Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

48. Milo

FORTY-EIGHT

MILO

I stilled when there was a light tapping at the door, right before it creaked open and my mother called, “Knock, knock.”

From where I was loading the dishwasher, I glanced back to find her peeking inside.

Morning light flooded in around her, and she sent me a tender, wary smile.

Affection throbbed within the void.

“Hey, Mom,” I told her, turning back to place the last cup inside.

Quirking a brow, she stepped in and shut the door behind her. “Dishes again, I see.”

“Don’t you know they’re never done?” I made a vain attempt at keeping it light, to keep the misery out of my voice, but I was pretty sure I failed with the way her face pinched in worry.

She slowly approached, her black hair swishing around her shoulders as she angled her head to study me from across the room. “How are you doing?”

A grunt got free. “Same as yesterday.”

There hadn’t been a day that’d passed since everything went down that she hadn’t come to check on me.

I appreciated it, but I wasn’t sure what she thought was going to change.

I couldn’t stop myself from cringing when she took a seat at the spot I’d come to think of as Tessa’s. Couldn’t erase that girl from my mind. Couldn’t stop wondering how she was. If she was okay.

Knowing full well I was the one who was responsible if she wasn’t.

“Coffee?” I pulled the carafe from the stand and waved it at my mom.

“Sure.”

I made her a cup, set it in front of her, and tried to ignore the way everything ached.

She took a sip, then set the cup on the counter and exhaled heavily as she sat back in the stool, her expression tightening in emphasis. “It’s been two weeks, Milo.”

An incredulous huff left me.

Did she think I wasn’t counting?

That every fucking day didn’t drag by like razors sliding slow across my skin?

Facing away from her, I pressed my hands to the counter, breathing around the pain. “Time doesn’t change anything, Mom.”

“Well, I was hoping in that amount of time, my stubborn son might come to his senses and go after the person he’s supposed to spend his life with.”

Guilt constricted because that person should have been Autumn.

She should have been the one I was grieving.

Missing.

How the fuck could I even look in the mirror when that person had become Tessa?

“It wasn’t even real, Mom.” I let it drop like a bomb because I couldn’t take this anymore. Her pushing me in a direction I never should have gone in the first place.

Confusion pulsed through the thickened air, and I could physically feel the weight of my mother’s frown from behind me. “What wasn’t real?”

I forced myself to look at her. “Me and Tessa. The whole thing was a sham. Faked.”

Disbelief streaked through her expression. “What in the world are you talking about?”

I swallowed around the shards that raked my throat, and I confessed the bullshit that Tessa got sucked into. What had dragged her into the depravity that was my life.

“She offered to pretend to be my fiancée to help me get the kids back. It was all a show for the judge.”

Horror smacked through Mom’s features, her eyes, the same color as mine, desperate to see inside of me. “What? What are you saying?”

My nod was tight, the words thicker because the second I tossed them out I knew it was a bald-faced lie. “We were just two friends trying to help each other out. We were never real, so you can drop it.”

It was the way we should have kept it.

But I was the fool who’d gone after something I knew full well I couldn’t have.

Knew I didn’t deserve.

“You lied to me about the whole thing?” The question trembled from my mother in a bough of disbelief. Aghast and pained. “The engagement? The party I threw for you? Your friends and family?”

Shame blew out on a heavy sigh. “We thought it was best to keep as few people in the know as possible.”

“I don’t believe you.” Her head shook, and I forced myself to keep going, driving the nail as deep as it would go because I couldn’t stand for my mother to keep watching me with the hope she kept subdued at the back of her gaze.

“And you know what that agreement did? It almost cost Tessa her life. I got her involved in my mess, and she almost paid the greatest price for it.”

Disgust lined my words.

“She got hurt because of me. Her brother is now dead because of me. Because she was exposed to who I am. Because I brought that trouble to her door. Had she never come here, she would have been just fine. So, I think it’s best if I let her live out her life, don’t you?” My tone went haggard and harsh, barely able to get my lungs to cooperate.

I felt like I was suffocating.

Drowning.

Lost in this darkness I would never find my way out of.

I was clinging to the edge of the counter and trying to remain standing when I felt my mom slip from the stool and onto her feet.

Slowly, she approached me, her energy warm and fierce.

She angled around, getting in my face, forcing me to meet her gaze. “Do I think it’s best for you to let her go? No, Milo, I don’t. Because maybe you two started out under some guise of a fake relationship, which I’m really disappointed in, but I know here…” She tapped her chest. “I know in here that it was real. There is no faking what you two shared.”

She inhaled a rattled breath. “The love you shared? The way she looked at you and you looked at her? It was real, Milo. I know it.”

She reached out and brushed her fingertips to the frantic pounding of my heart. “Just like you know it here.”

I choked over the implication.

The howl of the demons in my ear refuting everything my mother had said.

Because men like me didn’t deserve love. I was selfish for ever going after it.

I shifted so I could fully meet my mother’s eye.

“I failed Autumn, Mom. I failed her in the absolute worst way, and I almost did the same to Tessa. I knew this whole thing was doomed from the beginning, and I should never have hoped that it could become something more.”

Mom’s brow pinched. “But did it? Did it become something more?”

“It became everything.” The truth wheezed out of me.

Unstoppable.

She nodded slowly and shifted so she was leaned back against the counter facing me. “Then, what’s your plan?”

I returned my attention to the countertop, my head slowly shaking. “I start my business and prove I can be worthy of raising my kids. I fight for them with all I have, then I live for what I’ve been given.”

Contemplation had her biting her bottom lip before her gaze narrowed as she started to speak, her voice drawn low. “Do you think it doesn’t haunt me, Milo? What you went through as a child?”

“Mom—” Didn’t think I could handle the direction she was going.

She put out a hand to stop me.

“Do you think I didn’t blame myself?” Pain quivered at the edge of her mouth. “Yes, it was your father who was ultimately to blame. The one who was a monster. The one who inflicted the pain. But I also made a ton of horrible choices along the way. Choices I wish I could go back and change. Choices I will regret for the rest of my life.”

Agony skewered through the air.

“Mom…it wasn’t your fault.”

“Please let me finish because you need to hear this, Milo, and you need to listen .”

Throat closing off, I gave her a tight nod.

“Could you imagine, Milo, if I would have turned my back on you when you were a teenager? If I would have decided for you that I had made choices that had hurt you and you were better off without me?”

“No.” The word scored through the air.

My hands curled into fists.

No.

Her voice dimmed in sadness, with prudence, with care. “Or maybe I could let those choices ruin my life now. Maybe I could run away and hide and think you’re better off without me because you have to know the shame that I feel for the mistakes I have made will always be there. Or I can choose to live. Choose to move forward and learn from my mistakes. Choose to cherish all that I’ve been given.”

“Tessa was never really one of those things.”

“Wasn’t she?” She angled closer in my direction. “And you can either let your mistakes dictate your life now and continue to make them, Milo, live in regret and shame, or you can let what you’ve learned lead you to where you’re supposed to be.”

She pushed from the counter, though she paused and touched my arm, her words issued into the room. “It’s your choice, and I pray that you make the right one.”