Page 108 of Reckless Love

“It’ll matter in a court of law.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“If Raul wakes up, you will go back to him.”

“Why do you care? Why does it matter?” I cry. “Just let me be happy.”

“Raul is an asset to this family, and I won’t have him embarrassed.”

“You don’t want him to know he’s not Landon’s father. Well, guess what, Mom. That’s my ticket out of my marriage. He’s not the type of man to be okay with raising another man’s child.” But Stephen had been. He’d have taken me and Landon, even if Landon wasn’t biologically his, because he was mine, and that would have been enough.

She shakes her head and stares at me, but I can’t read what’s going on behind her eyes. “There will be no divorce between you and Raul. And if you pursue that avenue, I’ll be forced to go down a road I’d rather not travel too.”

“Stephen can ruin you just as easily as you can ruin him.”

“Maybe. But where does that leave you?”

Still trapped. Or without Stephen.

“Mom,” I plead, tears coming to my eyes.

“Enjoy the time you’ve got with Stephen. This little interlude from your real life. You’ve made it clear you don’t want me to help you, so I’ll just help myself.”

Then she leaves me in the hallway and goes back up the stairs.

Turns out all my boom has fizzled out.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ava

Walking in the door to Stephen’s house, I’m deflated, defeated. I got what I wanted—she admitted she’d manufactured the whole thing with Raul. But instead of my life feeling on track, resolved in way that’ll make me happy forever, I’m despondent.

Stephen was right. I went there without a clear plan, and now I’m the one backed into a corner.

“Stephen?” I call, wandering from room to room, apartment to apartment. At the back of the house, it finally clicks that his car was gone from out front. Did he really go to work at this hour and in the middle of all this emotional turmoil? Men really are made of different stuff. I could never.

I flop onto his bed, and I curl into the scent of him left on his pillow. The urge to cry and cry and cry creeps into my throat over and over, but I keep swallowing it down.

Stephen said we weren’t powerless, and he meant regarding Raul, but I hope that applies to my mother as well. Why didn’t I listen to him when he said to wait?

Deep down, I didn’t expect my mother to come at me like that. In all the years we’ve had conflict, she’s never done something so obviously cruel. Not to me. But when I consider what she did to Nathaniel and Hollyn, I realize how naïve I was. For whatever reason, my mother has always protected the Tucker name and reputation first, and her children have come second to that goal.

It’s not even like she was born a Tucker. She married into it, and if anyone should be this enraged over any dent in the Tucker reputation armor, it should be my father. But becoming a Tucker, a member of one of the richest and oldest families on the island, was the jewel in my mother’s social crown, and she won’t let anything tarnish it.

Footsteps echo through the apartment, and Stephen’s bulky frame slides into the bed beside me, drawing me close.

“Didn’t go well?”

“I don’t know who that woman is.” But I do. I do. She’s just never wielded that side of her with so much force against my interests.

“She threaten me?”

“Yes,” I whisper. I rotate in his arms, and I dig my hands into his T-shirt. “And I won’t let her hurt you. I should have listened to you. I had no plan.”

“Shit. I didn’t get that recorded. Can you say it again?” His chin rests on the top of my head.

“None of this is funny.”