Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Dixon

The call from his mother came in the wee hours of the morning before dawn, when even Harbor City was thinking about going to bed. It was between the drunks rolling home and the garbage trucks beeping down the street, and he had absolutely no intention of taking the call.

He had two hours until he needed to get up and go through the motions of getting ready for work and heading into the office. He’d been doing it all week, and no one had been the wiser. He supposed he had Nicole to thank for that. If nothing else, she’d taught him her best trick—how to fake it—if not how to spot a fake until too late.

His phone buzzed on his nightstand again, his mother’s face appearing on the screen. He rolled over and pulled the covers over his head. If he could block out construction crews and fender benders, the sound of his mom’s call was child’s play. He was halfway back to that same dream he’d been having every night where he could hear Fiona’s voice at Gable House but couldn’t find her no matter how many hallways he ran down, when the sound of the security alarm’s chirp alerting him that his front door had opened jolted him into full consciousness.

“Dixon Beckett, how dare you let me go to voicemail.” The door slammed shut with such force that he heard it three flights up. “Twice!”

Suzanne Parker Beckett click-clacked down the hall in her signature high heels, not stopping until she was in the open doorway of his bedroom. “I flew commercial for this. You are going to wake up and talk to me right now.” She took one look at him and rolled her eyes. “Hiding in bed? So dramatic, Dixon. Get up and meet me in the kitchen for coffee.”

It took his brain a second to process that his mom was here, in his apartment, and— Oh shit! He scrambled out of bed and hustled toward the kitchen. The last time she’d tried to make coffee, he’d ended up with wet grounds on his ceiling. The kitchen was the last place his mom belonged.

Luckily, by the time he’d rushed down to the kitchen level, she was sitting at the island pouring the contents of a takeout coffee cup into one of his coffee mugs.

“That one’s yours,” she said, nodding toward the travel cup on the counter. “Go get it, sit down, and tell me everything.”

He thought about arguing, but what was the point? When it came to winning, his mom gave no quarter for him just because he was her kid. He told her about the bet, about meeting Fiona, the dates, how she’d let Peacock sleep in her room, about the non-dates, and about her motivation for the whole thing. By the time he was done, both of them were finished with their coffee and his mom was eyeballing the coffee maker.

“Here, let me make some more.”

“Thank you. I didn’t sleep a wink on the flight. When Nash texted about what you’d done, I knew I had to come home right away, even if your uncle Arn had taken the family jet down to the islands. That man always did have the most abysmal timing.”

“You didn’t have to come home.”

“Of course I did.” She looked at him, her eyes softening. “You are a mess, what with this ridiculous bet. Your need to win has become too much—even for a Beckett.”

“I’ve always been like this,” he said with a shrug, ignoring the little voice in his head that was calling him six shades of a liar.

“No.” She pursed her lips and gave him the stink eye. “Not to this extent. This happened because Nicole cheated on you.”

Adrenaline shot through him. He felt like he’d walked into the annual stockholders meeting stark naked. “How did you know that?”

She made a tsk-tsk sound and took another sip of her coffee. “I’d always suspected, but because I love you and you were happy, I rationalized that little voice in my head as an overly attached mother missing her son.” She reached across the island they were sitting around and covered his hand with hers. “But after she died, I got ahold of the police report. I read the officer’s notes about where she’d been coming from. At that point, when you were in the middle of all that fresh grief, I didn’t see the point in adding on. I figured when you were ready, you’d say something. But the thing is, it has been two years and you still just hold it close to you, letting it stab you in the heart every time you take a breath.”

The pain on his behalf, the pity he saw in her eyes, nearly did him in. This wasn’t what they did. They didn’t talk about feelings. They talked about strategy, about winning, about solving problems. This was something else entirely. It was weird and awkward and he had no idea how to process it. She loved him, he’d always known that, but she loved seeing him win most of all. At least that’s what he’d always thought.

“Now you’re being dramatic,” he grumbled, retreating into their favorite teasing insult for each other.

Mom raised an eyebrow all the way up. “You, the unshowered, unshaven man sitting in the dark, hiding in his bed, and acting like a complete fool about a woman who really does love him and whom he loves in return is telling me that I’m dramatic?”

“Yes,” he snarled.

If his tone shocked or annoyed her, she didn’t show it. “I notice you didn’t deny that you love her.”

He stared into the dark liquid in his mug that had gone cold twenty minutes ago. “That’s none of your business, Mom.”

“Maybe,” she said, standing up from the stool she’d been sitting on. “But you’re truly a fool if you think that losing Fiona Hartigan comes even close to winning anything else. I’ve talked to Nash, Griff, and Ernie. I’ve seen the changes in you when we’ve talked. You’re back to being the man you were before Nicole wrecked you. You made that journey yourself, and I’ve never been more proud of you.”

“Duly noted,” he said without looking up, knowing he couldn’t because then she’d see how miserable he was.

So he sat there, staring into the blackness as she put on the coat she’d hung from a hook on the pantry door and picked up her purse from the end of the island.

“What good is winning if you lose the best person to have ever walked into your life?” She paused in the kitchen doorway, waiting for his response. When he didn’t offer one, she let out a tired sigh. “No answer for that one, huh? I guess that tells you everything you refuse to admit to yourself.”

She took the stairs down to the street level. He heard the alarm chirp when she opened the door and the announcement that the system had reset itself after she’d closed it.

Glancing up, he looked at the window over the sink. Someone else might have seen the sky turning from orange to pink to blue and spotted the birds flying through the garden. All he could see was Fiona’s ghost standing in front of the sink washing dishes, specks of flour still in her hair from making ravioli. He stared for a minute, pretending just for a few breaths that she wasn’t simply part of his imagination, and then he looked away, blinked a few times, and put her out of his mind for good.

As if that would work.

When it came to the game of not thinking about Fiona, he always lost.