Chapter Seventeen

Harvard

I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t want her to see me like this.

But she was Sami. Determined, stubborn Sami. And she wasn’t about to let me get away.

“Wait!” she said again, and, despite my longer stride, she caught up enough to grab my wrist, forcing me to either stop or drag her along behind me.

I stopped.

Her grip gentled, her fingers trailing up the outside of my arm to my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

I’d closed my eyes at her touch, feeling it like little bolts of electricity through every nerve ending in my body, but opened them again at her question. Her eyes were wide, brimming with concern.

I wanted to go all alpha male and tell her everything was fine. I was fine. I’d handle this. Except that hand continued moving up from my shoulder to cup my cheek, and it undid me.

I shook my head. “First the network. Now this. I—I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know how to fix it.”

I swear I saw a wince, but then she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me against her.

Something in me broke at the contact. Cracked like an egg, and all of my gooey threatened to spill out onto the pavement. I circled my arms around her and held her tight, drawing on her strength. Before I was even consciously aware of the decision, I lowered my head and fastened my mouth to hers.

She relaxed into me, soft in all the places I was hard. Sweet and receptive and…

Mine.

Dammit, I wanted her to be mine so badly. Had from the very first time I’d seen her at the Jackson airport with her broken R2-D2 suitcase. She’d looked so lost and had aroused every protective instinct I hadn’t known I possessed.

I’d never been good with women. I could count my relationships on one hand and have fingers left over. Until recently, I’d been too skinny—a pasty white broomstick with legs—to draw a woman’s attention. Always a little too awkward to feel comfortable in my own skin.

But not with Sami. She made me feel like a god. Masculine, powerful and—when she clung to me, diving her fingers into my hair and drawing me deeper into the kiss—even sexy. For a moment, as she kissed me, I was a superhero with a ripped chest and not the dorky kid in glasses.

“Well, this is cozy.”

I jerked away from Sami at the sound of the woman’s voice. Blood turned to ice in my veins, spreading numbness throughout my whole body. That pack-a-day smoker’s rasp had haunted my nightmares ever since I was old enough to realize most mothers didn’t treat their sons like meal tickets. But this time, that voice wasn’t a recorded message on my phone. It was real and directly behind me.

She found me. Holy fucking shit. She was here.

I stared down at Sami, too stunned to turn around and look, but going by the horrified expression on her face, time hadn’t been kind to dear old mom.

“Eric,” Kimberly Dyer said impatiently. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your girlfriend?”

Sami’s gaze shifted uncertainly back to mine.

I closed my eyes, taking a second to fortify myself even as my world crumbled bit by tiny bit from underneath me. I let go of Sami and stepped around her to shield her from the snake that was my mother.

Kim still dressed like the sixteen-year-old she’d been when I was born. Her jeans hung low enough to see her jutting hipbones, and if her shirt got any tighter, it was going to rip across her chest, which had definitely been surgically enhanced since the last time I saw her. Her skin had leathered from too much time in a tanning bed, and gravity was taking its toll. I bet she hated all that sagging whenever she looked in the mirror. She still wore her hair in an early-nineties poof, all teased and hair-sprayed into a helmet.

My mother. The textbook definition of a trashy gold digger.

Embarrassment curdled the little bit of beer I’d drunk, and a sour taste coated the back of my throat. I never wanted Sami to meet her, to see what I’d come from.

It took everything I had in me to keep my voice even. “What are you doing here, Mom?”

She huffed. “You disappear on me for over two years, and you have the nerve to ask what I’m doing here? I’m worried about my son.”

“You only worry about me when you need something from me.”

“That’s not true!” she snapped, all righteous indignation, but I saw the calculating flick of her gaze to Sami. She was putting on this show of concern for her. She probably thought if she won over my “girlfriend,” I’d be more compliant. “Hon, tell him he’s being unreasonable. He’ll listen to you. Lord knows he’s never listened to me.”

“Leave her out of this,” I said before Sami could reply. I didn’t want her dragged into one of Kim’s disasters. “How did you find me?” Because the woman certainly hadn’t managed it on her own. Whatever brains she’d once possessed, she’d drunk and snorted away long ago.

“I have friends. They specialize in finding people, and like I said, I was worried.” Her lower lip poked out in a practiced pout. “You stopped sending me my checks.”

And there it was. Not motherly concern that her son had all but dropped off the face of the earth two years ago. No, the money stopped coming, and she’d panicked.

“I’m not sending you any more money.”

The facade of concern burned away in the quick flash of her temper. “You owe me!”

I laughed, but the sound was bitter even to my own ears. “I thought I did. For years, you made damn sure I thought so, but then I grew up. Wised up. I don’t owe you shit.” I didn’t dare look at Sami. What must she be thinking of me now? Probably nothing good.

“I’m your mother.”

“You never acted like one.”

“You owe me for your life!” Kim screeched, and there she was, showing her true ugly face at last. The harpy I knew and had at one time desperately wanted to love.

My teeth ground together so hard something popped in my jaw. “I know. You’ve said.”

“You. Owe. Me.”

“Fine.” I pulled out my wallet and gave her the last bill I had folded up in there. “That’s the last you’re getting from me. Now leave.”

“One hundred?” she said in disbelief. “That’s all your life is worth? You ungrateful little shit.” She spat in my face. I’d never seen anyone do that outside of movies, and for a long time I just stood there blinking after her. Yeah, that hundred dollars was so offensive, but it didn’t stop her from tucking it into her bra before she stalked off.

Sami was the first of us to move. She took a small pack of tissues out of her purse and held one out to me.

After another beat, I accepted the tissue and wiped my face, which felt molten with embarrassed heat. I couldn’t look at her. I didn’t want to see the condemnation in her eyes. Or worse, the pity.

“So,” she said after another handful of beats. “That’s your mother.”

“Unfortunately.”

She moved to stand in front of me, forcing me to meet her gaze. “Why let her treat you like that?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t explain it. What would Sami think of me if she knew I was the reason my mother was the way she was? That my very existence had stripped Kimberly Dyer of her potential?

No. I wasn’t going there. Not with Sami. It was selfish, but I wanted her to keep looking at me with that little bit of hero worship gleaming in her eyes. “We should head home.”