The Christmas He Loved Her (Bad Boys of Crystal Lake 2)

Her mother’s hand shook a little as she touched one of the sparkly stars nestled among the fragrant branches. She smoothed her gray skirt and turned to face Raine, that polite, calm expression Raine was so used to firmly in place.

Gloria clasped her hands in front of her as if she didn’t quite know what to do with them and exhaled a long, deep breath.

“I want to fix us.”

“Excuse me?”

“I think it’s time that we tried.” She moistened her lips and touched her hair, obviously nervous. “I think it’s time that we really tried to… Uh, this is harder than I thought it would be.”

Her eyes glistened. With tears.

Disbelief didn’t come close to describing what Raine felt. Her life was falling apart. No, it had been free-falling into a pile of shit for the last few years, and her mother wanted to be buddies?

“Oh my God, your timing is as perfect as ever.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.”

Raine closed her eyes and took a moment to collect her thoughts. When she opened them, she couldn’t help the thin, high-pitched laugh that escaped her lips. It sounded crazy, even to her own ears, and she wasn’t surprised to see her mother wince.

“You want to fix us,” she repeated, sitting on the edge of the sofa because her legs were suddenly weak and she didn’t trust that she wouldn’t fall on her ass.

Her mother nodded slowly. “I do.”

“We’re not broken, Gloria, because there is no ‘us’ to fix. To suggest that means that we were whole at one point, and I don’t know what freaking rose-colored glasses you’re looking through, but we were never whole.”

Raine pushed off from the sofa and stomped over to her mother. “We were never a family, Gloria. We never fit together. You made sure of that.”

She saw the hurt in her mother’s eyes, but she didn’t care. In fact, it fed her anger and pushed her on. If she was going to live through hell, then why shouldn’t Gloria?

Gloria held her chin up, though it trembled. “Can’t we try?” she said quietly.

“I don’t have the energy to deal with your insecurities.” She leaned closer, not caring that her mother winced. All she cared about was making someone else hurt as much as she did, and if it was Gloria? All the better.

“You have no idea what I’m going through right now. What I went through after Jesse died and Jake left me.”

Raine closed her eyes and grabbed the edge of the sofa. God, she felt weak and used up. And old.

She was thirty years old and felt like she’d lived at least twice that long.

“Let me help you,” Gloria pleaded.

“Oh, that’s a good one. You want to help me?” She pushed off from the sofa again, which probably wasn’t a good thing to do, because she swayed slightly, but when her mother reached for her, she recoiled and shook her head.

“You don’t get to come back after all this time and think that a pat on the head and a few meaningless words are going to make a difference in my life. That’s not the way it works. You’ve been living in a dreamworld, Gloria. A hot and hard and foreign dreamworld, mind you, but nothing in your scope of knowledge will make a difference to me.”

“I can try,” Gloria whispered.

“You don’t know anything about me.”

Her mother looked horrified. “How can you say that? Yes, I wasn’t with you, I was halfway around the world, helping the less fortunate, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t know what you were up to or keep in touch. Jeanine made sure I knew everything that mattered.”

“What’s my favorite color?”

Gloria threw her shoulders back. “Purple.”

“Wrong, it’s blue. How old was I when I broke my left arm?”

Her mother was beat and she knew it. “I don’t know.”