Runaway Heart (A Game of Hearts #2) (28 page)

His eyes began to cross.

I paused. Laughed at myself.

“Obviously you can tell. Anyway, I think she’s here. Her name is Danielle Adamson. Would it be okay if I spoke with her? She contacted my best friend’s father to let—”

“Dany is Danielle,” he said, his smile returning color to his face.

It took me a second to understand what he meant. Okay… maybe that was a total lie.

“Huh?”

His features changed, melting like snow under the heat of the sun. “Come in out of the cold, lass, and I’ll explain it all to ye.” He grabbed my bags for me and ushered me into the house.

It was weird, being back in Della’s house without Ed and for total different reasons.

“Dany and I go way back,” Elliot said as he stepped around me and toddled down the hall with my bags in hand.

“You do?” I asked, feeling like the plane had taken me to another planet instead of England.

“Yes. In fact, she’s my cousin.”

My feet hit the brakes.

“Cousin?” I repeated, as if it were an entirely new word he just made up.

He turned. Smiled warmly. “That’d be the proper term for it, yeah.”

“Right,” I said as he turned back around and continued forward, taking me to a mother I realized I knew absolutely nothing about.

What kind of daughter was I?

“I didn’t know she had family in England,” I meekly said. “In fact,” I continued, feeling my face crinkle as I looked to the side, “the only thing I
do
know about her is she married a complete asshole and lived the majority of those years in fear of him because he considered her his personal punching bag.”

I saw him tense. Watched the tendons in his neck pop out a little as he cranked his head to each side. He really was her cousin. Really did love her the way he said he did.

And she only just reached out to him?

He slowly turned around. “Your mother wasn’t always like that.”

And the award for world’s biggest jerk goes to… Hannah Adamson!
I thought, watching his eyes crease at the corners.

“She was the toughest girl I knew. She used to jump fences with me and race me to the barn on her neighbor’s property. She beat me climbing up the ladder to the loft where we would sit and hang our feet over the edge, listening to the horses in the stable and eating the sweets her father gave her.

“And when she left, I felt like a piece of my childhood left with her. I don’t know what happened to her after that. What I do know, is that same little girl is still somewhere inside her. She just needs to find her again, is all. And she’s going to need your love and support to do that.”

There was a sharpness to his tone, but it was out of his evident love for my mother. A protective nature I could only respect.

“I can do that,” I said, my voice as soft as silk.

“Good.” He gave me a soft smile before turning back around. “She’s just here, in the library.”

Filmy, white dots danced in my vision as my stomach went a little queasy. It was really happening. I was really about to see her again for the first time in years.

For the first time as herself and not as my father’s shadow.

“Here we are,” Elliot said as we rounded the corner to the library.

Everything I planned to say to her decided to desert me when my eyes found her form across the room. Her back was to us, her hand moving like a conductor against a partially painted canvas.

I didn’t know she painted.

“Dany,” Elliot said, clearing his throat.

Her hand paused, and then she turned, her apron covered in a cluster of chaotic colors.

I swallowed and made myself speak. “Hi, Mom.” I said it as if I only just saw her yesterday. My heart beat like a hummingbird’s wings against my ribcage. My brain felt like it had rolled through a sticky field of emotions, picking them all up along the way, making it hard to distinguish exactly what I was feeling.

“Hannah!” The paintbrush dropped from her hand, and then she was in front of me, her arms wrapped around me so tight I could barely breathe. I dropped my bag and held onto her just as tight, feeling the hot springs in my eyes spilling down my cheeks.

“You found me.” She spoke against my hair, her voice thick with relief.

“You left him,” I said back, my throat raw with regret.

She pulled back. Smoothed her hands down my hair as her head tilted to the side. Her cheeks glistened with tears as her eyes scanned over my features, as if making a mental checklist to be sure I was still the same girl who left home years ago.

But what she found was that I wasn’t.

“You’re different,” she said, rubbing her hand against my cheek.

I leaned into it.

“So are you.” I noted her skin was free of bruises and plumper than when I left her. “You look…”

“Stronger?”

I forced myself to take a deep breath. “Yes,” I said. “Stronger.”

“I came to a few of your bouts, you know,” she admitted, really looking at me.

I felt my mouth hang open.

“I did.” A full smile bloomed on her face. “I hid in the back, and I was amazed. You were so… so alive. And when you left to come here for the World Cup, I watched you online. Saw you come into your own as a woman, and it was then I realized how much I let you down.”

“Mother,” I started to say, wanting to stop her, but she held her hand up to quiet my protest.

“I did, Hannah, and there isn’t anything you can say to change it. I didn’t… I didn’t hug you enough. I didn’t tell you all the ways you are beautiful. I didn’t teach you what courage meant, and I didn’t guide you into womanhood.

“I know there is nothing I can say to erase what’s happened. To bring back those years and do them over… but I can try, now, if you’ll let me.”

I was mute… my brain feeling like I was chasing a speeding train of information I couldn’t keep up with. Feeling like I was staring at an entirely different human sewn into my mother’s delicate skin.

I knew she got away from him, but I wasn’t prepared for the feelings that came with seeing my mother in a different light. For seeing her as a human being, and not as the sad woman who took a beating nearly every day.

“Hannah?” she treaded carefully, her eyes trying to search mine.

I shook the fuzz from my head. “Sorry. I have a million questions. This is all just so… so different. It’s a lot to take in.”

“Aren’t you happy?” she asked, sounding worried.

