Dangerous (23 page)

“Shit, Jess! Why would you do that?”

I actually felt sorry for her as she faced Stone. She looked scared to death. But I had to admit, I had a burning desire to know why she would do that, too.

“Because Stone,” she said, “I’m in love with you.”

It was so quiet that I would have sworn that someone had just hit the mute button and we were all actors in some crazy sitcom.

“No, no, no,” Stone said over and over. “No, Jess.”

“I am, Stone,” she swore, as her lips began to quiver and her eyes filled with tears.

“No, Jess, you’re not,” he assured her.

She stood silently, nodding her head as the tears spilled onto her cheeks.

“Shit!” Stone cursed, ramming his hands through his hair. “Come here,” he whispered to her, pulling her into his embrace. “Don’t cry, Jess.”

Everyone stood staring as he soothed her. Scarlet elbowed me and said, “Told you to stick with Chance.”

I didn’t respond. I really didn’t know what to say or what exactly was going on.

Stone looked back at me and saw Crimson and Scarlet flanking me. “Crimson, could you take Dara home for me? Jess and I need to talk.”

Crimson nodded.

Stone looked at me. “We’ll talk later, Dara.”

I didn’t respond. I turned to Crimson. “Could you take me home now?” I asked.

“Sure.”

I was thankful that it was a short ride home from Awesome Sauce and that
Crimson
and Scarlet were relatively quiet. I didn’t feel like talking.

I had barely made it into my bedroom before the tears started falling.

Chapter 11

Dara

I woke up to my phone buzzing. I squinted against the bright sunshine pouring through the blinds and grabbed my phone off the nightstand. It was almost noon, and I had missed calls and text messages from Stone, Crimson, and Scarlet.

The events of last night assaulted my mind like poison. I groaned as I realized it wasn’t a dream. My life really did suck.

I didn’t know what I had expected. I knew Stone’s reputation before I had ever agreed to spend any time with him. He was so different than me, so different than any guy I had ever dated, not that there had been many. When I was with him, life was exciting. I had felt things that I had never felt before. That included last night. I could never remember feeling so crushed by a guy.

I had tried to hold back the tears, tried to tell myself that it was no big deal. But it was. I was crazy about Stone, and I don’t think I realized it until everything shattered at my feet. And to make it even more memorable, I had visions of voluptuous Jessie with her pouty, red lips and mile-long legs that I could not get out of my mind. What guy wouldn’t be enticed by her?

Heck, even now, I felt a pang of sympathy for her. It might be easier to cope with that pang if I had been the one who had actually come away from the evening with the guy.

The tears threatened to burn my eyes again. I was furious with Stone.
Furious that he had caused a scene.
Furious that he humiliated me in front of all my friends by leaving with Jessie.

As much as I wanted to hate Jessie, I felt an odd kinship with her. I could relate to the emotions that were plainly etched on her face last night. If I looked in the mirror, I was positive that I would see the same feelings etched on my own face. She and I had a common fault. We had fallen in love with the wrong guy.

My phone buzzed again. Stone was calling. I hit the ignore button and groaned. Misery weighted my body, and my eyes felt puffy. I desperately wished I could go back to sleep, back to the blissful world of unconsciousness.

I turned my phone off and closed my eyes, refusing to open them, so that I would hopefully slip into a peaceful slumber.

It was an hour later when I awoke. I heard the familiar crunching of gravels that signaled a car coming up the driveway. I wondered if it was Granny returning. Then, I wondered if Stone had driven here in his dad’s car. I refused to see him.

It wasn’t long until Granny knocked on my door. “Dara,” she called, her muffled voice spilling in around the cracks, “you have a visitor.”

“Tell him to go away. I don’t want to see him.” I tried to keep my voice from cracking, just in case he could hear me.

“Dara, honey, your mother’s here.”

I sat straight up in bed, my heart pounding mercilessly. I didn’t want to deal with this right now. I’d had enough rejection this week. The last thing I needed was to discuss why my mother abandoned me, and if I did talk to her that was the
one
question that I wanted answered.

I raked my tousled hair from my swollen eyes and jerked the comforter back. I slid my legs off the side of the bed, my feet dangling inches from the scarred, hardwood floor.

I considered suggesting that Granny tell her to go away, too. I wasn’t in the mood to talk right now, and I didn’t know why it should be on her schedule instead of mine. I knew the words would never pass my lips, though. If I didn’t talk to her now, I may never get the chance again.

“Dara?”
I could hear the concern in Granny’s voice.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

I slid out of the bed and went to my dresser, rummaging through drawers looking for something to wear. I tugged on a pair of blue jean shorts and a red, snug-fitting tee shirt. I brushed my hair into a ponytail and studied my reflection in the mirror. My eyes looked horrible.

Crossing the hall, I went to the bathroom to quickly complete a shortened version of my morning ritual. I dabbed on a little eye makeup in an effort to hide the puffiness, but it did little good.

My palms grew sweaty as I walked down the hall toward the living room. I hadn’t seen my mother since I was three, and I couldn’t remember much about her. Pausing at the end of the hallway, I took a deep breath, willing my heart to slow its pace. Then, I held my head high and entered the living room.

She was sitting in a wingback chair across from Granny, who was seated on the couch. When I came into the room, she stood and a huge smile lit her face.

I glanced at Granny, and she nodded her head in encouragement.

My mother was a little shorter than I. Her dirty blond hair hung listlessly just below her shoulders, and while she wasn’t unattractive, I could detect traces of someone who had lived a hard life. She held her arms out to me. I hugged her and quickly stepped back. She reeked of stale cigarette smoke. It was an odd feeling to know that this stranger in our living room was my mother. I did recognize her, though, from the picture tucked away in my jewelry box, and I couldn’t deny that I was looking into a set of eyes that was the exact same shade of green as my own.

