Page 24 of Broken Halo
I don’t quiet my voice. “Open the damn door.”
She crosses her arms and glares up at me. “No.”
I pull the photo book out of my back pocket, open it to a random page, and slap it on the glass in front of her face. “I’m not leaving until you open the fucking door and explain this.”
The determination melts from her face and her eyes dart from the evidence of my mother’s betrayal back to me.
Ellie’s the picture of guilt, and since I was a defense attorney for three years, I know it when I see it.
She reaches for the door. I hear the bolt click and then she’s standing in front of me in a tiny pair of shorts and a tank. All the evidence is there to prove she’s not wearing a bra. Her nipples pucker through the thin material, and when she realizes I’m looking, she crosses her arms over her chest.
She doesn’t say a word and she doesn’t invite me in.
I’m not surprised by either.
I hold up the pictures. “Explain this.”
She worries her lip before looking back to me and swallows hard. “It was a gift.”
I frown. “A gift?”
She tightens her arms around her chest and nods. “I gave it to her about a month ago. It seemed to make her happy.”
I look down at the picture in my hand of my mother holding Ellie’s baby, one when he’s much younger—proof she’d been visiting my mother for quite a while. “I can see from the damn pictures she was happy. I couldn’t believe you came to the funeral yesterday. Tonight I found this. I want to know why you were ever with my mom to begin with. When I told you I didn’t want anything to do with you, I thought you were smart enough to know that meant my mother, too.”
Her face pales and she shifts on her bare feet. “She reached out to me.”
“Bullshit,” I spit, though I don’t know why. That sounds exactly like my mother and it pisses me off even more because whatever relationship they had happened right under my damn nose, especially the last few months after I moved back to Texas.
Her voice wobbles. “It’s true. When I moved back to Dallas, she got hold of me through Jen.” She takes a deep breath and adds, “I told her you wouldn’t be happy. But if I remember correctly, she said he’ll get glad in the same pants he got mad in.”
I huff a frustrated laugh and drag a hand down my face. I can’t even be angry at that because I know it’s true—my mother said that to me a million times.
Ellie straightens her spine and looks more like the person I was more than obsessed with. “I know it’s a moot point now, but you don’t have a hand in who Faye was friends with.” She rolls her eyes. “Obviously.”
I hitch a brow. “Any other surprises you’d like to fill me in on as it comes to my mother?”
She tucks an unruly hunk of hair behind her ear, but if there are any more secrets about the woman who raised me, she refuses to say a word. “Griffin goes to bed before eight, so if you could refrain from banging my door down in the middle of the night, I’d appreciate it.”
“You didn’t answer my calls or texts. That would’ve been easier.”
Her eyes narrow. “I assumed you needed to speak to me about today and there’s no need. I plan to secure new representation tomorrow.”
I guess when I told Jen it was no skin off my back who represented her that was a lie because the next words slip out of my mouth. “You have counsel representing you and he’s got it under control.”
“Speaking in the third person is new for you, and quite honestly, you don’t wear it well.”
“I don’t care what you think about me.”
“You say that. Yet here you are, at—” she uncrosses her arms giving me another glimpse of the thin material that’s hiding nothing as she looks at her phone, “—twelve forty-five in the morning. You need to work harder at not caring.”
For once, she’s right.
And she goes on. “She might’ve been your mom, but I loved her, too. Make all the demands you want but that, Trig Barrett, you can’t take away from me. Be pissed. I’m used to it and I don’t care. Though, for the life of me, I still can’t figure out why you took a job working for my family. If either one of us has anything to explain, it’s you.”
I shrug. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“You might think that, but one man in my life creating havoc for my family is enough. I’m not sure my conscience can bear another. There’s no good reason for you to want to have anything to do with any Montgomery.”
