Hamilton looked at my phone, then back at me. “It’s possible. But you’re an adult, and they all know where you are. Jack called me last night.”
Jack had called? Shit. Jack had been honest about the lengths he’d go to when it came to protecting his family’s image. He’d looked into my mother’s background and was very likely regretting welcoming her into the family now. “What did he say?”
“I don’t know. I never answer his calls.” Hamilton turned off the stovetop and put my omelet on a paper plate and brought it over to me with a cup of coffee.
“And why is that, exactly?”
“Sometimes people don’t deserve forgiveness, Vera,” Hamilton replied before changing the subject. “What are you going to say when you finally talk to your mother?” Hamilton asked while handing me a fork and sitting down beside me. “We can practice. Want me to call you a crazy unclefucker to really set the scene?”
Rolling my eyes, I replied with a snappy, “No.” In a way, I was glad that Hamilton made this somewhat of a joke. Laughing about the entire situation was better than obsessing over it. “I’m not sure what I’m going to say to her. I suppose I’ll ask why she hired Jared and how much of his friendship and attention was her instruction and how much was him. I never wanted to date Jared, but it makes me feel cheap. He didn’t actually like me. I was just a means to an end. Our whole friendship was fake. He was clingy and annoying, but he was my first friend here. I just don’t like feeling so used.”
Hamilton looked at my plate, nodding. “That makes sense. I’m not defending him, but what if he genuinely developed feelings for you? Would it make a difference?”
“No. Our entire friendship was a lie,” I immediately replied before stabbing my omelet with my fork. “I’m just glad we didn’t do anything. I don’t think I’d be able to stomach it if I fucked him. He probably didn’t give two shits about me. He just wanted the job. I’m so fucking stupid.”
“You aren’t stupid, Vera. I think he’s a major asshole, and I’d like to kick him off the edge of a cliff, but I can recognize when a man wants someone. He looked at you like you were a snack. A delicious, mouth-watering snack. I bet he took the job thinking it would just be an easy path to his dream job. He probably wasn’t planning to want you—let alone care about you. And for the record, this is really fucking annoying for me to say because the idea of anyone wanting what’s mine pisses me the fuck right off.”
I smiled to myself, then shook my head. “This isn’t the first time my mother has interfered like this, you know…”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force the memory down. “What do you mean?” Hamilton asked, his voice holding a dangerous edge to it.
“The family she worked as a housekeeper for? The dad made me uncomfortable. He would look at me…”
Hamilton reached out and grabbed my leg. “What happened?”
“She encouraged it. She would send me over to pick up things randomly or ask me to deliver messages to him when he was alone in his office. I told her that he was leering at my ass one day, but she shrugged. It took me a while to realize what she was doing. He was married and more than twice my age. My mother wanted him to flirt with me—to pressure me. She told me to let it happen. I think she saw it as an opportunity. I was seventeen…”
“That’s really fucked up, Vera.”
“He never did anything, though,” I quickly added. “I know Jared isn’t the same, but it feels opportunistic. He comes from a good family. I’m sure she was all too happy to force us to spend time together.” Hamilton went quiet for a long moment, and I quietly ate my food while thinking over what happened. “She always wanted this, you know. Joseph is the perfect kind of man for my mother. I just don’t know if she’ll ever let me live my own life. She feels like I owe her, as if my existence is a debt I’ll never be able to repay.”
“You don’t owe her a damn thing, Petal,” Hamilton growled. “You don’t owe her shit. Okay? Fuck. I can’t believe she did that to you.”
“She didn’t do anything really; she just encouraged his attention. He was harmless.” Until he wasn’t. There was one night where he grabbed my ass and whispered dirty words into my ear, calling me a tease. If his wife hadn’t shown up and knocked on the door, I don’t want to know what would have happened. Calling the entire experience harmless was probably not a healthy way to look at it, but I’d always struggled with seeing the more sinister parts of my mother’s motivations.
“She was trying to pimp her fucking daughter out. Don’t you see what’s wrong with that? Did he touch you? What was his name?”
I swallowed my bite of food before leaning over the table to kiss him on the cheek. “He never touched me,” I lied. “He just looked. He just…lingered.” Leered. Licked his lips. Dropped things on the floor and asked me to pick them up.
“And your mother has the fucking audacity to get angry about me?” Hamilton huffed. “She doesn’t care about your wellbeing; she cares about money and her image. She’s a nasty opportunist, Vera. Can’t you see it?”
I always thought it was strange that Mom was willing to sacrifice me, when she was a victim herself. I often wondered if she did it because she didn’t know any better or because her morals and rigid views about sex and roses and mistakes had a gray area when it benefitted her.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I snapped before getting up and putting my fork in the sink. My trembling fingers
