid luncheon.
