Chapter 31

• Jayden
• "Seven. Seven days since I put up with the distance between Ambre and myself. Seven days since my mother caught me leaving her room after we spent the night together. I quickly put on my sweatpants, pulled on my t-shirt, and left the room on tiptoes. I was both happy to have let things happen and afraid of what was to come, but I was ready. Ready to stop fighting or pushing her away. That morning, however, I was far from imagining what was about to hit me. I was carefree, I had a light heart, and I had let go. It is in those moments that the backlash is most brutal. I should have been wary of the silence; I should have felt that something was in the air and that I was facing everything I had always feared. My mother was there, her arms crossed over her chest, looking at me with incomprehension from the middle of the hallway. The door to her room was still slightly ajar, a sign that she had not planned to get out of bed for long. It was five in the morning. She looked tired and lost. I stopped dead in my tracks, my legs almost buckling under the looks she threw at the door in front of me. I knew immediately that she had understood.
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