Irrational (Underneath it All Series: Book Two) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Read Online Free Page A

Mom would starve if it wasn't for me. I would starve."
    The undercurrent I’d sensed in her voice was a little more than that. It was a riptide that would have brought me to my knees if I wasn't literally squeezing the life out of the cushion. It was easy to be angry at my mother. She moved in some guy with her underage daughter. She packed Rose's bag like she was running some sort of hotel. It took more than four walls to make a home and the place we grew up was pretty much a home in name only, thanks to that woman. But the fury that poured gasoline in my veins and lit a match didn't compare to the guilt that pulverized my heart. Our mother had committed her sins, with no visible sign that she would ever admit, never mind actually taking steps to atone.
    What was my excuse? I’d been so blinded by my resentment that I threw the baby out with the bath water. When was the last time I came home just to hang out with Rose? When was the last time I reached out and just checked on her and listened to her and was just there ? Sure, I would drop any and everything to swoop in to save the day, but when I eyed the taut lines in her back, it was clear that she needed a sister more than a savior.
    I scooted from the couch and the floor didn't do a thing to mask my approach. Rose smacked her lips disapprovingly before I even made it to the kitchen table.
    "Whatever you've got to say, can you say it when I'm not trying to fix dinner?" she spat over her shoulder.
    I had a choice to make.
    The first one was the choice I'd been ticking. Giving her space and avoiding confrontation was what I thought I was doing by keeping my distance. I could turn around and park my ass back on the couch and after she had some time to bang some pans around and angrily toss some salad, we could ignore the elephant in the room and pretend like everything was okay. The other option was to say what I needed to say. Something that seemed so obvious, so necessary to move forward to a different place that I was kinda ashamed I hadn’t done it already.
    I'm sorry.
    Two words that could open the door for us to begin to heal. Two words, and we could be sisters, and not just two people who shared DNA and a mother who drove us crazy.
    I paused at the dining room table, perching my fingertips on a stack of bills and spam. For all my strength and ability to stare down anything in the name of protecting her, saying those two words was harder than I thought it would be.
    I grasped at straws, my eyes glossing over the ‘Falcon High Cheerleader’ screen printed on her sweatshirt. The pang of disgust that my mother had once carried pom poms through those halls but called Rose's time on the squad 'a waste of time' was still there, but I didn't cling to that. I was making it about me, and that didn't lead to anywhere healing.
    "Remember when you found Mom's old varsity jacket in the shed and I taught you how to do a cartwheel?"
    Even though she was right in front of me, still pissed as hell, my mind took me back to that day. I could feel the sun beating down on us, drenching me with sweat. I'd been curled up on the grass with a book when I heard Rose's squeal. My heart stopped until I saw that my premonition that if she didn't steer clear of the shed it would collapse on her didn't come true.
    Rose was standing beside the old shed, her tiny, eight year old body swallowed whole by this letterman jacket. I'd rolled my eyes, ready to give her an earful as I pulled off the jacket our mother had claimed from some poor jock. I stopped when I got closer and saw the name ‘McLeod’ stitched on it.
    The wonder that beamed from Rose, the sleeves trailing on the ground. The way my heart broke when she said she wanted to be a cheerleader "like mommy”...
    There was a part of me that wanted to shake sense into her deluded head and tell her the last person she should ever emulate was our mother. Instead, I plastered a grin on my face and said, "Well, if you're gonna be a cheerleader, I