“Just rattled. Mostly.” His dark expression made it clear there was more he wasn’t saying.
“I’m glad you were there for them,” she said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
His gaze ran over her face, soft and searching. “No, but thank you for offering.”
She nodded and heaved a deep breath. “There are some things I should do before heading over to Mom’s this afternoon.”
“Then let’s get to it,” Maverick said. “Because the faster we sever your remaining ties to Slater, the easier I’ll be able to rest.”
“And the less ways he’ll have to try to hurt or control me,” Alexa said in a low voice.
“Hey.” Maverick tipped up her chin. “Over my dead fucking body is anyone going to hurt you.” He arched a brow.
As much as Alexa appreciated the sentiment, the words unleashed an icy chill all down her spine. “Please, don’t say that, Maverick. I couldn’t . . . it would . . .” She shook her head, the horror of imagining him dying—or even getting hurt—stealing her ability to pull together her thoughts.
“I’m not going anywhere, Al. Don’t you worry.” He took her hand. “Come on.”
But as they headed out into the already hot summer morning, that chill wouldn’t go away. Because she didn’t know what she’d do if something happened to Maverick because of her.
And she hoped she never, ever had to find out.
CHAPTER 22
Alexa was right.
Her mother took the news badly. She yelled, cried, and rocked in her chair, the nastiness of her rants and name-calling more a reflection of her stress than what she truly thought of her daughter. Intellectually, Alexa knew that. It still hurt to hear her mother accuse her of being selfish and stupid and uncaring. Especially when so much of what she’d tried to do these past five years had been about making sure her mother would be taken care of forever.
“How can you do this to me, Alexa? How can you do this to me?” her mother cried. It went on and on and on, no matter what she or Lillian said.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I wish this didn’t have to happen—”
“It doesn’t. You can just make up with Grant. Make things better,” she said, ringing her hands against the stack of photo albums she’d hauled into her lap. The stacks of magazines and newspapers around her chair had regrown in height since Alexa had cleaned some out just last week. “Then I could keep this house and all my things.”
Alexa pushed down the hurt that her mother was more worried about losing her junk than why she and Grant had broken up. Not that Alexa had offered the gory details, but her mother seemingly hadn’t even thought to ask. “I can’t, Mom. And I won’t.”
“You could if you wanted to. You could if you cared about me,” she said, her voice nearly a shriek. Her sobs and sniffles filled the tense air.
Wearing a pair of khaki pants and a lavender top, Lillian sat on the end of the couch closest to Mom so she could pass her occasional tissues. “Now, Cynthia, you know your daughter’s relationship has nothing to do with how she feels about you,” she said, trying for the fiftieth time to interject a voice of reason.
“But it does, it does, if she cared about me at all . . .”
“Mom,” Alexa said, guilt threatening to swamp her.
Her mother’s hand stroked over an album with one of her brother’s baby pictures on the cover. “Tyler would never have done this to me.”
Alexa flinched, the words impacting her like she’d been struck.
“Enough!” Maverick yelled.
The room went eerily quiet.
He’d been standing just inside the living room by the door to the foyer for the whole conversation offering Alexa silent strength and the certainty that she wasn’t alone in all this craziness. He hadn’t said a thing through the entire hour-long conversation. Until now.
“Maverick Rylan, don’t you raise your voice at me,” her mother said with a sniff. But not yelling this time.
“I will raise my voice, because you’re not hearing Alexa and she deserves to be heard. If Tyler were here, he’d be raising his voice, too. So I’m saying what he would say because I know you’d respect him enough to want to hear it.” His agitation on her behalf eased some of the sting she felt, and his defense of her made her realize how long it’d been since she’d last had a champion, a defender, someone who’d always have her back. God, it felt good, and it meant everything.
“So, what is it you think he’d say?” Mom asked, dabbing at her eyes.
Maverick stepped up beside Alexa. Frustration rolled off of him, but he did a decent job of reining it in as he spoke. “He’d say Grant Slater is a coldhearted, controlling, abusive bastard. He’d say that Slater hurt your daughter and forcibly threw her out of the house. And he’d say that if those weren’t reason enough, Alexa can’t go back to Slater for the sheer fact that he’s threatening to evict you from here to try to force her to bend to his will. Now I’ve known you most of my life and I know you’ve always loved your kids, so I know there’s no way you’d want that kind of a man or that kind of a life for your daughter. And that because you’re such a great fucking mom, you’ll do whatever you can to protect Alexa, too, just like me. No matter how hard it is.”