Page 43 of Damaged Protector

“Just with my mom. My dad worked overseas a lot and only came home a few times a year for a couple weeks at a time.”

“So it was just you and your mother?”

Mal nodded. “She homeschooled me so I would have time for more intensive dance training. That limited my social interactions and only made the enmeshment deeper. I depended on her for everything.”

I was genuinely curious about what she’d gone through. “How is it different from a normal mother and daughter who are close?”

“The guilt,” she whispered, pinching her lips together. Remaining silent, I allowed her time to tell her story. “My mother was a ballerina, but her career was cut short when she got pregnant with me. She enrolled me in dance when I was very young, and I loved it. I wanted to dance all the time.”

She jabbed a tomato and popped it in her mouth, chewing slowly before continuing. “Not to brag, but I was good. Really good. I was deemed a ballet prodigy.”

“Did you get burned out or something?”

Her blonde head shook back and forth. “No, I enjoyed dancing, until…” She swallowed hard. “Something happened last year that spoiled it all. My mother didn’t take my side, and it pissed me off.”

“What happened?”

Her eyes shifted to a spot over my shoulder. “I don’t want to get into that, but it broke something inside me.” Her voice went raspy, and I hoped to hell she wouldn’t cry. “When she punished me, I started to see things more clearly. It’s like the walls that were blinding me finally came down, and I saw what she was doing was wrong.”

One word flashed like a neon sign in my brain. “Punished you, how?”

Mallori nibbled on the corner of her lip, staring speculatively at me. “You’re not going to tell Cam?”

“Bee, whatever you tell me is just between you and me.”

The gentle force of my tone must have convinced her because she blurted out, “She locked me in my home dance studio until my dad got home.”

“For an entire day?” I questioned, feeling my blood begin to boil.

“For five weeks,” she replied, lifting an eyebrow.

The boiling turned into molten lava, and my voice strained with the urge to yell. Instead, it was deceptively quiet. “She locked you in a fucking room for five weeks?”

“Yep.”

“What did your dad say about that?”

Her eyes dropped to her plate. “I didn’t tell him. He would go thermonuclear, and that’s not good for his heart.” She raised her gaze back to mine. “My dad is a sweetheart and one of my favorite people in the world. I’d never want to hurt him.”

“So you allowed yourself to be hurt instead?” That came out snappier than I’d intended, and Mal lifted one shoulder.

“I know it sounds stupid, but she just… I don’t know how to explain it. I was in too deep. But I had a lot of time to think, and I started to see that our relationship was flawed.”

Flawed? It was completely fucked up. “So how did you start pulling away? I mean, you moved here. I have to assume she wasn’t happy about that.”

“She’s not happy at all about it, but my father stood up for me when I told him my plans.” Mal picked up a sliver of carrot with her fingers and nibbled on it. “After everything that happened that night and then her getting mad at me about it, I felt like my studio was a prison for the first time in my life.”

I still wanted to know what had happened to her that had started this conflict, but I didn’t want to push her. Jesus, she must have felt so trapped inside her own home with her own mother.

Reading between the lines, I said, “So you decided not to dance as a fuck you to your mother?”

A subtle smile crested her lips, and she bobbed her head up and down. “Exactly. That was the best way I knew how to punish her back. Plus, dancing was kind of spoiled for me at that point.”

“I’m sorry, Bee. No one should be treated like that.”

“You’re right. I started looking up stuff on the internet—she let me keep my phone because my dad would be suspicious if he didn’t hear from me for more than a few days—and I found a bunch of stuff on enmeshed families. One of the sites had a link to a counseling center where you could message or talk to someone for free.”

“Did that help?”