A Lot Like Adiós (Primas of Power, #2)

by Alexis Daria

After almost two years in limbo as a freelancer, she’d taken the step to officially start her own business and get back to the work she loved doing.

But who was she really punishing here?

She’d allowed herself to be vulnerable. To be seen. To ask for what she wanted. How many people never felt that in their whole lives? She’d once been one of those people. And now that she’d felt it, she’d always know. She deserved better. And she would survive, no matter what.

Had his mother always been this way? Saying one thing and meaning something else? Why was he only able to see it so clearly now? Because you’re an adult now, his brain supplied. Before he’d left at eighteen, Gabe had still viewed his parents through the lens of a child, interpreting their actions only in relation to himself. He hadn’t yet learned to see them as real people. Now, he’d been gone so long, it was like seeing dual images of them: the parents he remembered, and the people—older people—that they were now. He was forced to confront the truth that they were fully formed humans beyond their roles as Mami and Papi.

His parents seemed much more mellow than he remembered, and Gabe noticed he was better at managing his own emotional responses to them.