Don’t tell my—

I grabbed the paper towel sitting beside my plate and held it under my chin as I spit my rice into it—wasting precious food and not giving a shit—as my heart rate and blood pressure racked up so fucking high, so fucking fast, it was a miracle I was just as healthy as I’d ever been in my life at that point… minus some physical stuff… because anyone else would have had a heart attack right then. At least anyone that gave half a shit about another person—and I gave a massive shit about my mom. My heart wasn’t supposed to be beating that fast while I was technically resting.

Mom groaned, sitting up straight, just as I set the paper towel beside my plate. “No, no. Don’t you spit your food out.”

I didn’t bother thinking about the last time I’d spit my food out; I didn’t need to get more pissed off. “Mom,” I said, my voice higher and squeakier than ever, sounding not at all like me and, maybe, a little like a teenager on the verge of throwing a temper tantrum.

But this wasn’t a tantrum. This was my mom being injured and not telling me about it. And not wanting me to tell anyone else about it.

The woman who had practically raised me on her own tipped her head to the side and made her eyes go wide like she was trying to tell me without words that I needed to scale back on the drama. But the thing that mostly caught my gaze was the fact that she didn’t even set her mug of tea down as she basically hissed, “Jasmine. Don’t start with me.”

“Don’t start with you?” I spit back at her, more alert than I’d ever been after a practice. Here I’d been just a minute ago, staring into the stone countertop of the kitchen island, thinking about how badly I wanted to get into the shower and go to bed… not even thinking about practices and figure skating and the future… and now, now I was about two seconds away from losing my shit. Just like that.

Because. What. The. Mother. Fuck.

“Don’t start with me,” she demanded again, taking a sip of her tea, just as easy as can be, like she wasn’t telling me to blow off her accident and concussion and broken nose, and that I couldn’t tell my siblings about it for whatever reason she had in her head. “I’m fine,” she said before I ignored her don’t start with me BS and leaned forward, blinking at her, like I had the worst dry eyes in the world.

“Why didn’t you call and tell me?” I asked, using a tone that would have definitely gotten me grounded ten years ago, as anger twisted my guts. Why hadn’t she?

My hands had started shaking.

My hands never shook. Never. Not when I was mad over getting screwed by people I had slightly trusted. Not while I was waiting to skate. Not after I skated. Not when I lost. Not when I won. Never.

Mom rolled her eyes and focused on her phone again, trying her best to be dismissive. I knew what she was doing. It wouldn’t be the first time. “Jasmine,” she said my name just forcefully enough for me not to make another smart-ass comment. “Calm down.”

Calm down. Calm down?

I opened my mouth, and she shot those blue eyes, the ones I’d be able to pick out of a color wheel with my eyes closed, in my direction once more. “I’m fine. Some dumb-dumb stopped paying attention as he exited the freeway and rear-ended me. I crashed into the car in front of mine,” she went on, and I knew why she had thought about keeping it to herself. “It isn’t worth getting worked up over. You don’t need to get mad about it. I’m fine. If I could have hidden it from you of all people, I would have.

“Ben already knows. Your brothers and sisters don’t need to worry about it either.” She made a dismissive snort. “Don’t get worked up over me. You have better things to focus on.”

My mom didn’t want me to get worked up over her because I had better things to focus on.

Raising both my hands up toward my face, I pressed the pads of my fingers to my temples and told myself to calm down. I told myself to. I tried to go over all the relaxation techniques I’d learned over the years to deal with my stress and… nope. None of it worked. None of it.

“I don’t want you to be distracted by me,” Mom insisted.

I swore my ears started to ring. “Did an ambulance have to take you to the hospital?”

She made an annoyed sound. “Yes.”

I pressed my fingers deeper into my temples.

“Oh, put your hands down and pull your thong out of your butt,” she tried to joke. “I’m fine.”

My ears definitely started to ring. For sure.

I couldn’t even look at her as I said, my voice sounding lower and hoarser than normal… not even sounding like it belonged to me, “You could have called me, Mom. If it was me in the accident—”

“You wouldn’t have called me either,” she finished.

“I—” Okay, maybe I wouldn’t have either, but that knowledge didn’t ease my anger even a little. If anything, it just made me madder. My hands shook so bad, I stretched my fingers long and lifted them up to either side of my face, shaking them. Mad, so fucking mad, I wanted to scream. “That’s not the point!”

She sighed. “You had a big day. I didn’t want to bother you.”

She didn’t want to bother me.

My mom didn’t want to bother me.

I dropped my hands and tilted my face up to the ceiling, because if I looked at my mom the way I wanted to, she’d probably smack the expression right off. And then I wondered where I’d learned to keep so many secrets. Holy fuck.

“It’s only a little concussion and a fractured nose, Grumpy. And don’t raise your voice at me,” she said for the second time, and for the second time, it had zero effect on my blood pressure. “I know what this year means to you. I want you to take advantage of it. You don’t need to worry about me.”

I replayed her last sentences in my head, and it nearly exploded. This sickening feeling swelled up from my stomach to make it to the back of my throat.

Maybe I was being dramatic, but I didn’t think so. This was my mom. My mom. The woman who had taught me by example how to get up every time I was down. She was the strongest woman I knew. The strongest, the smartest, the prettiest, the toughest, the most loyal, the hardest working….

My throated ached. Years ago, she had scared the shit out of us by saying they had found a lump in her breast that ended up being nothing, I’d heard or seen pretty much all of my brothers and sisters cry. I’d just gotten pissed off. And scared. I’d admit it. I’d been terrified for my mom and, as selfish as it was, for me. Because what the hell would I do without her?

Worst of all, I’d been a dick about the entire situation. But I blamed it on being a teenager—and on my mom being the greatest anchor in my life—on why I’d flipped the hell out and tried to blame her, like she could have prevented it somehow. Now… well, now I was pissed again but not at her.

Well, maybe at her, but only because she would have avoided telling me she’d gotten hurt if she could have, and… and because she didn’t want to distract me. Didn’t want to bother me. I balled up my fist, and if my fingernails had been any longer, I probably would have drawn blood.

“Ben met up with me at the hospital,” she explained, her voice slowly beginning to edge back into a calm, even tone. “You don’t need to get worked up.”

All I could do was stare at her.

“I want you focused,” she added. “I know how much this means to you. If the accident would have happened three months ago, I would have called you, but you’re busy again, Jasmine. I didn’t want to take away from it.”

Didn’t want to take away from it? If she had gotten hurt before I’d started training so hard again, she would have called me but now she wouldn’t?

I glanced up at the ceiling and undid my fist, stretching my fingers as wide as possible. I couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t pick them, choose them, find them, make them up. I was too stuck on her I know how much this means to you.

My chest joined my throat in the aching game.

Did she not understand I’d do anything for her? That I loved her and admired her and thought she was the greatest human being in the world? That I had no idea how she had raised five kids with my dad only being in the picture until I was three? That I didn’t understand how she could have been married three times before Ben, had her heart broken each time, but somehow she hadn’t given up hope and hadn’t let any of that stuff jade her?

There were a lot of things I didn’t let get to me. There were so many times I fell and hurt myself but kept going. But people had been assholes to me when I was younger, once, maybe a couple of times, making remarks and comments, and that alone had made me give up on strangers.

But my mom never let anything get her down for long.