Happily Ever After: (A Cinder & Ella Novel) by Kelly Oram

Author:Kelly Oram [Oram, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contemporary, romance
Publisher: Bluefields
Published: 2017-04-10T18:30:00+00:00

Brian’s mom was amazing. I could see why Brian had apologized for her in advance and had been worried about her barging into the picture after everything I’d been through the night before, but the truth was, she was exactly what I needed. She was so much like my mom—energetic and enthusiastic, with a true excitement for life. She was domineering, stubborn, opinionated, and outspoken, but she had a huge heart and was completely accepting. She’d been ready to love me long before she’d met me.

It was strange, though, because in ways, she was also a lot like my father. She was a go-getter. She was organized and efficient—something my free-spirited mama never could have managed. I don’t think she’d ever had to support herself, but she still worked hard doing charity work and working for the alumni and boosters organizations at Doug’s university. She’d been raised with money and had always run in important circles. I’d bet she’d get along really well with my elitist father. She just wasn’t snobby or judgmental about it. Liz and Doug were both great, and frankly, I was relieved that between Brian and I we had at least one set of parental figures we could look up to.

Brian left with Doug to pick up his car from the movie theater while I was in the shower. When I was done, Liz helped me downstairs, and by the time we reached ground level, I was rethinking letting Brian call his real estate agent. “It is always like that?” Liz asked when I had to go straight for a bottle of painkillers I kept in Brian’s kitchen cabinet.

I nodded as I swallowed the medicine. “Stairs are the hardest physical activity I’m capable of. That I can manage them at all is a bit of a miracle. For a long time, the doctors didn’t think I’d walk again, but I’ve got a wicked stubborn streak, and I wasn’t going to be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.”

I went to the refrigerator to see what I could scrounge up for lunch. Brian and I made breakfast late, but most of it went uneaten. Liz had brought our dishes back downstairs while I was in the shower, and was insistent that I get a proper meal in me. “Ooh. He’s still got some shrimp. How does shrimp pasta salad sound?”

“Delicious.” She blinked and glanced at me curiously. “Do you cook?”

I grinned as I pulled different ingredients from the fridge and set them on the counter. “It’s one of my favorite hobbies. My mother loved it, too. It was something we always did together. Mama worked a lot of hours in order to pay the bills. She came home late a lot, and eventually I started waiting on dinner so that we could cook together after she got home. It helped her feel less guilty about being gone so much. After that, cooking sort of became our thing.”

Liz smiled at the story, and I realized that I’d just openly talked about my mother without any sadness or fear of making things awkward.

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