So much had changed, yet so much was the same. Nicky was out of the hospital. I was at college in Baton Rouge, which was only half an hour away. LeVan and I were seeing each other and hoping to keep things quiet.

Mother hadn’t changed.

Like when she showed up at my college dorm room unannounced.

“Mother? Why did you come here?”

The sight of my mother at my door was…unexpected, to say the least. When I’d gotten accepted into college, the absolute first thing I’d done was apply for housing. It wasn’t like it was necessary—I could’ve stayed at home and commuted, and maybe I should have. Being there for Nicky was just as important as going to school so I could get the hell out of my mother’s house, but at the same time, I’d had to breathe.

It hadn’t helped that since the accident, she always seemed to be everywhere. She showed up at the shop after discovering I worked there.

I will not have my daughter working in a store as a fucking cashier!

I refused to quit and she threatened me—again.

I told her to go ahead and hit me and the next time I was asked what happened, I’d tell the teachers who asked, the people in the store—because I wasn’t about to quit this job.

She must have seen something in my eyes because she had lowered her hand.

And over the next few months, everything had gotten worse.

Twice, she’d put Nicky in a facility. She called the group home a facility and made it seem like she was doing him a favor.

Each time, I’d quietly raised hell and made enough threats that she’d brought him home, but only after she made it clear she was doing it to punish me.

Before I’d left for school, I’d told her if she did it again, I was going to post a video of her in a drunken rage onto Facebook or Instagram. She was technologically clueless, but I’d let her see the video I’d taken on my phone—naturally, I didn’t show it to her on my phone. I’d let her see it on several different file storage sites and told her it would stay private as long as she kept my brother out of the group home—and as long as Grace was allowed to come in and keep him company.

She’d acted as though it was all her idea and we hadn’t talked since.

The gleam in her eyes was enough to scare me, especially considering the way we’d left things.

I’d gotten the upper hand and that was something she’d never let settle for long.

“How are you?” I asked, keeping my voice polite through sheer will alone. “How is Nicky?”

“Your brother is fine,” she asked, glancing past me pointedly. “Are you going to ask me in?”

Do I have to? But there was no point in denying the inevitable.

I’d paid the insane extra fees to get a room to myself. It was suite-style rooming, so while I shared a bathroom with a couple of other girls, the room itself was mine. The walls were paper-thin. What I wanted to know was how my mother had actually gotten up here—the building was supposed to be closed to everyone who wasn’t a student.

She’d probably conned someone—or paid them.

Her lips curved in a smug smile as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. “You do know I made a rather large bequest here a few weeks ago, don’t you? When I came down today, I had a brief visit with the dean. After we finished, I asked if she’d mind escorting me over…you’ve been so busy and all. I wanted to surprise you.”

“How thoughtful,” I said, somehow managing not to grit my teeth. Knowing she wouldn’t leave until she’d gotten her digs in, I stepped aside. “I’ve got friends coming over for study group in twenty minutes.” I didn’t bother prettying it up for her.

Once the door was closed behind her, she didn’t bother with niceties either.

It was a relief, too.

As she walked around my apartment-styled dorm room, she wrinkled her patrician nose and sighed. “I just don’t understand why you’d choose to live here when you can drive yourself in thirty minutes. This apartment is so…simple.”

“I like it.” I was also paying for it with my money. When I’d turned eighteen, I’d gotten a call from a lawyer—actually, it was several months after I’d turned eighteen. The calls came after the letters went unanswered. Mother assured me she hadn’t seen the letters, but she was so full of bullshit, she all but reeked of it. The lawyer had been in charge of a trust left by my father’s estate. It wasn’t huge, at least not compared to my mother’s family fortune, but the five hundred thousand I got at eighteen would pay for college tuition, as well as books, room and board, and other expenses. I’d get another five hundred thousand at twenty-five.

There was money for Nicky, too, but it was left in trust, to be used for his needs.

And that meant it was under Mother’s control.

She had no control over my college choice, my education, none of it.

And that was what I like best about my simple apartment.

I’d almost accepted the offer to go to Tulane just so I could be with LeVan, but he’d understood that I wanted, more than anything, to stay close to Nicky. I was desperately trying to figure a way out for him, too, but until I could figure out a solution, my best bet was to stay close.

And LeVan and I had managed just fine, traveling back and forth to each other on weekends. I no longer worked part-time for the boutique but I did take commissions for one of a kind garments and for the first time in my life, I felt like I could breathe.

Maybe I should’ve been more prepared for this.

As Mother turned to face me, her gray-blue eyes glinting with malice, something cold slithered around and settled inside my heart.

The words oh shit twisted through my mind.

