“Who is it?”
“My mother,” I simply said, smiling. Her picture was on there, drawn with horns. Darius leaned over my feet, looking at the table and wincing. Yeah, I was artistic like that. He turned back to me and I felt his gaze on me for a solid minute before I looked up, raising an eyebrow in question.
“Why do you dislike your mother?”
Oh why did I? This could be the product of a brilliant 5000-word essay. I was unsure why they didn’t let me write about this at school, definite A plus essay.
“I don’t dislike her,” I said, flipping the page. Only a few more left to go. I winced when I saw that I reached the fashion article and it was anything but fashion. My eyes widened, people actually wore that?
“I hate her,” I corrected.
“Why?” Darius asked again, his finger playing with the edge of my leggings. I don’t even think he knew what he was doing, and his eyes were busy scanning across the front of the magazine, probably the new headline, before they locked with mine.
“She never wanted children.” I shrugged, as if this topic was of no importance. That was the understatement of the year. She loathed children, and she loathed me.
Darius cleared his throat, shifting in his seat. “She didn’t want kids?”
“Nup,” I said, popping the ‘p’. “My dad did, and I guess he won, saying something about someone to lead on the family business.” I added a dry laugh. Oh boy, did they get it wrong. I was the worst person to lead on the family business. Hell, if only I got a dollar for every time I did something wrong in my mum’s eyes.
“Since she had to have a child,” I continued. If I was going to tell him, I might as well tell him all of it, not leave him hanging on half fed information, “she wanted a boy.”
“But don’t mothers usually want a daughter?”
“Not mine,” I said sighing. She hated daughters. They were much harder work. According to her I was a nightmare child. According to my dad I was the best thing that ever happened to him. How could my parents be together when they were total opposites, who knew?
And why did my dad act like a kitten in front of her? Well, probably because she would claw his eyes out.
“She made my childhood hell,” I said, flicking to the last page of the magazine behind the cover. There was nothing interesting there to stare at, but it kept my emotions in tact thinking about my childhood, and what a childhood it was. And it kept me from staring into Darius’s intense gaze.
“I mean I had no friends, she would scare them away.” I added in a shrug to make it seem like it was no big deal, but it was. “They were too scared of her.” I was running out of pages to flip. Hell, I was on my last page and I needed something for my fingers to do.
“Then Rose came along.” And this brought a smile to my face, because Rose, I loved her. “She was the only one who wasn’t too scared of my parents, she stuck around. Of course, mum didn’t like this, tried sending me to boarding school, saying Rose was a bad influence on me, and hell yes she sort of was.” I remembered all of the parties she made me go to. Oh lord, I was a partier.
“But of course that’s when dad drew the line. He didn’t want me across the world in England without parents who could keep eyes on their child, so she let him but then made me go to a girls school. That wasn’t too bad since Rose transferred with me. There was an exam to do and thankfully we both got in.” It was a smart school, but I was sure my brains and IQ level dropped after I got into that school.
Hell, I became lazy, that school cared more about their grades than the students, and that was when I lost all motivation.
“And then I got into Med School, was respectful. Mother hated it, she wanted me to quit, she said it wasn’t a girl’s profession.” I rolled my eyes. I was quit passionate about helping people.
“Why did you quit?” asked Darius, speaking up since I started talking. My eyes searched for his.
I shrugged. “I wasn’t cut out for it.” She was right, not about the fact it was not a women’s profession. Hell it was, but you did need to be a certain person.
“It scared me. I had the power over someone else’s life. I didn’t like that, not to mention I had to deal with bones,” I said. “And touch people, ew.” Darius let out a chuckle, “Not my thing, but then I wasted so many years with that I didn’t want to go back to Uni and do another course, so I decided I would take a gap year. You know, that’s what everyone did before Uni. I didn’t so I was going to catch up.” I waved an arm and let one end of my magazine drop.
“But?” He prompted me on.
“You know.”
He shook his head. “Know what?”
I bit my lip. “Well, I really can’t go on a gap year and travel when I was meant to be getting married…to you.”
“Oh,” he said, realising what I meant.