I rushed to say, “Yes. I’m very happy you left him. I just…” I stopped. Chewed on my lower lip. “I just want to know why?”

“Why what, honey?”

“Why you stayed for so long?”

I could see the memories flashing before her eyes like a movie reel as her face morphed from sadness, to pain, and then to regret. I wanted to retract my words. Bury them under a pile of rocks where they couldn’t get free, but I knew better.

I wanted to know more.

“There isn’t one reason that will explain it, Hannah,” she said, her voice slightly quivering. “He was my husband. Your father. Our provider.” She inhaled sharply, like she was trying to hold back the tears. “I didn’t have any special talents, at least none that would pay the bills for us.”

I glanced over her shoulder at the painting she’d been working on—a field of lavender that looked so realistic I felt I could reach out and touch it. Maybe even smell it.

“You paint,” I stated, taking her hand in mine.

“That isn’t enough. Not when you have a child that needs tending to. And not when you don’t believe in yourself to begin with. I won’t blame your father for this… not for the remarks he made about my talent, or about the anger he had when he caught me painting from time to time, because it wasn’t his fault I didn’t do anything more with it. It was mine.

“My own fear of being rejected fed into the easy excuses your father gave me by telling me I wasn’t good enough. I absorbed them like a sponge and used them to repress myself, because I thought hiding was easier than being told by an opinion that mattered that I wasn’t good enough.

“Then you went to college and found roller derby. And when you applied yourself and got picked up to be on the international team, I started looking at myself in the mirror. Really looking… long and hard.

“I was so damn proud of you, Hannah. You had persevered despite having two parents who weren’t anything close to role models. You paved your own way, and the shame I felt in myself for realizing I had taken the easy way out was enough to move my feet. To make my hands start grabbing clothes and shoving them into a suitcase, until I was at the door, telling your father I had enough.

“He didn’t believe me, of course, but I didn’t look back. I knew he wouldn’t think I meant it, so I left him a note to find telling him I was going home. He’d never chase me here.”

“I know,” I said, thinking of his face as my stomach went sour.

“How do you…?” She stopped. Gasped. “You saw him? Oh my, Hannah! Did he hurt you? Are you okay? What happ—?”

“Mom, I’m fine!” I said, trying to calm her down as I clasped her hand in mine.

She stilled, waiting for me to explain.

“I went to see you. To close a really long and hard chapter in my life before I could move forward. I hadn’t expected to see him, but I’m glad I did. It proved something to me, something I’d cowered from for so long.”

I inhaled courage and looked directly at her.

“I’m no longer afraid of him. He doesn’t hold any more power over me. I realized when I left home that I let that part of me rule my decisions. And when I saw him again… saw what he’d become and what I became because of him, it was like a light switch flipped on inside of me. It wasn’t us. It was him.
He
was broken. We were just his collateral damage.”

Her eyes bubbled with emotion. “I’m so sorry, Hannah. I wish… I wish I could have given you a different life. A better one.”

I pulled her into a hug. “It’s okay, Mom. I don’t blame you anymore. I forgive you.”

Mom pulled back with a small gasp, her hand coming up to brush away tears I hadn’t felt falling. “I love you, Hannah. My beautifully brave, strong, intelligent girl.”

My breath hitched. “I love you too, Mom.”

“Hello, Hannah,” Della said from the doorway, making her entry.

We both let go of each other as she sat across from us, tucking her hands in her lap.

“You’ve returned,” she said, looking at me.

“Had to. My heart is here.” I took in a deep breath to calm myself.

“And what will you do? After you find him, that is?” she asked, her narrowed eyes scanning my face.

I felt like a heat lamp was held above my face. “I honestly haven’t thought that far ahead,” I said with a small laugh. Painfully aware of how ridiculously unprepared I sounded. “I-I don’t usually have issues finding work though. I guess I’ll start with that… finding a job, I mean.”

Della pulled in a sharp inhale of air, and then said, “What if I said I’d like to offer you a position here?”

My words tripped over themselves. “Like a job-job?”

She laughed. “Yes. If you’d like, that is. I think as a victim yourself, you’d be a perfect fit. I need someone to help the girls who leave this place adjust in the real world. With the shelter continuously gaining exposure, it’s hard for me to leave and pay visits to the girls the way our foundation does when they set out on their own. It would be nice to have the extra help.”

It took me a second to wrap my mind around what she offered me. To realize it was something I wanted to do all along.

Help people.

The medical route seemed too arduous for me, and it was why I bounced from major to major, trying to find something that sparked my interest.

But this… this I could do.

“Absolutely,” I said on a laugh. “Thank you, Della!”

“You’re quite welcome. I told you before you’d have a place here, and I meant it. You have your mother’s spirit. She’s a fighter.”

I looked to my mother, unable to process the pride and relief I felt that she had gotten away. That her life was
hers
.

“Yes, she is,” I said, understanding her on a deeper level. Though she stayed, she fought to get where she was. Struggled through years, only to come out on top.

“How long will you be here?” I asked her.

“As long as it takes to get back on my feet and to find work,” she said. “There’s so much I need to tell you, Hannah. About your family and your heritage.”

“And you will have all the time in the world now that you two are reunited. You both can stay here until you get settled and find a place to live,” Della said with a wide smile. “This is what we love seeing the most here. Families mending.”

We all shared a smile.

“Ed will be so happy you returned.”

My heart stopped. My feet twitched. “How… how is he?”

“I believe it’s my turn to be a little confused. How is it the two of you already know one another?” Mom asked, looking between Della and me.