Truth Be Told (Blackbridge Security Book 4) Marie James (latest novels to read TXT) 📖

wore in an effort not to have to turn on the heat has a coffee stain on one shoulder, but I just can’t seem to part with it either.

Three things take up space in the trash bag I carried in here after Alex left for school. Two being jeans I don’t think she’s worn in years, and one being the gray blanket she used to cover her legs during chemo. None of those carry good memories and were easily discarded.

Everything else?

I can pull images of her wearing, using, or planning to use it all.

How can I dispose of or donate any of it?

Not the shoes she wore to weed the flower beds in front of the house.

Not the book on her night table, a torn piece of the Sunday paper marking her spot on page one forty-two.

Not even the half empty bottle of water. It was one of the last things to touch her lips.

It’s been two weeks since the funeral and I’m no closer to being okay than I was the day I whispered my goodbyes, praying that she could hear me and that she knew how much she was loved before she went.

Hanging my head, I press curled fists into my eyes. They burn from tears and lack of sleep and the misery of watching Ignacio walk out of the house every night.

It made sense to come back to the house after realizing Cooper was gone, and I hate to admit I had gotten used to him being around during Mom’s final days, through the funeral, and the week we spent at that house.

Then we come back home and nothing.

At the rental we didn’t touch, kiss, or flirt, but his presence was calming. The second we get back here, he’s out the door faster than I can blink.

I’ve done my best not to imagine where he is when he’s not with us, but it’s nearly impossible not to imagine him with someone else, his mouth on another woman’s skin, his tongue in her—

“No,” I hiss into the room. “Fuck, no.”

“Tin?”

I spin my head around so fast, I grow dizzy, my eyes taking a long moment to refocus on Ignacio standing in the doorway to my mother’s room.

“You okay?”

God, how many times is he going to ask that question? The words have been on his lips on repeat for weeks.

Maybe if you stop lying to him, he’ll stop asking.

“I’m fine,” I snap, hating that he’s a witness to my internal struggle.

“What are you doing?” He looks around the room, no doubt judging the lack of things filling the trash bag at my side.

“Going through her things.”

“You don’t have to do this so soon.”

“Don’t I? Cooper is hell-bent on selling the house. I’m not going to be able to afford a three bedroom just to house her things. This has to be done.”

Besides, I promised her during one of our many conversation I didn’t want to have after she found out that the treatments were no longer working that I’d move on as quickly as possible. As quickly, thank God is relative, so I don’t feel like I’m breaking that promise I made to her just yet.

She assured me she was going to be happy because where she was going, she’d be welcomed back into the loving arms of my dad. She told me more than once that she was ready. She missed him on top of being so tired and in constant pain. She didn’t want to leave us, but she didn’t see dying as a punishment.

Leaving Alex and I here alone feels like the worst thing she could’ve ever done, and that brings on wave after wave of guilt for my selfishness.

“What are you doing here?” I ask instead of arguing further.

“I came to—”

“I mean in the house. Do you think because we share a son that you have the right to just walk in and make yourself at home?”

If you didn’t leave every night, it would be different, but you do so…

“I knocked.” He hitches a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the front door. “You didn’t answer, and your car was out front. I got worried.”

“Worried?” I huff a humorless laugh. “I don’t need you to worry about me. The door was locked. Did you break it? Is that just one more thing I’m going to have to fix around here? Cooper already messed up the—”

“I didn’t break the door, Tin.” He frowns down at me.

I haven’t made a move to get up from the middle of my mother’s bedroom floor. Her clothes are scattered all around me, and he’s interrupting my pity party. I grow angrier by the second.

“A window then?” I snap. “How did you get in my house, and if you tell me you made yourself a key, know that I’m going to lose my shit.”

“I jimmied the lock,” he says with a shrug.

“You jimmi—” I hold my hand up. “You know what? It doesn’t even matter. Alex is at school, and I have shit to do. Lock it back up on your way out.”

His lips form a flat line as he takes a deep breath. It’s the same way my boss acted when I told her that I needed a little more time to get things in order. I hate people who don’t just say what they’re thinking, and despite biting my own tongue where this man is concerned, him doing it to me makes me want to scream.

“I have to go,” he says, his voice maddeningly calm.

“Bye.”

“No, Tin. I have to leave. Houston. Texas.”

My throat threatens to close.

What is it about me that makes me not good enough to stick around for?

My dad, my mom, him now for the second damn time.

“Okay,” I say, one simple word that feels like my entire life story wrapped in one.

Accepting instead of begging is always a better choice. I tried begging once with him and it didn’t work. I won’t do it again.

Honestly, I’m surprised he stuck around this long.

His absence is