Ignitable

Ignitable - Chapter Eighteen

Cade....

Ready to face my mother, I don't even dignify my arrival with a polite knock on her office door. Instead, I push it open with my impatient palms. "Out!" I bark out a churlish order to my mother's loyal and long-serving PA. Not even attempting to argue, he grabs hold of a folder from off the desk before scuttling right past me.

Somewhat startled, mother glares at me with wide and unimpressed eyes. "What the hell do you think you are doing?" She barks in my fuming direction.

With unwavering quick strides, I slam both my hands down onto her desk with utter fury. "What the hell am I doing? Don't you mean what the hell are you doing?"

Becoming almost rigid with indifference, mother speaks using only an annoyingly flat voice. "Stop being so over dramatic, Cade. I did you a favour last night." She actually smiles at me—actually fucking smiles.

My mouth slackens with angered disbelief. "You really don't give a shit about what you did last night, do you?" Shaking my head with growing disgust, I keep my furious gaze on her. "You don't actually care whether you were wrong or whether you were right about it. You just saw something, and thought that you could use it against me in some twisted hurtful way. But what you saw between Sophia and her ex, was nothing."

"I'd hardly say that a kiss like that was nothing." Mother casually replies, curling her lip with a sarcastic grimace.

"Well, it was." I furiously retort, standing taller now on the opposite side of her desk.

"Is that what your little tick told you?" Her grimace becomes an ugly sneer. "And you believe her?" She now sniggers with an accentuated roll of her small and cruel eyes.

Engulfed with blind rage, my voice becomes nothing more than an aggressive bellow. "Her name is Sophia, and you will call her by that name!" I'm just so angry, I fear I may lose all self control. Lowering my head and just taking a moment all to myself, I try to contain the fury that pounds around my entire body. Mine and my mothers relationship is so mutually destructive, I just need to end it now. Withholding my anger, I keep my voice solidly calm. "Sophia has never given me any reason to doubt what she has told me. But you, I doubt every single thing that poisonously passes your lips. I doubt every single thing that you say or do, because you are nothing but a malignancy. I have spent my entire life, wondering what I have done for you to hate me so much. I have spent my entire life slowly becoming you, because I haven't been shown any other way of how to function as a normal human being. I hate myself, because of you! I see a fucking therapist, because of you!" My rage is starting to bubble beneath my skin, just waiting to escape through my forbearing pores. "I know that you just hate to see me happy. I know it seems to be something that you just can't stand to see. But I am happy. Sophia, she makes me happy. Which is why, I'm done. I am done with you. I am done with this place. I am done with anything that has been touched by you."

Mother doesn't even blink or move a muscle, she just keeps her scowling eyes firmly on me. "You're giving everything up for this Sophia?" She says Sophia's name in a desultory way; sceptically undisturbed.

Just as unmoved, I sneer with my confident reply. "In the end, I would have anyway. Sophia has just made me see sense, much sooner." No doubt, my mother is now arming herself with yet another one of her condescending remarks. Only, I don't give her enough time. "I will honour the ongoing cases that I have...then I'm gone." I enjoy telling her that. I enjoy its finality. Enjoying the enjoyment of it all, I slowly turn my back on my mother, ready to leave her and all of her poison behind.

"You're making a big mistake, Cade." If she thinks that will stop me in my strides, she has another thing coming. Picking up my defiant pace, I am just reaching for the door. "Your tick will soon tire of you. You're too damaged to love. Believe me, I know all about that."