Chapter 153

Chapter 153
Linnet's POV


My hands had gone cold. I pressed them against my thighs under the table, trying to process what she'd just told me, trying to reconcile it with everything I knew about consent and respect and the right way to treat another person.

But I kept my mouth shut, because I could see this wasn't the moment for my commentary, for my modern understanding of boundaries and autonomy. This was Mom's story, and she needed to tell it her way.

"When I finally came to my senses," she continued, her voice steady despite the tremor I could detect underneath, "I pushed him away and ran. Grabbed my bag and just ran. I remember thinking he was crazy, that he had to be some kind of psychopath to just kiss someone like that without warning, without permission."

She fell silent, staring down at her soup, and I watched the play of emotions across her face—regret, confusion, something that might have been shame or perhaps just the complicated tangle of feelings that came with remembering your younger, more naive self.

"But then he started approaching me more openly," Mom said after a long moment. "And I didn't resist as much as I should have. I told myself I was just being polite, that it would be awkward to keep ignoring him when we kept running into each other. But the truth was..." She swallowed hard. "The truth was that part of me was flattered. Intrigued. No one had ever paid that kind of attention to me before."

I wanted to say something, to offer comfort or understanding, but the words stuck in my throat. Because I understood, didn't I? I understood exactly what she meant—that heady, dangerous feeling of being wanted, of being pursued, of mattering to someone in a way that felt both thrilling and terrifying.

"There was this night," Mom continued, her voice taking on a different quality now, something softer and more distant. "I went out with some classmates to a bar near campus. Cole was there too. And at some point during the evening, he pulled me aside, into one of the bathroom stalls, and he kissed me again. This time I kissed him back."

She looked up at me then, her eyes searching my face for something—judgment, maybe, or condemnation. But I kept my expression neutral, encouraging her to continue even as my stomach twisted with complicated emotions I didn't fully understand.

"He said—" Mom's voice caught slightly. "He said I smelled good. That he couldn't stop thinking about me. And I believed him. God help me, I believed every word."

The kitchen was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. Outside, a car alarm went off and then fell silent. Mrs. Chen's television continued its muffled commentary on some show or another. And I sat there, watching my mother's face as she traveled back through time to a version of herself I'd never known—young, vulnerable, caught in the orbit of a man who would eventually become the source of so much pain.

"After that, things moved quickly," Mom said. "There was an incident at the school pool—I got into trouble in the water, wasn't a strong swimmer, and he pulled me out. Saved me, or so it felt at the time. And then one night, walking home to my apartment, I was harassed by some drunk guys on the street. Cole appeared and fought them off. Got hurt doing it—but he didn't back down until they left."

"I brought him back to my apartment to clean his wounds," Mom continued, and now her voice had gone soft with remembered tenderness that made my chest ache. "Patched him up as best I could with my limited first aid supplies. And while I was bandaging his knuckles, he asked me to be his girlfriend. Asked me to give him a real chance."

She paused, took a shaky breath, and when she spoke again her voice was barely above a whisper. "That was the first time I kissed him of my own free will. The first time I chose it instead of just reacting to what he did."

I found myself nodding slowly, understanding beginning to dawn even as questions multiplied in my mind. I thought about Bryson—about the way he'd waited for me to make choices, to set boundaries, to decide what I wanted and when I wanted it. The contrast between his patient respect and Cole's aggressive pursuit couldn't have been more stark.

"That night he stayed over," Mom said, and now a faint smile crossed her face, sad and wistful and tinged with something that might have been grief for her younger self. "We lay in my tiny bed—it was barely big enough for one person, let alone two—and we didn't do anything. He just held me. Wrapped his arms around me and held me while I fell asleep. And I remember thinking..." She trailed off, blinking rapidly against tears that were gathering in her eyes.

"What did you think?" I prompted gently when the silence stretched too long.

"I thought I'd finally found it," she whispered. "Real happiness. The kind of love that felt safe and certain and permanent. I thought—" Her voice broke. "I thought I'd found someone who would always protect me, always keep me safe. I was so young, Linnet. So naive. I had no idea what I was really getting myself into."

My throat had gone tight with unshed tears of my own. I reached across the table and took her hand, squeezing it gently, offering what comfort I could even as my mind raced ahead to what must have come next. Because clearly something had gone wrong. Clearly that fairy tale romance had soured into something dark enough that my mother had spent twenty-three years running from it, hiding from it, keeping me away from any connection to Cole Doyle and his family.

"Not long after that, we started living together," Mom continued, her fingers gripping mine with surprising strength. "I moved into his apartment. It was so much nicer than my cramped little studio—he had space, good furniture, a kitchen that actually worked properly. He said it didn't make sense for me to keep wasting money on rent when I could stay with him. Said he wanted to take care of me, to make my life easier so I could focus on my studies."

She fell silent again, and I watched her face carefully, noting the way her expression had shifted from wistful nostalgia to something darker, something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up in primal warning.

"At first, it really did seem like I'd found happiness," she said, but there was something hollow in her voice now, something that made the words ring false even as she spoke them. "Like everything was falling into place exactly the way it was supposed to."

But even as she said it, her face was changing—the light fading from her eyes, the small smile disappearing, her features settling into lines of tension and remembered pain. Her hand in mine had gone rigid, her fingers curling into a grip that was almost painful in its intensity.

I felt my own body responding to her distress, my shoulders tensing, my breathing growing shallow. Whatever came next in this story, it was going to be bad. I could see it written in every line of my mother's face, could feel it in the way the atmosphere in our small kitchen had shifted from nostalgic to oppressive.

"Mom?" I said softly, squeezing her hand. "What happened? After you moved in with him, what happened?"

She looked up at me then, and the expression in her eyes made my blood run cold. It was fear—raw, visceral fear mixed with shame and regret and a kind of desperate sadness that seemed to emanate from the very core of her being.

"Mom?" I repeated, more urgently now. "What's wrong? You moved in with him, and then what?"

For a long moment she didn't speak, just sat there staring at me with those haunted eyes while the radiator hissed and the television droned and the whole world seemed to hold its breath waiting for her answer.

Then she opened her mouth, and I braced myself for whatever truth was about to shatter the fragile peace we'd built in this cramped apartment, this small safe space we'd carved out of a world that had never been particularly kind to either of us.

"Then everything changed," she whispered, and her voice was so broken, so full of pain, that I felt tears spring to my own eyes in sympathetic response. "Oh, Linnet. Everything changed."