(RIVALS) The Upside of Falling ✔️

Chapter 39: Heartbroken

It never failed to amaze me how quickly a night could change.

"What happened?" I asked her gently once she was sitting on the couch beside me. I grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around my mother, her body looking frighteningly small beneath it.

"He got a call from work," she managed to choke out between sobs, "he went straight to the airport..." I grabbed the tissue box off the coffee-table and handed it to my mom, knowing it would be one of many that she went through tonight.

As much as I resented my mother for taking my father back every time, for choosing him over me, I couldn't find it in my heart to abandon her. She needed me and even if it killed me, I would be there for her.

"You know he's not going away for work, Ma." She needed to know the truth, no matter how harsh it may be.

She turned her head and stared at me. Her eyes were red, the skin around them pouffy from all the tears she had cried. My mother reached up and rested her palm on my cheek, smiling sadly.

"I know that, love. I know."

"Leave him," I begged her for the hundredth time.

"I can't," was all she replied. Every single fucking time it was those same two words.

"Why, Mom? Why the hell not? Look at what he does to you!" I yelled louder than I intended, slamming my hand on my lap as I felt tears burn behind my own eyes.

"I love him, sweetie."

"That's not love, Mom. It's not." I told her confidently. I knew what love was and this sure as hell was not it.

Becca's face flashed in my mind and I missed her so fucking much that my need to see her was overpowering. That was love -- that feeling that arose in me every time I thought about her.

Suddenly, I found myself wishing that Becca was here right now. She would know what to say, the perfect words to comfort my mother, words that I never seemed capable of coming up with. But I didn't want Becca's first time meeting my mom to be like this, for her to meet a heartbroken, crying woman who couldn't even stand on her own two feet.

I wanted it to happen, but not like this.

"Mom," I said sternly, wanting her to look at me instead of averting her gaze from mine. "He doesn't love us, he stopped loving us years ago. You need to let him go, please. For me."

For a split second, I actually believed that she would -- that she would divorce my father and get him out of our lives for good. I believed that this would be the final time I had to watch my mother cry over this man that managed to ruin both of our lives. But that false second of belief passed as soon as I saw the look on my mother's face.

"He's made mistakes, sweetie, but he is still the man I fell in love with. I feel it every time he comes back. And one time, he will stay for good. I know it," she smiled at me with so much hope in her eyes that, for the first time in years, I began to cry.

I sat up abruptly, the urge to run away from this situation was overpowering but my feet remained planted on the ground. As always, I was unable to abandon my mom, even in times like this where it would be justified to do so.