Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
I knew I couldn’t though, because of Amma. That was the last thing she’d want me to do.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I let Gabriel go, feeling completely idiotic for forcing myself on the man. “I think I’m just having a lot of feelings lately.”
“I should’ve made you some cookies, too,” he joked. He smiled and didn’t for a moment seem fazed by the fact that I’d all but tackled him. He held the cookies out toward me, and I took one.
As I bit into it, I almost cried again. A part of me wondered if he knew that I wasn’t always this way. I wasn’t always this oddity that lived in a gilded cage. I wasn’t always this broken bird fearful that it would never fly again. I wasn’t always damaged.
He’d known me when I still dreamed. When I still imagined. When I still felt alive. He knew the best and worst parts of me and called them beautiful. He knew me when I didn’t even know myself. And now he was there, baking cookies for my daughter, unaware that such a small act meant so much to my fragile heart.
Gabriel smiled and brushed his thumb against his chin. “Good, bad, inedible?”
“Perfect,” I told him.
His smile stretched wider, and I wanted to tell him how much I missed him.
Then again, who knew how much damage that would do? Who knew how much that would make him spiral. Besides, what was the point of telling him that we had a shared past? A whole life story where we existed as each other’s person. It wouldn’t change our current situation. If anything, it would push him away further. If he knew what I’d done all those years ago, if he remembered the accident, he would hate me. He would blame me the same way his mother did. That terrified me.
“And thank you, Gabriel. For being so kind to Ava. I know she struggles a bit with being social. Her anxiety gets to her. Probably a trait she sadly picked up from me,” I mentioned before taking another bite from my cookie.
His brow furrowed. “Are you okay, Kierra?”
I tilted my head. “What?”
“Are you okay?” he repeated.
Nothing else followed those three words. His brown eyes stayed locked with mine, packed with a tenderness that flipped my world upside down. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone outside of my family asked me those questions.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie to him. So I remained quiet.
He frowned as he placed the plate of cookies down on the counter. Then he crossed his arms across his chest and leaned against the kitchen island. “Are you safe?”
Those words made me stumble backward slightly. “What?” I choked out with a slight shake to my head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Before he could answer, Ava hollered from her bedroom. “Mom! I need you!”
Those words shook me away from the interaction completely as I fell back into my role as a mother. I didn’t have time to answer his questions. I didn’t have time to dive deeper into how I wasn’t okay and how I hadn’t ever felt safe.
Being a mother meant you pushed your own problems so far away to take care of others. Being a mother meant you lost yourself to save your babies. How dare Gabriel even ask me that type of question. Of course I was all right. It was the only thing us mothers were ever allowed to be—at least on the outside. On the outside we’d pretend that everything was amazing and wonderful, even though the world within us was crumbling into a million pieces.
“Sorry, I have to—” I started, but he shook his head.
He picked up the plate of cookies and held it out toward me. “Go ahead. I hope she’s feeling better. I’ll let myself out.”
I grabbed the plate and thanked him once more, before hurrying toward Ava’s bedroom.
“Mommmm!” she hollered again before I walked into her space.
“Is there a fire, or are you just really into yelling lately?” I remarked.
Ava sat on her bed with a box in front of her. Within said box were photo albums and old yearbooks. “What in the world are you doing with those?” I asked her, completely confused. I hadn’t seen those things in so long.
“Rosie dropped them off the other day. She said she was clearing out her parents’ garage and found some of your stuff that you stored there when you were in college together. I’ve been looking through it.”
I placed the plate of cookies on her dresser and then walked toward her. “Wow, I haven’t seen these in—”
“Mom,” she urged, looking at me as if I had three horns on my head. “Are you kidding me? Are you really going to act like everything’s normal?”