Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Moira yanks back from him. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Domhnall says, jaw flexing. “You clearly put on more makeup to try and hide it from us.”
Moira rolls her eyes. “I knew I shouldn’t have come out tonight.”
“Just tell us what happened,” Quinn demands, no-nonsense.
I can’t help but be moved by how obviously everyone in the group cares for each other. Even if Moira’s clearly annoyed by it.
“It was no big deal. It was just some consensual slapping with a dom I know. He went harder than he should have. That’s all.”
“Which dom?” The vein in her brother’s forehead looks all but ready to burst. “Was it Bane? And there’s another bruise on your arm. Fuck, Moira.
“No, of course it wasn’t Bane. I just saw him that one night.” Moira looks down in dismay at where he’s pointing, then glares up at her brother as she yanks her coat back on.
Domhn just stares at her. “What’s going on with you?”
“It’s none of your business if I want to play a little rough.”
“It is if you’re playing outside the club again. Jaysus, how could ya? After what happened last time?”
Anna gasps at his words, a haunted look coming into her eyes. Moira’s face crumples with horrified guilt, and she shoots up from the table, yanking her purse over her shoulder and shoving her shades back on.
As she does, I get a better look at her. She looks a lot skinnier than the last time I saw her. Her badly applied makeup doesn’t hide her gauntness.
I don’t know everything that happened last year when Anna had her mental breakdown after coming out of the amnesia, but there have been clues here and there that Domhnall blames Moira for some part in it.
Which obviously doesn’t help, because Moira clearly already blames herself, as well. Whatever problems she had before are only exacerbated by this additional layer of shame.
“Fuck you,” Moira spits at Domhnall, then she turns and stalks out of the club. Anna starts to stand up, but Domhnall catches her forearm.
“Don’t,” he says. “She doesn’t deserve it after what she did to you.”
“That’s not fair,” Anna says. “She didn’t know.”
“She knew there were rules and that it was dangerous to break them,” Domhn snaps. “But here she is, doing it again, with no care how it affects anyone else. She’s just as selfish as our mother.”
Anna looks desperately at Quinn, who nods and jogs after Moira.
Anna just wraps her arms around Domhnall’s waist. “She’ll be okay.”
Domhn draws her close to his chest, back into his lap. “I just don’t know what to do with her. She had it so easy compared to all we went through, and I just can’t put up with her bullshit anymore.”
My chest clenches in sympathy for both him and Moira. It’s always like this when it comes to her. Anna and I have both suggested therapy to Moira, but she won’t hear of it. I guess she had some bad experiences when she was younger with in-patient treatment, and now she won’t even consider it.
But it’s so clear she’s spinning out. I know enough from my studies that her behaviour won’t change without intervention.
It’s the curse of studying psychology. You learn about the way human brains actually work. Like, my whole life, I swore I’d be nothing like my mother. But me saying that and knowing in my head that I want to be different don’t mean shit.
I was born a naïve little animal in a confusing world, and the only way I could learn was by mirroring what I saw. Her.
My mother swore she would be nothing like her mother. She’d tell me. She thought she could accomplish that if, once she had a baby, she told it she loved it once a day. Granted, she never picked it up, held it, cradled it, or showed it any affection. It was like this for me and my older brother, who might as well be a stranger to me. But she told us once a day that she loved us when we were babies. Of course, that was just incomprehensible gibberish to us little animals that only needed to be picked up and held.
But she thought it meant she was doing everything differently from her own cold, indifferent, unaffectionate mother.
We’re all such fools.
It was only halfway through my degree that I realized if I didn’t start going to therapy myself, I’d end up the same way. I have difficulty maintaining close friendships, just like my mother. My mother has a thousand acquaintances, and everyone loves her, but she has no best friends. I can be the charming life of the party if I want to, but it’s so difficult to fight through the OCD drowning my head with questions about what everyone thinks about me, I usually choose to just sit quietly in the corner.