Grey

Chapter Fifteen

 My mom walked into my room the next day with her head held high and she seemed as if she had her life together for the first time. Ivy had called me that night. I'd left everything out about the 'fight' with Grey because bringing it up only made me burst into tears as I thought about how we could have died.

“Violet,” she said in a calm manor. Not as a question, but as if she were answering one. I tied my dirty hair up into a bun. I was hoping the nurses would give me a shower soon. My eyes bored into the magazine I was reading. Okay, I wasn't really reading it. The words stared back at me as they blurred together.

She licked her lips and crossed her arms as she paced the room. I wondered where my father was and why he was so silent over the past few days. “I'm here to talk about...the accident.”

“Just say his name,” I snapped, closing the magazine with more force than I should have. The pages ripped and I threw it to the end of the bed.

My mom swiped her fading blonde hair from her face. “Do you want to tell me why you were in the car with him?” she asked.

I crossed my arms. “Do you want the truth? Or should I just bullshit it all so I can finally stop hurting your feelings?”

That didn't go so well. “Violet Elizabeth! I'm sick of this! I'm sick of it!”

“I've been seeing him for almost two years! There! Are you happy? Are you fucking happy?!” I screamed, balling my fists into the hospital sheets.

She looked like a deer in the headlights when the words escaped my mouth and hung in the air like gunshots during war. “You've been what?” her words were broken.

I nodded. “Yes, you heard me right. I've been seeing him. He's been in our house. He's been in my bed! It was his child that I miscarried!” It all came off my chest in swift sentences.

A hand clasped to her mouth. Her eyes widened even more as tears filled them. “You've been...he's been...you were...oh my,” she whispered, turning around.

With my head bowed I sighed and closed my eyes. “You've got to stop living your life like this.”

I heard her turn around. “Living like what?”

I lifted my head. “You're living like a zombie. Mom, it's been two years. And I know it hurts. It hurts me everyday, too. But you've got to stop. I'm still here, I still exist, you know. Since Rowan's death you've just stopped being a mother. Yeah, you cook, you clean. But you don't love. Grey...he...provided love for me, that was something you could never do,” I explained.

I expected her to take time and think about what I had just said. I wanted her to tell me I was right and then walk over and hug me and sob into my shoulder as she apologized for not being there. Instead she spit out, “That boy doesn't love you.”

Just as fast I replied, “You wouldn't know. You can't even say his name.”

She threw her hands up in defeat. “Whatever, Violet. I never want you to see that boy again. Do you understand me?”

Anger overtook every emotion I had felt in the past few minutes. “I'm eighteen in a month. You can't keep me from him.”

She didn't bother to fight with me as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder. “I'm serious, Violet. I'm done. You see that boy again and I'll press charges.”

I made a confused face with my eyebrows knit together with my nose scrunched up and my eyes squinted. “Charges?”

“He's almost twenty. You're seventeen. I can press statutory rape.”