Ice Blue [ Book One ]

8 // Mothers

I trusted you, you were the first
Then you lied and it gets worse
You broke me down
Now just look around
Who's all alone?
Who's all alone now?

• • •

That night, in the shower, I broke down. I don't know what caused it, I don't know where it came from, but one second I was applying shampoo to my hair and the next I was crying on the floor, curled up in a ball.

My unborn child flashed to memory, how they didn't even get a chance.

"It's all your fault!" he snarled at me, wrapping his fingers around my throat. "What kind of mother can't protect her own child?"

I tried! I wanted to scream back, but he had ordered me not to speak. I was left to plead in my own head, to beg him to believe me. I tried to keep them safe, I did! I didn't want to shift! I was only following your orders.

"You should be ashamed of yourself, Rivera. The fact that you lost our child is enough for me to kill you," he whispered, pulling me close. I struggled to breath, clawing at his hands with as much strength as I could muster. My Feline was silent, too ashamed of herself to help me. "But luckily for you, I can't." He dropped me.

I struggled to catch my breath. "I want you out of this house," he ordered.

And my world was forever broken.

When I came back to reality, his office was gone. Replaced it was the shower, my clothes were gone, and bullets of hot water turned cold hit my back like a machine gun shooting rounds into a desolate field and hitting nothing but dead trees.

How long had that memory kept me within my own head? I wondered as I placed my hands on the tiled wall for support to drag myself up to my feet. Everything hurt, my chest throbbed with a dull ache, and my eyes burned from the crying I had mistaken to be water from the shower-head.

I washed my body off, not bothering to add conditioner to my hair before stepping out. I kept my head hung as I reached for a towel, wrapping it around myself and reaching for the doorknob.

Before I could open it, it wriggled just before I touched it. Startled, I stepped back, almost slipping on the slightly damp floor. The door pushed open and Princeton's mother stood before me, a mug of tangy-smelling liquid in her hands.

"Oh, my poor dear," she murmured, looking me over as if she could see from just how I stood my emotions. She stepped in, setting the mug on the counter by the sink and wrapping her arms around me.

I was too shocked from the intrusion to think weirdly of the fact that she knew my state, and that she was hugging me while I was wet and pretty much naked.

I kept one hand gripping the towel in my hand, my only coverage, and used my other one to hesitantly wrap around her. Her warmth soothed me, soothed the ache in my chest. Is this what it felt like to have anything close to a mother? To feel warm and protected the second she touches you, to feel like you want to break down to her and cry to her?

She pulled away, her arms leaving me but her eyes looking my face over. I gripped the towel, my hand shaking so much I feared I might accidentally let it go. "H—how did you..."

"To lose a child is something no mother should have to experience." The older woman gave me a sad look through her clear eyes, taking my hand in hers. "I lost one as you did."

"How ..." I started, wanting to ask so many questions but not knowing where to start.

"Princeton told me," she murmured, her eyes drifting to mine again. "Rivera, my dear, I am so incredibly sorry. Someone so young should never have to go through a loss as bad as yours. I came to see how you were holding up ... and I just knew you weren't."