Free Teach Me To Live (Teach Me - Book One) by Alannah Carbonneau

words, disaster would be inevitable. So, I thought better of the words I wanted to say, as I remembered the way Austin made me feel inside. I didn’t intend to ruin the possibilities of my seeing him again by demolishing the good inside of him by shedding light on what Mom would more than certainly consider a rotten exterior.
    “Did you find anything to help you in your search?” I asked acidly. I felt, in a way, violated. I was almost nineteen years old and my parents had snooped through my bedroom after our fight as though I were little more than twelve years old. I had a right to be out past 10:00 pm. I had a right to see a boy, and if I wanted, to create a relationship with said boy. I had a right to live, and by all that’s holy, I have a right to happiness.
    If I make a mistake, then it’s mine. I’ll live with it. And I will learn from it. And I will become better for it.
    If I fall in love and my heart is broken, then I’ll live with that, too. I’ll live with that love that was once mine, and I will cherish it because what was once love can never be all bad, even after heartbreak.
    If I fail and break, then that failure is mine and it is for me to decide when the pieces of me need to be rebuilt. It is for me to decide how those pieces of me are rebuilt.
    It’s not up to my parent’s. It’s not their job anymore. I’m a woman. I’m growing up and the tether they have me on needs to be cut. I’m aching, so deeply inside, to fly.
    How can they not see how truly caught I am within their protective snare?
    Again, I glanced around the caged freedom that was the pool house. A little bit of the elation that began to burn in Austin’s presence dimmed until it was little more than a simmer.
    Anger took its place.
    My eyes took in the open door of my bedroom and I knew they’d been searching for my journal.
    Hurt bloomed and resentment flared.
    She thought I was acting like a child, but I felt as though I were being belittled like one. It was all I could do to keep myself from losing my head and the little sanity that lived there. It was all I could do not to scream at her. Not to stomp my foot in rage and betrayal—like a child would.
    But I didn’t. I simply stood there with my face drawn in an impenetrable mask. My hurt and anger and resentment were pushed so far down, I had a feeling that they weren’t even shining from my eyes. For so many people, the eyes were a window to the raw truth in a soul. But for me, my eyes displayed no secrets. My eyes were under lock and key. Impenetrable.
    I glanced once more around the space my parent’s had offered me. The space that wasn’t really mine, and repeated, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
    “If I had found something, you would have been home before half past ten.”
    I thanked the heavens that I took my diary with me wherever I went. If I had left it here, she would have read all about the blue eyed, tatted creature, who claimed my every thought for the last eight days. Yes, I knew eight days was a little much to be obsessing over some man I met in a coffee shop. But if you had seen his eyes . . .
    You would be obsessing too.
    I shook my head of thoughts of Austin. “What do you want, Mom?”
    “I want to know more about this boy you were out with.” She folded her arms over her chest and I knew she was deflecting in fear of the words I was about to say.
    “I don’t want to tell you about him.”
    “What’s his name?” She asked, as though I hadn’t just told her I wished to keep him from her.
    “I just said,”
    “Madison, I’ve spent the day arguing with your Father, my husband, on your behalf. The least you can do is answer the questions I’m asking you.” Her voice was sharp and I knew without question that she wouldn’t let this go. And then her words hit me, like a bullet to the heart.
    She’d been fighting with my Father, her husband, on my behalf. Mom and Dad didn’t fight. They just didn’t do that. But today, they’d