Better When He's Bold

It had been two weeks since things had turned into something different between me and Race. Two weeks in which he had maneuvered things so that my mom could get into this place. Two weeks in which he had insisted that a monster of a man with a scar on his face and a permanent glower—who simply went by the name Booker—follow me to and from every single place I went. Two weeks in which the bank had sent the final notice of nonpayment on the house, letting us know we had only to the end of the month to pay or get out. And maybe most importantly, it had been two weeks in which I realized that when I didn’t see my golden god it really sucked and made me miss him something fierce.

Between handling things with my mom, trying to figure out what I was going to do about where Karsen and I were going to go, and getting everything squared away with school now that I was a hundred percent back on track, there hadn’t been any time to see Race. I wanted to this weekend, but it was fight night at the Pit and there was some kind of playoff game going on, so he hadn’t been around. When I did manage to get him on one of his many phones, I was happy to hear that he didn’t seem any more pleased with the separation than I was, and then he demanded that if anything felt off I tell Booker about it. I had already had to hand my new laptop over to the giant and wait anxiously while he pawed at it and searched for God only knew what. If there was spyware downloaded on this one, the giant couldn’t locate it, which seemed to make Race a little less anxious, but didn’t make me feel any less violated.

It wasn’t that I was opposed to having a man at my back who looked like he could rip someone’s head off simply because they looked at him wrong, it was more the fact that he didn’t talk and didn’t seem too stoked at being my babysitter that bugged me. He was a few years older than me and way taller than both Bax and Race. He had short dark hair that he slicked up off of a high forehead and made the scar that started above his eyebrow and cut straight down the side of his face to his jaw look even more prominent. It was really a shame considering he was a really handsome man. His eyes were a pretty, sharp, gunmetal blue. They were so pale they looked silvery and reflective, and they sat in a face that was strong, defined, and chiseled in a supremely masculine and hard way. If it wasn’t for that scar, he could give Race a run for his money in the heartthrob department, and I wasn’t excited that my little sister kept sneaking furtive glances at him when she thought no one was looking.

“Don’t be nervous, Mom. They’ll get you on the right meds and help you get straight.” I put a hand on her shoulder and tried not to flinch when I felt her shake under the light touch. “It’s what has to happen.”

Karsen nodded and bit her lip. She looked so young, so fragile, that I hated that she had to be part of this. My mom saw where my gaze shifted and whispered so I was the only one that could hear her, “What are you going to do? The house . . . there is no money.”

She sounded genuinely distraught about the circumstances, so it took every ounce of self-control I had not to remind her that this was all a little too late. Maybe if she hadn’t been drinking and driving in the first place, maybe if she had fought harder to stay medicated, maybe if she had left my oblivious and selfish father before it all had reached this point, I would be able to buy into her regret and shame. Now it just made my stomach hurt and had disbelief and aggravation struggling for dominance under my skin.

“Don’t worry about us. I’ll figure something out.”

She finished the paperwork and handed off the thick stack to a woman dressed in scrubs who had been lurking off to the side watching our awkward family moment. The employee told us that we had five more minutes to say our good-byes and then Mom would be assigned a room. Karsen stopped trying to hide her tears and wrapped her arms around our mom’s shaking frame. I heard her tell her that she loved her and my mom echoed the sentiment. When they separated, my mom turned to me and I just shook my head. I wanted her to get help and to be able to offer my sister some kind of healthy parental figure, but I wasn’t about to pretend like we weren’t here at this place without reason.

I reached out and squeezed one of her hands and told her, “I really want you to get the help you need, Mom. Please don’t waste this opportunity. You won’t get another one.”

Race was eventually going to run out of people he could wiggle favors out of, and if my mom squandered this chance at patching up her disrupted life and mental state, there was nothing else I could feasibly do to try and set this family to rights.

Karsen leaned against my side and I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and we watched as my mom was led away. She looked back at us over her shoulder and I felt the way Karsen’s thin body quaked against mine. She was too soft for this. How on earth was I going to drag her away from a nice suburban home into a dive located in the heart of the city if she couldn’t even handle the reality of who our mother really was?