I wanted to kick her out, make her leave.

“You think you are so, so clever, dearest daughter…don’t you?” she asked softly, moving to sit down on the couch.

“Mother?”

She waved a hand at the seat opposite her. “Please, sit. We have much to discuss and if you have a study group coming, we’ll have to be quick about it.”

* * *

The echo of her voice still rang in my ears.

“If you continue to see him, you will not see your brother, Dorothea. Do I make myself clear?”

Sitting tucked up against the headboard of my bed, I wrapped my arms around my knees and did my very best not to move.

My worst nightmares had just come true.

My mother had found LeVan and me out…and she was threatening to keep me from my brother.

I couldn’t even cry about it.

It was a big deal, but put in perspective, was nothing like some of what LeVan had been through.

LeVan told me once that he’d spent most of his life walking with feet in two different worlds. His father was a respected, rich doctor…and white. His mother’s father had been the town drunk up until he killed himself and two others in a drunk-driving accident when LeVan was a baby. They’d been poor, but LeVan’s mom had won a scholarship to one of the best colleges in the South and she’d come back to teach high school.

Of course, my mother had fought against her.

The Porters being black had nothing to do with Mother’s antipathy, she insisted.

But I knew her too well.

I was so sick of how she kept threatening to throw me out. Even before LeVan was in the picture. Sometimes, as much as I hated myself, I almost wished she would.

LeVan said he’d been dealing with all kinds of prejudice all his life, and the quiet, unspoken sort was just as ugly and damaging as any other kind. No matter how polite people like my mother were to your face, they were snakes in the grass when it mattered.

And LeVan still wanted to be a part of my life.

That meant more to me than all this unnecessary chaos in my life.

Still, although my eyes were dry, there was a hard lump in my throat, one so big I could almost choke on it. When the knock came, I closed my eyes and turned my face away. Study group would just have to function without me. But I wasn’t used to having girlfriends.

The other girl I shared a bathroom with was part of the study group—she was also the girl responsible for helping pull me out of my shell, so it wasn’t a big surprise when she came through the bathroom, seeking me out.

“Hey, girl, didn’t you hear…oh, no. What’s wrong, Thea?”

Turning my head on the padded headboard where it rested, I looked at the girl who had somehow become my first real friend. Naomi looked like a stiff wind would blow her over with her platinum blonde hair, her tiny five foot two frame, and her slim “boy’s body” as she called it. I’d told her over and over again that she looked nothing like a boy. She reminded me of what I imagined a pixie would look like, right up until she opened her mouth.

There was nothing unearthly about Naomi, despite her ethereal looks and somewhat beatnik sort of name. Yes, her middle name really was Virtue and she made fun of it more often than anyone else would ever be able to, displaying one of her many excellent…virtues, a sense of humor.

Stubbornness was another, but right now, I wasn’t up for it. “Naomi, go away,” I said bleakly.

“Absolutely not.” She marched over to the bed and sat down, her diminutive form making the bed bounce repeatedly. She nudged my ankle. “What’s up?”

Miserable, I looked at her. “My mother was here.”

“Oh. Ouch.” She made a face. “I’m glad I missed out on meeting the she-bitch. But…come on, I thought you’d said you were past letting her make you so miserable.”

Swallowing, I let my head fall back against the headboard and closed my eyes. “I guess I was tempting fate.” Sucking in a deep breath, I said, “My mother knows about LeVan and me.”

“Oh.” Softer now. Naomi was quiet for a moment, then she said, “Look, you are eighteen years old and you’re out of that house. You’re going to college on money your dad left you, and there’s only so much she can do to make your life miserable. What is the prejudiced old hag going to do, piss and moan?”

“She’s going to keep me from seeing my brother,” I said.

“What?” Naomi’s startled gasp had me opening my eyes.

I met her gaze and nodded. “You heard me. That’s how evil, how vindictive, how prejudiced and ugly my mother is. Because I’m dating a black guy, she’s threatening to keep me away from my baby brother. She can’t even stand him, but fuck that. Fuck the fact that I’m the only one who loves him—” My voice cracked as the fury and worry inside me reached a boiling point. I surged off the bed to pace.

Naomi gave me a couple of minutes, then, as I swung around, she moved to block me, catching me by the arms. “So…” she gave me a taunting look. “What are you going to do, let her win?”

“I don’t know!” I all but shouted it.

Naomi was unfazed. “You need to talk to LeVan.”

“She probably has someone here watching me.”

A cat’s smile curled her lips. “Well, it’s a good thing you know all sorts of shit about clothes, then, huh? And a good thing you and I know people who work in the theatre department. We’ll just have to make you look like not you.”