Better when He's Bold

“Don’t be nervous, Mom. They’ll get you on the right meds and help you get straight.” I put a hand on her shoulder and tried not to flinch when I felt her shake under the light touch. “It’s what has to happen.”

Karsen nodded and bit her lip. She looked so young, so fragile, that I hated that she had to be part of this. My mom saw where my gaze shifted and whispered so I was the only one that could hear her, “What are you going to do? The house . . . there is no money.”

She sounded genuinely distraught about the circumstances, so it took every ounce of self-control I had not to remind her that this was all a little too late. Maybe if she hadn’t been drinking and driving in the first place, maybe if she had fought harder to stay medicated, maybe if she had left my oblivious and selfish father before it all had reached this point, I would be able to buy into her regret and shame. Now it just made my stomach hurt and had disbelief and aggravation struggling for dominance under my skin.

“Don’t worry about us. I’ll figure something out.”

She finished the paperwork and handed off the thick stack to a woman dressed in scrubs who had been lurking off to the side watching our awkward family moment. The employee told us that we had five more minutes to say our good-byes and then Mom would be assigned a room. Karsen stopped trying to hide her tears and wrapped her arms around our mom’s shaking frame. I heard her tell her that she loved her and my mom echoed the sentiment. When they separated, my mom turned to me and I just shook my head. I wanted her to get help and to be able to offer my sister some kind of healthy parental figure, but I wasn’t about to pretend like we weren’t here at this place without reason.

I reached out and squeezed one of her hands and told her, “I really want you to get the help you need, Mom. Please don’t waste this opportunity. You won’t get another one.”

Race was eventually going to run out of people he could wiggle favors out of, and if my mom squandered this chance at patching up her disrupted life and mental state, there was nothing else I could feasibly do to try and set this family to rights.

Karsen leaned against my side and I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and we watched as my mom was led away. She looked back at us over her shoulder and I felt the way Karsen’s thin body quaked against mine. She was too soft for this. How on earth was I going to drag her away from a nice suburban home into a dive located in the heart of the city if she couldn’t even handle the reality of who our mother really was?

“It’ll be all right.” I wanted to sound reassuring, but I just sounded tired and sad.

“I hope so. Things haven’t been all right in a long time.”

Hearing that twisted my guts into knots, so I tugged her closer. “I’m so sorry for that.”

She sighed and jabbed me with her elbow like we used to do when we were younger and roughhoused with one another.

“You’ve always done whatever you could to make it all seem okay, Brysen, but if no one else in the family is willing to keep up the façade, then the cracks show. It’s not your fault.”

“No, but I’m not giving up on us.”

Her mahogany eyes flashed at me. “I know you won’t.”

I guided her out of the waiting area to the front doors of the facility. It looked less like a hospital and more like a nice spa that middle-class ladies would spend an afternoon at. When we hit the parking lot I put my sunglasses on and noticed that Karsen’s gaze immediately went to the big black truck that was parked a few spaces over from my BMW.

“Why is that guy following you around again?”

She made no secret of the fact she was staring at the brute in the driver’s seat and I didn’t like the way he flashed his teeth at her like a hungry wolf. She had asked me repeatedly why the darkly brooding man and his massive truck always seemed to be around when we went anywhere, and pat answers weren’t cutting it anymore, so I told her the truth.

“Because Race is worried about me. Someone was spying on me through my old computer and then tried to hurt me after work. Race knows some pretty scary people, Booker is apparently one of them, and he’s hoping that having a pseudo bodyguard will keep my stalker at bay.”

The news about my computer had literally made me break down. I cried for an hour and then yelled at Race when he asked me who could’ve possibly downloaded the spyware onto it. If I knew the answer to that I wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. After I hung up on him and then paced a hole in the floor, I started to feel guilty for taking out my frustration on the one person trying to help me out. Before I could call him and apologize, he had sent me a text with Booker’s picture attached and told me I had a new shadow. The mountain of a man was going to follow me everywhere whether I liked it or not. Then Race texted that if I ever hung up on him again, he would be at my door within ten minutes and I wouldn’t love the results. It irked me that he was threatening me, but I got where he was coming from, so I just said I was sorry and told him I couldn’t wait until he did show up at my door.

Of course, Karsen, with her romantic and unfettered mind, focused on the part of my statement that was the least important.

“So Race is like your boyfriend now?”

I cut her a sideways look and popped the locks on my car. After we slid inside and fastened our seat belts, I told her, “I don’t really think Race is the boyfriend type.”

She rolled her head to the side and looked out the passenger window. It took me a second to realize she was staring fixedly at the mirror and the truck behind us.