My Father's Boss

Chapter 19 Different

Jasmine watched her mother very closely. She was different now. Her smile lines were deeper, there were freckle she didn't recognize, her eyebrows thinner. Her eyes brighter than before. She was thinner now, taller.

What time could do to someone that was so close to you once.

"Mom?" Jasmine asked again, clutching the glass frame.

At first, Nevara's eyes were wide with disbelief. What was Jasmine doing there? She hadn't seen her in years. Not since that fateful night that she decided to leave everything behind to go after Caine. She left absolutely everything. Her name, her husband, her little girl, her home, everything that made her who she was, she abandoned to go after someone who she truly believe she loved. Who she truly does love.

She raised a boy who was not her own, and then a child that she conceived out of true love, all because of love. Sadly in the process, she had to leave behind a big eyed little girl, who loved her more than this life itself. But she made a choice, and in exchange she lived a life that she never believe he deserved. A lavish life.

But Nevara never would have left, if she weren't sure she would be well taken care of. Renaldo was a good man...a great man, who would do anything to care for Jasmine. Leaving wasn't hard. Trying to move on without Jasmine was.

"What do you mean, mom?" Killian asked, looking at the woman who raised him.

Jasmine looked towards her boyfriend. For the first time since she had met him, she realized exactly where she knew him from.

She remembered a young, big blue eyed, curly haired boy, waiting behind a glass door, watching and waiting for her and her mother. Her mother holding onto her hand tightly, as she ran up lavish stone stairs. A man...the same man from the picture, embracing her mother and kissing her cheek.

The little boy running out and taking hold of Jasmine's hand, guiding her to a green backyard. Flowers, decorating the perimeter of their home. The same ice blue eyes, that now only held confusion, bearing down at her with curiosity. A sweet smile that was never absent from the young boys face, now vacant on the grown man's face in front of her.

"Mom?" Cage asked, his eyes never leaving Jasmine who felt as if she would be sick at any moment

Nevara never said anything. She had imagined this moment many times before. What she would say to the now grown woman, she had abandoned for a son that wasn't her's and a man.

She had imagined it all, coming up with a thousand different scenarios of how this moment could go. What she would do, how she would behave. But now it was here, and there was nothing. She had nothing she could say that would make any of this okay. Her explanations, which she knew were only excuses, now sounded stupid, cowardice, and selfish.

What could she do to make this better?

Aspin all the while made her way towards her best friend. She had recognized the woman, the moment she unlocked the front door.

At first, she heard only the click of her heels, the smell of her expensive perfume engulfed the room. Nevara too instantly recognize the blond girl. Her eyes were the same. But now they held something harsher for her. Something she wasn't used to seeing from the young blonde, that had been like her daughter, since the death of her mother.

When their eyes connected, they had whispered one another's name, not sure if the boys had heard them.

Nevara had tried to come up with an explanation, but her words only twisted together. If she had messed up so badly, trying to come up with any explanation for Aspin, she didn't even want to try now that she had her daughter in front of her. She had so many questions. But none that couldn't be answered later.