Page 75 of Born for Starlight

She looked ready. That was the problem. She looked like a woman who'd been ready for hours.

I stood in that beautiful suite and picked up my dead phone and considered what I'd just done. I'd invited the woman I used to sleep with to come explain my lies to the woman I…

I didn't finish that sentence. Not even in my own head.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The nap hadn't helped. My head still pounded, and the ceiling of that beautiful bedroom hadn't offered one single answer in ninety minutes of me staring at it. Matthew had offered to hold me while I slept.

Seriously? Was he stupid?

Seriously. Men.

I'd made it abundantly clear that I was napping alone. Then I had lain there with my back to the door and watched the mango tree in the courtyard while the light changed. My head had throbbed the whole time. Nothing had gotten better.

Layla was coming tonight. And I was already fairly sure what she was going to tell me. I just didn't want to be right.

So now here I was, in the bathroom again, running water into the tub so I couldn't be heard. It occurred to me that this was becoming my office. Some women had corner suites. I had a marble bathroom in Brazil and a faucet doing my soundproofing.

I refused to be vulnerable in front of Matthew.

Refused.

But I knew myself, and that was not a small thing. I understood my own layers. I knew which emotions I had to dredge up to do what I did for a living, and that meant I'd had to learn myself top to bottom. The better I knew myself, the better actress I became. It worked in both directions. And the woman in this bathroom knew that if she didn't get emotional reinforcements before facing Layla, she would fall apart in front of the wrong audience. I needed my family.

I loved my friends. Zoe and Kit would work in most situations, and either one of them would pick up on the first ring. But right now I wanted my mom. The woman who flew to Brazil, adopted a half-starved two-year-old, and never once looked back.

I looked down at my phone and winced.

Branson. My parents were in Branson, Missouri. They went every year, some place Dad could fish and Mom could see a show or two. While they were there, the phones went on do not disturb. Emergencies only. And needing to hear my mother's voice was not an emergency, no matter what my chest was insisting.

I called my mom’s mom instead.

Grandma Maureen picked up on the third ring, and the second I heard her voice I wanted to cry. It was stupid. But there it was anyway.

Maybe it was this country. The mango trees, the wet, heavy air that only exists here, Portuguese drifting up from the pool deck. All of it kept making me feel young. Small. Like my body remembered being small here, even though I remembered nothing at all.

My first real memory of Grandma Maureen swam up with her voice. Red hair. Red lipstick. A wide smile and bright eyes filled with tears, looking down at me.

"How is my beautiful angel?"

Almost word for word what she'd said to me that very first time.

I sucked back a sob. It didn't suck back all the way.

"Oh, baby. Tell me what's wrong. Are you hurt? Do you need to come home?"

"I'm fine." I forced the words out.

"Horsepucky. Jase and Bruno were right. You never should have gone down to Brazil. This was a bad idea from the jump. You get on the next plane home."

"No. Seriously, Grandma. I'm fine."

"Angel. You don't sound fine."

I broke.

I broke, and I didn't know why. Except I did know why. It was Aurora, and what I was almost certain was happening there. It was the idea that anyone, any woman, any child, but especially Luzia, could be trafficked. Sold. Auctioned. The word alone broke something deep inside me, and I didn't know if that thing could ever be put back together again.