Page 140 of Serpentine
Miles is next to us on his bike, gripping the hell out of the handles.
“We’re sure we’re ready for this?” he finally asks, breaking the tension with his sharp tone.
Aella finally peels off me, sniffling. “We have to close this chapter. No matter what comes of the meeting.”
As if her word was all we needed before heading inside, we grumble and get off our bikes.
I reach a hand toward her, helping her off my bike.
As she gets off my ride, I eat up each movement her lithe body makes. Licking my lips, I tug her close and kiss her on her head, closing my eyes and breathing in her perfume.
“You’ve become our world, Bambi.” It’s the most I’ve ever given her verbally. While she knows I’m different from my emotions, she needs my words. It requires me to tell her the shit that’s rumbling around in my overly connected brain.
“You two have become mine,” she whispers back, pulling from my hug and looking up at me.
Her deep blue eyes trap me in their hue, and I swallow.
“Let’s get this shit over with,” Miles says, and Aella gives me a look I know all too well.
He won’t tell her he’s upset. He won’t tug her into him to help cushion his nerves.
He needs her, and she knows it.
I nod, and she pulls away and goes to him, entwining her fingers with his and taking up the lead as we stride toward the building.
Aella leads us inside, toward her father’s office, and the closer we get, the worse my nerves get.
Our mother, the woman we’ve been looking for since we were teens, is here. Even though a door lies between us, it’s as if I can feel her somehow. Smell her.
But she left us.
Emotions war inside me, and I try to tamp them down.
The process of coming to terms with her being alive is still ongoing, and I don’t know how I’ll react to seeing her. How will my brain reconcile her image with what I know to be true?
She left us.
“Ready?” Aella asks us.
We’ve been standing before her father’s office door for a few moments. Readying.
She reaches forward and grabs the knob, even though neither of us agrees that we’re ready to proceed.
I spot her once Miles steps inside, moving off to the left with Aella.
She’s sat in a chair before Walter’s desk, and her eyes are leaking tears.
Almost instantly, the hurt and anguish slam into my chest at the sight of her. But the same memories of her kissing us to see us off in the morning or dancing around the kitchen as she cooked breakfast won’t let those feelings win.
She was our mother.
She is our mother.
A choked sob comes from my throat, and I take a moment to realize that it was me who made the sound.
“Braxton. God, look at you,” she says, wiping her face and standing. She’s fighting the urge to come towards me, and I’m thankful she’s controlling it.
She knows I don’t want to be touched with so much happening in my head. Just as she’d known back then. Mom always knew when it was okay to reach for me.