Granny stood. “I’ll give the two of you some privacy.” She took my hands in her small, cold, wrinkled ones. “Dara, I’ll be in my bedroom if you need me.”

I nodded and watched Granny as she left the room.

“It’s so good to see you,” my mother said in a soft voice.

I stared at her blankly.

“I think about you all the time,” she continued, holding up a photo of me when I was a baby.

Part of me thought I should say something and ease her growing discomfort, and another part of me wanted her to suffer, the way she made me suffer. If she thought about me all the time, why did she wait almost fifteen years to visit? Why didn’t she call or write?

I remained silent.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions you’d like to ask me,” she said, giggling nervously and sitting back down in the chair.

“Why did you abandon me?” I asked, unsmiling, a little taken aback by just how angry I was.

“Because I wasn’t good for you,” she said simply. “I loved you enough that I wanted a better life for you than what I could give. I knew that your father’s parents would take you with no questions asked. Joe and Helen were some of the best people that I had ever met, and I trusted them to take care of you like you deserved.”

I sat down on the couch, never taking my eyes away from her face. “They didn’t even know I existed,” I said. “If you thought they were so great, how come you never even told them about me?”

“Dara, your father and I broke up before I found out I was pregnant. I never told him about you because we were miserable together. He was always drunk, and I was always high on prescription pills. I knew he’d want to work it out if I told him about you, and I just didn’t want to deal with our relationship. It was easier to leave and never look back.”

I grunted. “Sounds like you do that a lot.”

“I understand if you hate me, but it was different with you. I didn’t want to leave you, but I was so screwed up. I’d take downers to go to sleep and uppers to wake back up. I started dabbling with other drugs, too.
Cocaine.
Heroine.

“I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t.”

“I wasn’t worth it?” I asked.

“Oh, baby, you were worth it, but I was so far gone with drugs, I didn’t know whether I’d live through another day. And I didn’t care.

“I knew I had to find somebody to take care of you, before I did wind up dead and something horrible happened to you. My own parents had kicked me out of the house years ago and told me that they wanted nothing to do with me. Joe and Helen were the only people that I knew who deserved you.”

Tears streamed down her face. “You’ve had a good life with them, right?” she asked, nodding her head and waiting for me to confirm it.

“Yes,” I answered quickly, not needing to give the question any thought. “I love them both with all my heart.”

She pursed her lips and wiped her eyes. “Then I made the right choice.”

“They took good care of me, and I love them. But that didn’t keep me from wondering why you never came back.”

“I know, but it was better that I didn’t. I was a mess, and I didn’t want you to see me like that. I’ve been clean for six months, though, and all that time, I’ve been trying to get the courage up to come and see you.

“You have every right to hate me, but I wanted you to know that I love you more than my own life. That’s why I did what I did. Because I loved you, and no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t become the kind of mother that you needed.”

She sobbed openly, and I felt like I should go to her. But my feet wouldn’t move. Where was she all the nights that I cried myself to sleep?

Once she regained her composure, she stood and walked toward the front door. I stood and watched her, waiting for her to speak.

“Thank you for talking to me. I know this is probably a little overwhelming. I’m going to go, so that you can have time to process everything, and then, I’d like to come back and see you in a few days or a few weeks.
Just whenever you’re ready to see me.
I’ve given your Granny my phone number, so you can call me when you want to talk.”

I nodded my head in acknowledgment, and I silently watched her walk out the door.

Once the door closed, I exhaled loudly, not even realizing that I had been holding my breath. I covered my mouth with a trembling hand. A myriad of emotions churned in my soul, and it felt like slivers of glass coursed through my veins.

I collapsed on the couch, hot tears blistering their way down my cheeks. Saddened by the life that I had lost with my birth parents, I was at least grateful that Papa and Granny had cared enough for the granddaughter that they hadn’t even known existed to take her into their home and love her. I knew now that without them, I would have never had a chance at happiness.

When the flow of tears finally stopped, I knocked on Granny’s door and entered her room. She sat by the window in the corner, reading a book.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her brow furrowed as she looked up from the novel.

“Considering,” I said.

“You know you can talk to me if you need to.”

“I know, Granny. Right now, I think I just want to take a hot shower.” I turned to leave the room, but then I stopped and looked back at her. “I’m glad you and Papa wanted me, Granny.”

Her eyes glistened as she watched me, a small smile on her lips. “Honey, you were the best thing that ever happened to us.”

I couldn’t stop the rivulet of tears that streamed from my eyes. I hadn’t known how much I needed to hear her say that until the words flowed from her lips. I ran to her and hugged her hard. If anything ever happened to her, I would be lost.

I finally released her, kissed her on the brow, and went to shower.

After letting some of my stress wash down the shower drain along with the steaming water, I felt slightly better, though I was still an emotional mess. My mind kept alternating between the scene last night with Stone and the one today with my mother. Both of them sucked.

My phone buzzed against the kitchen table while I nibbled on a saltine cracker to settle my stomach. Stone was calling again. I hit the ignore button.

I needed to talk to Crimson and Scarlet about Granny’s bridal shower, but I really wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.

I flipped on the television, stretched out on the couch, and mindlessly watched one of my favorite recorded programs. I replayed the visit with my mother this morning over and over in my head. If she thought that I was going to make it easy for her, she was wrong. I had heard enough about drugs to know how addictive they were. Educational groups had presented the facts to the student body at Quail Mountain High, and I clearly remembered a recovering user telling the students that he had tried it one time. One time was all it had taken for him to be addicted, and that addiction resulted in him losing his home, his job, and his family.