Page 53 of What If We Break?
I handed him his coffee without saying a word. I wasn’t sure if I could speak right now.
Part of me wanted to tell Reece who I’d just met, the other part was still trying to understand it happened myself.
In theory, I knew she was alive. I knew she tried reaching out before. But for the first five years of my life, I’d been told she was dead.
While I didn’t remember much from those years, I remembered being told Millie died giving birth. Then, the next thing I remember was my dad sitting me down at eight years old, telling me how she wasn’t dead but that she apparently faked it all just to get out of being a mother.
For the next six months, I’d been crying myself to sleep because I thought I ruined someone’s life. I was worried Dad thought of me as a burden as much as this woman did.
I knew that if it hadn’t been for me, Dad would’ve gone to the NHL. He wouldn’t have had to spend his college years taking care of a kid he didn’t plan to have, and instead could’ve had fun and been irresponsible.
I thought, if she could hate me for ruining her life, so could he. The difference was that she did something horrible to get out of her responsibilities while Dad stepped up.
Dad reassured me that I’d been the best that’s ever happened to him more than once, but on very bad days, even that reassurance did nothing to console me.
A few years later, I found out that Millie got pregnant on purpose, she just failed to tell my father until I was twelve.
Ever since then, I knew she technically wanted me… until she didn’t anymore. But by that time, I already resented her, and finding out about that made my hatred even worse.
“Hey, are you alright?” Reece laid his hand on my thigh, his thumb stroking back and forth.
I looked out of the window, noticing that we were no longer near Claire’s.
“Do you want to go back home?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “I need a drink.”
“You can’t drink,mi princesa. We have a competition tomorrow.”
I turned to look at him, but Reece’s eyes were focused on the road.
He styled his hair earlier. Usually, Reece’s hair was all fluffy even though he always put gel in it so it stayed in place. Sometimes I’d think he woke up like that and didn’t even brush his hair, but it never looked bad.
Today, he parted his hair in the middle.
I kind of wanted to run my hands through his hair just to mess it up again. I liked the middle part, but this so wasn’t Reece.
“Now, tell me. What’s wrong?” He stopped at a red light and took that moment to look at me. “Who do I have to beat up?”
I smiled softly at his words. He’d never beaten someone up, but I liked that he claimed he would. “I met Millie,” I told him, keeping my voice down as if it was a secret.
“Millie?” Confusion flickered in his eyes. “Millie… Scott?”
I nodded quickly then shook my head. “I think she’s a Reed now.”
“Who the fuck would marry someone like her?”
My shoulders lifted into a shrug. “Someone who’s as cruel as her or… they’re just really stupid.”
Reece’s grip on the steering wheel tightened as we sat in silence at the red light. I could feel the tension radiating off him, his knuckles turning white. Despite my own resentmenttowards Millie, I didn’t want Reece to get too upset about the encounter. He was protective of me, sometimes to a fault.
“Did she say anything?” Reece finally asked, his voice low and controlled.
“She tried to apologize,” I replied, my gaze fixed on a distant building outside the car window. “Tried to blame my mom for everything.”
“Emory?”
I nodded, feeling a mix of emotions swirling inside me. “She claimed Emory stole her life. That she’s the victim in all this.”
