The fasten seatbelt sign turned off and I unbuckled my seatbelt. Home. I was back home. The phone call to tell my mom I was coming back made my palms sweat. The flight attendant opened the airplane door, and I walked past the one other row of seats and the couch running the length of one side of the jet and stood in the open door. The freezing fresh air whipped past me as I took the three steps down to the tarmac. A black SUV sat a few feet away and Charles stood by the door. He opened it and my mom stepped out, her pristine navy tailored pantsuit fit like a glove. She took off her sunglasses and held the phone to her ear. I could hear her stern orders from there. Always the task master, ensuring the social scene was never wanting for the best event she could coordinate. Some things never changed. She ended the call and held out her arms.

I stepped into her embrace, her arms—toned from two daily hours of exercise sessions with her personal trainer—wrapped around me. I hugged her back. She smelled exactly the same. It was as if a nearly homicidal level of attention to detail and event planning could give off a smell.

“Hi Mom,” I said as I hugged her back, settling into her. It felt good to be back. The throbbing ache in my chest hadn’t dulled one bit, but I hoped in time it would. That I would recover from being in the destructive path of Killian Thorne.

“Hi, Rachel. Let me take a look at you,” she said, holding me out at an arm’s length. I could feel the disapproval radiating off her. Good to know where I stood.

“Don’t worry, dear. We can go shopping tomorrow,” she said, tucking us back into the SUV. I knew better than to argue. It looked like five to seven hours of getting caught up on all the latest fashion trends was in my future.

“Okay, Mom. Fine,” I said, defeated. I knew what coming back home meant. “And you didn’t have to send the jet.”

“Don’t start with that again. I don’t know how you fly commercial in the first place,” she said, whipping her sunglasses off. You’d have never thought my mom grew up the child of a nurse and a doctor, but she’d certainly shed those upper middle class roots for a life firmly planted in the world of the uber rich.

“It’s not that bad, Mom. Plus, it’s a lot more economical,” I said, staring out the window. From the outskirts of the city, everything whipped by. Riding through town, everything looked just the same, like it had been frozen in time while I went away, waiting for my return. It was comforting and scary at the same time. It would be like I never left. Like he never happened. Like I was before.

I slid my phone out of my pocket and turned it on. I held my breath at the sheer number of messages that popped up on the screen. Tears pooled in my eyes. Why did he have to be so hell bent on revenge? Why was it so much more important to him than what we had?

The messages were an emotional rollercoaster from sad and scared to angry and admonishing me for breaking his rules. There were a few in there from Dahlia as well. Checking in on me. My mom babbled on and on about some big events coming up and how great it would be to have me at her side throughout all of it. Just like old times.

We pulled up to the house and I went up to my room. I stood there, staring at the walls, at my bed, at everything. It was suffocating. I needed to get out. The room was just as I’d left it. The posters on the light blue walls that I’d convinced my mom were more my style over the lilac she’d been determined to use. My college textbooks lining the shelves above my small desk. It was like I never left. Like everything that happened in New York had all been a dream, or was it a nightmare? It had only been minutes and I needed to get out of there. I knew exactly where I needed to go.

I sat on the nest in my old treehouse and stared at my phone. A drip splashed against my screen before I even realized I was crying. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. I curled up, wrapping the blankets around me. My phone buzzed again and I was almost afraid to look at the screen. I finally gave in.

Dahlia: R u ok?

Me: No

Dahlia: Do you want me to mail you his balls?

My watery laugh filled my little hideaway.

Me: No, please do not remove any body parts from anyone in my absence

The phone rang in my hand.

“You said absence. Does that mean you’re thinking of coming back?” The hope in her voice made me well up again. Was I going back? Going back to what? I had no job. No one in the city would hire me. And Killian was there.

“I don’t know, Dahl.”

“What do you want me to say if he comes by here?”

“I don’t think he will. I think things were pretty well over when I left. Plus, I broke his rules.” I swallowed back the bile that threatened to race up my throat.

“I need you to come back. And I’m not just saying that because I won’t get your mom’s crazy care packages anymore.” I laughed and wiped my nose.

“Thanks.” The silence stretched between us.

“Just know that I miss you and I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” Dahl said, emotion heavy in her voice.

