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"I'm really tired," I repeated. I could hear the hollowness in my own voice. Empty. No emotion.<br />
"Thanks for the eye…um, thing, but if you don't mind …"<br />
My mother stared at me in surprise, her features open and confused. Then, just like that, her<br />
usual wall of cool professionalism slammed back into place. Until that moment, I hadn't<br />
realized how much she'd let it up. But she had. For just a brief time, she'd made herself<br />
vulnerable with me. That vulnerability was now gone.<br />
"Of course," she said stiffly. "I don't want to bother you."<br />
I wanted to tell her it wasn't that. I wanted to tell her I wasn't kicking her out for any personal<br />
reason. And I wanted to tell her that I wished she were the kind of loving, understanding mother<br />
you always hear about, one I could confide in. Maybe even a mother I could discuss my<br />
troubled love life with.<br />
God. I wished I could tell anyone about that, actually. Especially right now.<br />
But I was too caught up in my own personal drama to say a word. I felt like someone had<br />
ripped my heart out and tossed it across the other side of the room. There was a burning,<br />
agonizing pain in my chest, and I had no idea how it could ever be filled. It was one thing to<br />
accept that I couldn't have Dimitri. It was something entirely different to realize someone else<br />
could.<br />
I didn't say anything else to her because my speech capabilities no longer existed. Fury glinted<br />
in her eyes, and her lips flattened out into that tight expression of displeasure she so often wore.<br />
Without another word, she turned around and left, slamming the door behind her. That door<br />
slam was something I would have done too, actually. I guess we really did share some genes.<br />
But I forgot about her almost immediately. I just kept sitting there and thinking. Thinking and<br />
imagining.<br />
I spent the rest of the day doing little more than that. I skipped dinner. I shed a few tears. But<br />
mostly, I just sat on my bed thinking and growing more and more depressed. I also discovered<br />
that the only thing worse than imagining Dimitri and Tasha together was remembering when he<br />
and I had been together. He would never touch me again like that, never kiss me again…
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