Alexa was right.
Her mother took the news badly. She yelled, cried, and rocked in her chair, the nastiness of her rants and name-calling more a reflection of her stress than what she truly thought of her daughter. Intellectually, Alexa knew that. It still hurt to hear her mother accuse her of being selfish and stupid and uncaring. Especially when so much of what she’d tried to do these past five years had been about making sure her mother would be taken care of forever.
“How can you do this to me, Alexa? How can you do this to me?” her mother cried. It went on and on and on, no matter what she or Lillian said.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I wish this didn’t have to happen—”
“It doesn’t. You can just make up with Grant. Make things better,” she said, ringing her hands against the stack of photo albums she’d hauled into her lap. The stacks of magazines and newspapers around her chair had regrown in height since Alexa had cleaned some out just last week. “Then I could keep this house and all my things.”
Alexa pushed down the hurt that her mother was more worried about losing her junk than why she and Grant had broken up. Not that Alexa had offered the gory details, but her mother seemingly hadn’t even thought to ask. “I can’t, Mom. And I won’t.”
“You could if you wanted to. You could if you cared about me,” she said, her voice nearly a shriek. Her sobs and sniffles filled the tense air.
Wearing a pair of khaki pants and a lavender top, Lillian sat on the end of the couch closest to Mom so she could pass her occasional tissues. “Now, Cynthia, you know your daughter’s relationship has nothing to do with how she feels about you,” she said, trying for the fiftieth time to interject a voice of reason.
“But it does, it does, if she cared about me at all . . .”
“Mom,” Alexa said, guilt threatening to swamp her.
Her mother’s hand stroked over an album with one of her brother’s baby pictures on the cover. “Tyler would never have done this to me.”
Alexa flinched, the words impacting her like she’d been struck.
“Enough!” Maverick yelled.
The room went eerily quiet.
He’d been standing just inside the living room by the door to the foyer for the whole conversation offering Alexa silent strength and the certainty that she wasn’t alone in all this craziness. He hadn’t said a thing through the entire hour-long conversation. Until now.
“Maverick Rylan, don’t you raise your voice at me,” her mother said with a sniff. But not yelling this time.
“I will raise my voice, because you’re not hearing Alexa and she deserves to be heard. If Tyler were here, he’d be raising his voice, too. So I’m saying what he would say because I know you’d respect him enough to want to hear it.” His agitation on her behalf eased some of the sting she felt, and his defense of her made her realize how long it’d been since she’d last had a champion, a defender, someone who’d always have her back. God, it felt good, and it meant everything.
“So, what is it you think he’d say?” Mom asked, dabbing at her eyes.
Maverick stepped up beside Alexa. Frustration rolled off of him, but he did a decent job of reining it in as he spoke. “He’d say Grant Slater is a coldhearted, controlling, abusive bastard. He’d say that Slater hurt your daughter and forcibly threw her out of the house. And he’d say that if those weren’t reason enough, Alexa can’t go back to Slater for the sheer fact that he’s threatening to evict you from here to try to force her to bend to his will. Now I’ve known you most of my life and I know you’ve always loved your kids, so I know there’s no way you’d want that kind of a man or that kind of a life for your daughter. And that because you’re such a great fucking mom, you’ll do whatever you can to protect Alexa, too, just like me. No matter how hard it is.”
Alexa didn’t quite know how to feel about the fact that Maverick had shared all her dirty secrets with her mother, but she had to admit it was the first time since they’d arrived that her mom had stopped yelling and crying. And was actually listening.
“Language, Maverick,” her mother said, no heat to the admonishment at all.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Her mom looked at her. “Is all that true, baby? Grant hurt you? And he’s blackmailing you, over me?”
Alexa swallowed hard, the heat of shame and embarrassment crawling up her face. She nodded and hugged herself, feeling raw and exposed. But at least it was for a good cause, because Alexa could see that Maverick had gotten through to her mother by appealing to her as a mother. Smart man.
“Oh,” Mom said on a gasp, her hand going to her mouth. “Oh, my poor girl. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was ashamed for you to know,” Alexa said, her gaze dropping to the floor. “For anyone to know.” She felt Mav’s gaze on her, but couldn’t meet it. Not just then.
“Alexa,” Lillian said, “how someone treats you is a reflection of them, not you.”
“I know that,” Alexa said, finally looking at the other woman. “But I also let him get away with an awful lot.” She shook her head, refusing to dwell on her mistakes when there was so much she could be doing to try to fix them. “I’m not doing that anymore, though.”
Lillian’s expression was full of sympathy and approval. “Cynthia, what does learning about the details of Alexa’s situation make you feel?”
“Well, I feel terrible, of course. And obviously she can’t be with someone like that,” Mom said. Regret and trepidation were clear in her voice, but it was as if Maverick’s tirade had flipped some sort of reset switch inside her mom’s mind. And it was closer to an apology than she usually got from her mom. So there was that.
“So how do you feel about giving this move a chance?” Lillian asked.
After a long moment, Mom nodded. “I guess we have to, don’t we?” She nodded again. “So . . . we will.” Alexa felt a weight lift off her shoulders, at least a little. And she had Maverick to thank for bringing her mother around.
“Good,” Lillian said. “Then how about the four of us come up with a game plan that will make this as easy on you as it can be?”
“Fine,” her mother said, a little cantankerousness sliding back into her tone. “But first I’d like to see this new place. Because I can’t plan anything without knowing what kind of place I’m going to and how much space it has.”
“That we can do,” Maverick said. His hand went to Alexa’s lower back, and his thumb slowly stroked like he knew she needed the comfort. She did.
Alexa finally looked at him, and the fierce protectiveness blazing from his dark blue eyes absolutely slayed her. Just sliced right open to the heart of her. Which wasn’t so hard since her heart clearly beat for him. “Thank you,” she mouthed.