Pole Dancer

Chapter 20: Stay

Chapter 20: Stay

Unfortunately the next day, I was left with a hangover and a broken heart. Jax did send me a goodbye text though so that had to count for something, right?

I threw my phone as far away from me as possible.

"OW!"

I opened my eyes to see my mother standing there rubbing her head. She held a laundry basket filled with clothes. Her Sunday habit was to clean me and my sister's dirty clothes hampers and wash everyone's loads.

"Sorry. I don't feel good today," I groaned as I threw my comforter back over my head.

The sunlight was annoying me.

"What's wrong with you? You don't get hangovers. Does this have something to do with that Jackson boy?"

"Mom, please..."

My mother sighed before she put the basket down on the floor and came over to my bed. I turned my head to the other side to avoid looking at her. My hair was probably a mess and my makeup was staining my pillow, but I couldn't face her. Not without being angry at her.

"Martie, what's wrong?"

I stayed quiet. The sound of her humming softly filled the silence. I knew she wanted to ask me again but her tactics were never to push either of us. She let us come to her whenever we were ready.

"I've been thinking. Maybe I- we stop running from these demons and we stand in the sun," my mother sounded unsure but genuine as she spoke loud enough for me to hear.

My ears perked but I didn't lift my head, not yet.

"I've kept you girls trying to live this life and it reminds me of what my mother did to me. I know she meant well but I feel like most of that was based off of fear. Fear for the unknown. But I'm done running from a ghost and I'm done making you girls live like this. Besides, my brother has been wanting to meet you girls for the longest."

I heard about this brother once before but just in one of her stories. He didn't have the same mother as my mom but they were really close. He was overprotective of family so he kept her close and made sure she never wanted for anything.

But their father wanted my mother at the forefront of his operation overseeing the things that went down so he could pass them on to her. He wanted his wife, my grandmother, to help but she refused when she got pregnant with my mother to help him with anything dangerous.

She paid the price.

"Why now?", I asked staring ahead at the photo on my bedside table of Mom, Sherice, me, & Paula at a concert.

Our first time doing something fun and spontaneous, a way of Mom apologizing for us barely seeing her when we first moved here. She spent six months doing whatever it is that she does to make her money and it made for double shifts and late nights.

"I've been putting things in place for this moment. You're older and I don't have that fear that someone will come steal you away from me," she reached out and touched my shoulder even as I refused to turn to look at her. "Your father can't touch me the way that I thought he could and my own father doesn't have the same pull he used to. I'm doing this for you and your sister. Give you guys that normalcy I missed out on as a kid."

I sat up finally ready to listen to what she had to say.

"What's going to happen?"

She smirked at me like she had things up her sleeve that I couldn't believe. Her eyes sparkled like when she had the best news in the world to tell us. I raised a brow but she only smiled and walked backwards out of my room, picking up her basket of clothes.