“If he comes to the apartment and that’s a big if. Just tell him I left, okay? I don’t know what I’m doing and I can’t think straight right now.”

“Done,” she said like she was ticking a checkbox. “Anything else?”

“No. We’ll talk soon.”

“We’d better.”

“Night, Dahlia.”

“Night, Rachel.”

I drifted off to sleep for a while. A fitful sleep filled with Killian’s face, his hands, his body. The hinges on the door creaked as it opened and closed. The mattress of the nest sunk by my feet.

“Sweetheart.” My mom’s gentle voice almost broke me again. Her soft hand on my foot did it though, rubbing it under the blankets. Before I knew what I was doing I had my arms wrapped around her neck and she ran her hands down my back. I was like a little kid. All this time I swore, I’d grown up. That I was doing this all on my own and all I managed to do was make a mess of everything.

“I’m sorry, I’m kind of a mess, Mom,” I said, getting my tears all over her pristine outfit.

“You’re never a mess, honey. Never.” She pushed my hair back from my face to look into my eyes. “Are you going to spill or are you going to make me guess?” I took a deep breath. All my bravado about being able to make it on my own and not wanting their help and here I was. Back in my childhood treehouse, crying against my mom’s shoulder like I was a little kid again.

“I got fired.” Starting there seemed like the safest bet.

“Thank god,” she said, her breath rushing out of her. I scrunched up my eyebrows.

“What?”

“Work troubles, I’ve got you covered, honey. For a minute, I thought maybe you’d gone and gotten your heart broken.” Her attempt at a joke only made me feel that much worse. At my crestfallen expression, she wrapped her arms around me again.

“Oh honey. It is a guy, isn’t it?”

I nodded my head against her shoulder. “Tell me everything.” And I did. I word vomited everything all over her. Not the sex stuff, because gross, but everything else. How we met. What my boss asked me to do. Everything.

“And now, I don’t know what to do. He destroyed everything I worked for. Ruined the life I built there.”

“Did he?”

“What do you mean? Of course, he did.”

“You’re always so focused on being perfect. On being the best. You got fired and you got your heart broken. Some people would call that a rite of passage. You were always so focused and determined I wondered what it would take to finally derail you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember in senior year of high school, when someone had the audacity to ask you to prom?”

“Yeah…”

“And what did you say to me?” I tried to remember what our conversation had been. The details eluded me.

“You said, ‘Mom, I’m not going to be some arm candy to some asshole who only asked me because he saw me all dressed up at one of your events’. You thought he asked you because he saw you at the foundation auction, but that wasn’t true. You didn’t want to believe it. You never wanted to believe in anything other than the path you were on. The plan that laid ahead for you. And I knew one day you’d get derailed. It was inevitable.”

“It didn’t have to be. I was stupid and I made a mistake.”

“So, you’re human like the rest of us. I’d hoped that you’d have made these mistakes when you were in high school or college. Gotten it out of the way. It’s a lot easier to recover from a fall when you’re younger. More resilient. You’ve always held yourself to a ridiculous standard.”

“Mom, maybe because you and Dad never held me to any standard.”

“What standard could we have held you to that was higher than your own? You need a life to balance the hard work. You need to relax and take time for yourself to find out who you are. Ups and downs are a part of life.”

“This is way more than an up or a down, Mom. This is so beyond that. I helped ruin someone’s life.”

“I’m sure you didn’t.” She had so much faith in me that it hurt. It hurt that I’d let her and myself down.

“Well, I’m going to do just what you need in a situation like this.”

“What?” I was ready for some retail therapy or whatever other silly thing she had planned for me. Maybe planning the spring charity auction.

“You’re going to come and work with me at the foundation. We’ll see how long you last, but I’m not going to let you hide out here forever,” she said, squeezing me again before climbing out of the treehouse.

My mom set up all my homecoming events in record time. There were five gallery openings, three galas, twelve luncheons, and I met with the boards of every charitable foundation in the city. I kept my work with Rhys Thayer out of it. Not that they would have known me as that woman anyway. I wasn’t Rachel, executive assistant to Rhys Thayer. I was Rachel, daughter of Alexander Halston, energy market titan and second best philanthropic event hostess to my mother. I was back, right smack dab in the middle of everything I thought I’d left behind.