Into the Tomorrows (Bleeding Hearts Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

in those missing beats were the affections that she should have held for her only child and only living parent.
    But as usual, I didn’t give into the thought for too long. It was useless, with her. She’d never change.
    “Did you hear what I said?” she asked.
    I stood up and moved away, wanting away from the cloud of cheap perfume. “I probably did,” I said noncommittally as I unloaded the dishwasher and placed the cups in the boxes sitting on the counter. The house was a mess of boxes and trash bags. Most of what would go with my grandfather when he was moved to the home was already there, apart from the chair my mother was currently offending with her stench.
    “I said he doesn’t love you.”
    My hands paused, holding a baby blue teacup that had been my grandmother’s. I asked, mostly to make her repeat herself, “Who doesn’t love me?” But I already knew the answer.
    “That boyfriend of yours. Colin. The skinny dipshit with the curly black hair.”
    My fingers tightened on the delicate handle of the teacup for a moment before I relaxed them, not dignifying my mother’s ranting with even a look in her direction. “You’ve been around him less than a handful of times, Mom.”
    It might have been true, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of being right.
    “You’re just like me,” she continued, her voice taking on a darkness I knew to be her introspective voice. “Men can’t love you for long, they’ll only leave you.” She stood up, walked into the kitchen and picked up the blue teacup out of the box on the counter. I watched her out of the corner of my eye as I kept loading the box.
    “I’m not like you.” I said it quietly, but loud enough for her to hear. Internally, I screamed it.
    “You are. You’re just like me.” She leaned over, twirling the tea cup with her hands. I watched her tremble, waited for her to drop it.
    “That was Gram’s cup,” I said. No one drank from it. It sat in the cupboards, only being washed to clean the dust.
    She held it up to her face and squinted. “Well, no need for relics.”
    I knew she was about to drop it, just because she wanted to, and I placed my hand on the cup, stopping her. There was a panic in my voice thinking of it—of my grandpa’s heartache not having that blue cup in the cupboard beside his white one every morning in the assisted living facility. “Don’t,” I said, a tremble in my voice giving away my vulnerability.
    My mother was a leech for vulnerability. When she found it, she latched on—sucked it dry. And I knew, from the way her eyebrows raised as she gave me a speculative gaze, that she had found my weakness and would exploit it.
    “Just give me five hundred.”
    I had little more than that in my bank account as it was. “No.”
    “He doesn’t love you,” she repeated, waiting to see if her words would hit their mark. But I stayed emotionless and idly wondered what that made me. I was more upset about her breaking a teacup than her stating what was very likely the truth—that Colin didn’t love me.
    “Why do you care?”
    “Why don’t you?”
    I sucked in a breath through my nose and parted my lips for it to leave, wishing it would carry away the anger building up inside of me.
    “You’re weak.” She was trying to wound me, but she wasn’t succeeding. The truth didn’t hurt—her complete lack of care for her own mother did. She wrenched the cup away from my hands.
    Her eyes glittered under the yellow kitchen light. “Four hundred.”
    I reached for the cup and she held it up, poking me painfully in the chest with one curved fingernail.
    “You’re just like me—you just don’t see it. Better not to let yourself feel for him, Trista.” Her eyes still glittered and her lips curved, so proud she was, for helping harden her daughter to love. “Because he’s going to leave you. They always do.” Her finger moved down and poked me in the stomach. “Just make sure he doesn’t knock you up, like