The Heart That's Meant to Love You

Chapter 85: Betrayal

The week after Naomi's graduation was surprisingly calm. Ms. Rowe didn't hound her about getting a "decent job", nor did she bring up the Grand Plan.

But that was the scary part. Because Ms. Rowe always brought up the Grand Plan. If she hadn't, that meant new plots were forming in her head, and Naomi would have a hard time maneuvering out of their grip, despite the fact that she was an adult and should be self-sufficient.

Her mother's silence should have tipped her off.

Nothing had been said about Oliver's absence. Nothing had been done about the Grand Plan's next step. Nothing had been heard about working at Ms. Rowe's company. In the end, it turned out that none of them held a candle to the information in Ms. Rowe's grasp.

This fight didn't begin from Ms. Rowe's usual throne on the sofa. This time, Ms. Rowe came to Naomi.

"Do you have something to tell me?" Ms. Rowe asked, barging through Naomi's bedroom door without warning.

Naomi checked the clock, an excuse to buy her more time to rack her brain for what her mother might be talking about. At this point, Naomi had kept enough secrets to be confused as to what her mother had found out.

They had resolved the retreat issue ages ago. This must be about Oliver or the Grand Plan.

Naomi wagered on the latter, but she wouldn't assume. "Do you have something to tell me?"

"Don't talk back to me. You know what you did."

"No, mother, I do not." Naomi rose from her desk chair, her posture returning to its practiced poise. "And if you've forgotten, I am an adult woman. It is acceptable for me to ask if my own mother has something she wants to say."

Gone were the days when Naomi cowered before her mother. Over the past months, Naomi had seen other sides of life. Other people had made her recognize that her situation was complicated, but she shouldn't have to bow down in fear.

Ms. Rowe sneered at Naomi's statement. "I knew allowing you to talk to that... that... that loose girl was a bad idea. Look at how she's ruined you."

Ruined? Naomi didn't reply to that, because she was certain that Claire had turned her away from a path that would have destroyed her.

"She isn't a loose girl. She's just eccentric." The need to defend Claire lay strong across Naomi's shoulders. From the beginning, Claire had been nothing but friendly and sweet.

"You wouldn't know what girls like that are capable of." Ms. Rowe huffed a laugh. "That isn't what I came here to discuss."

Interesting. Naomi hadn't known there were other options on the table for discussion. What could her mother possibly want to talk about at this dark hour?

As if it knew and disapproved, a flash of lightning lit the sky outside Naomi's window.

Naomi should have listened to such a bad omen.

She didn't. "What did you come to discuss, then?"

Ms. Rowe lifted her hand, in which she clutched a handful of photographs. "What are these?"

As she couldn't see the front side, Naomi had no way of knowing. She barely refrained from making a sarcastic remark. Instead, she remained silent.

"What are these, Naomi?" Ms. Rowe threw the photographs at Naomi's chest. They hit her, then scattered on the floor.

Naomi looked down, into her own face. Eyes closed, lips slightly parted, and the most peaceful expression painted across it. An expression that Naomi missed, though she had never made it before or since. Peace. What an odd concept in her world.

"That's not even the worst." Ms. Rowe held up one photograph that she had painstakingly held onto. A photograph of Naomi, hair mussed, looking back over her bare shoulder. "Do you have no decency?"

Kieran had promised to keep the photos secret, and Naomi trusted him to follow through on that. Despite his hurtful words, Kieran had never done anything to betray or harm Naomi. Which left a slew of questions in Naomi's already busy head.

"How did you get these?" Naomi asked quietly.

"Have you any idea how these will be misconstrued?"

Naomi looked up from the photographs, straight into her mother's face. "Where did you get them, mother?"

"It doesn't matter where I got them. What matters is that if I can find them, the press can too."

"The press doesn't care about me." Naomi shook her head. "How did you get them? Do you have someone investigating me?"

"It doesn't matter!"

"It does!" Naomi's voice came out as a shriek, perhaps the only tone that would get through to her mother. "Answer me. Do you have someone following me? Am I being investigated?"

"Of course you are!" Ms. Rowe threw back. "You're too much like me for me to trust you."

There it was. The real problem. Ms. Rowe didn't trust her own daughter.

Naomi lifted her chin like armor to protect her heart. "Why don't you trust me, mother? I've done all you ever wanted."

"Naomi, you're going to be someone. Don't mess it up like I did."

"What do you mean?" Naomi considered her mother's words. "Do you want me to go into politics because you weren't able to?"

"We aren't here to discuss my past. We're here to discuss your future." Ms. Rowe pulled out her phone and opened a photograph. This time, it was Naomi standing outside the apartment building, Kieran too close to be considered a platonic friend. "Get rid of your boy toy. Petty romance can only lead to bigger mistakes."

"I'm a mistake?" Naomi pieced the story together by the things unsaid.

She had always known that her father left before he and her mother got married. She hadn't realized that Ms. Rowe was holding such pent-up bitterness about her own child.

"Stop changing the subject. Distance yourself from this boy. He'll only bring you trouble."

"I think it's the other way around." Naomi, still reeling from being called a mistake, forgot to put her filter back on her words. "He's not hurting me. You are."

Ms. Rowe's hand flew on its own, landing across Naomi's cheek with all the rage of a king cobra.

The silence that followed was broken only by a crack of thunder so loud that it shook the windowpanes.

Naomi's fingers lifted to ghost over her cheek, where her mother had hit her. Ms. Rowe had never hit her before. They had argued, they had yelled, but it had never come to blows.

Ms. Rowe's emotions flitted across her face, then evaporated under the mask of indifference she always wore. "Get rid of him or leave this house. I don't want a daughter who risks her future for the sake of a boy."

Get rid of him or leave this house. An ultimatum of the most serious kind. An ultimatum that Naomi considered fully, thoroughly.

If she stayed, she would have to follow through on the Grand Plan. No art. No expression. No self. She would marry a man whom her mother chose and live a life that had been planned since infancy.

But if she left... would she be alone forever?

It was a risk she was willing to take, if only to be herself. If her mother hit her once, would she do it again?

For her whole life, Ms. Rowe had been Naomi's constant. Her only family, her biggest cheerleader. The sheer betrayal of the slap laid upon her stung more than the side of her face.

Ms. Rowe reached out for her daughter. "Look at me, Naomi."

"I'm sorry. I can't." Naomi grabbed a jacket off of a chair, not bothering to throw it onto her shoulders. She didn't think that far. She didn't think at all. Naomi simply ran.

She ran to escape the choices surrounding her. To escape the reality of what had just happened. Naomi ran as fast and as far as she could, to the only place she felt safe.