Tamed by the Bad Boy Next Door

The Deep End

She decided to change the subject.

“Did Mom tell you more about why she couldn’t come?”

George replied in a neutral tone, “Just that something came up.”

“Oh,” Ainsley said, not hiding her disappointment. “That’s all she told me too.”

“…I’m sure she’s very sorry.”

Though she wasn’t as certain of that, Ainsley nodded. “Yeah.”

…

Ainsley’s mother, Margaret, suffered from mental ailments.

Ainsley hadn’t really noticed this while she was growing up. Her mother had been nothing but kind and doting to her, but there were weeks or even months at a time when Margaret would have little energy to do anything—not even provide her only child with her basic needs.

George worked a lot back then, but during such times, he would make an effort to be home as much as he could to quietly take up the slack.

That was part of the reason why Ainsley never felt anything was amiss. It was only when she grew older and could take care of herself that the cracks started to show.

George gradually poured more of his time into work, coming home late each weeknight and getting to spend time with Ainsley only in the mornings. Even during the weekends, he’d be busy more often than not overseeing his various businesses.

It turned out that he only made an effort during his wife’s past bouts of illness for their daughter’s sake. He had already tried so many times to help Margaret get better, but over and over again, she would suddenly stop taking her meds and they would all go back to square one.

He had grown tired of it at some point. Given her pattern of behavior, he couldn’t help but suspect Margaret didn’t want to get better.

She, of course, couldn’t fail to notice how cold her husband had become over the years. To her credit, she would wait until Ainsley had fallen asleep before confronting him about his increased absence, eventually accusing him of cheating on her.

But despite his own faults, George never did such a thing. He had simply fallen out of love with the woman who, knowingly or unknowingly, had weaponized her helplessness to keep him tied to her.

Margaret didn’t believe him. Off her meds, she became increasingly paranoid that her husband had someone else—perhaps even started a whole new family on the side. She would demand to check his phone and various accounts obsessively, wanting to find evidence of his cheating.

However, far from being convinced that he was telling the truth each time she didn’t find any, she only grew certain that he was good at hiding his tracks. Her paranoia then escalated until she started stalking him in person.

She couldn’t hide what she was doing for long. With her mother also constantly out of the house, Ainsley was being left all alone to fend for herself. She was in her mid-teens by this point, but still far too young and sheltered not to be distressed by it.

That was the last straw for George. He had planned on waiting until Ainsley turned eighteen before divorcing his wife, but now that Margaret’s behavior was putting their child’s safety at risk, he could no longer afford to wait.

Margaret refused to accept that her own actions were the cause of her husband leaving her. She simply took this as the final proof of his betrayal. Until the bitter end, she never believed that George had remained faithful even after their relationship was already in tatters.

During the divorce proceedings and the battle for her custody, Ainsley could no longer be shielded from what was really going on. It also didn’t help that her mother’s sanity was by then only hanging by a thread.

When she alternately fought with and begged for her soon-to-be ex-husband not to leave her, she took to doing it within their daughter’s hearing, allowing her to finally see the extent of Margaret’s mental instability.

On paper, it seemed to be a no-brainer that George would have Ainsley’s full custody.

But the girl herself couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her mother all alone, especially not when her condition was the way it was. She wasn’t selfish or naive enough to plead for her parents to stay together, but couldn’t she at least stay with both of them equally?

George couldn’t possibly allow such a thing. When even he couldn’t succeed in helping his wife, how could Ainsley?

In the end, the decision was taken from both their hands. Margaret tried to overdose the day before the divorce was to be finalized.

She was luckily discovered by Ainsley in time and her life was saved. As a consequence, however, she was directly admitted to a psychiatric hospital and lost what little chance she had of continuing to raise her child.

George didn’t care if it made him a bad or callous person, but he could never forgive his now former wife for the trauma she had caused their daughter. Margaret had thankfully survived, but it was a close thing, and Ainsley couldn’t have known when she found her mother that she would make it.

As it stood, that harrowing experience was already something Ainsley would never forget. If her mother had died, it was painfully easy to imagine what kind of lasting effect that would have left on her psyche.

Even though George had no doubt that Margaret loved their daughter as much as he did, that love simply wasn’t strong enough for her to overcome her own issues for Ainsley’s sake.

He also couldn’t help but think that a part of her wanted to use what would have been that final act to take revenge on him. She couldn’t make him stay with her, so she likely wanted to saddle him with the fallout that her loss would have created.

Back then, George wouldn’t have been surprised if Ainsley had blamed him for everything. He also used to think he had failed Margaret in some way.

But much to his gratitude, Ainsley also saw things from his perspective. He had tried to help her mother as much as he could for as long as he could. It’s just that, none of his efforts mattered in the end because the person in question didn’t want to help herself.

With Margaret now in a place where she could receive the treatment she needed, the father and daughter could only hope that her condition would improve.

And it did—at least for a time.

After being released, she went back to live temporarily with her parents until she could find a job and get back on her feet. She was granted visitation rights every other weekend, and during those times when Ainsley saw her, she was back to being that loving and attentive mother she’d known from childhood.

They would often go out, just two big girls shopping and sightseeing and having a blast together.

It was Margaret who introduced Ainsley to the activity they had dubbed “boy spotting.” It wasn’t fair, she said, that men could ogle women as much as they wanted without being judged too harshly for it—simply because “boys will be boys.” Since it would be impossible to make them all stop, “equality” in this case should mean women could do the same to them.

Still a little naive, and honestly just happy at the progress her mother seemed to have made, Ainsley took this interest of Margaret’s as a sign that she was ready to move on, perhaps start dating again.

As she did about most things in her life, Ainsley had shared this observation with her father, and George seemed to have taken the news with immense relief.

Despite everything, he wished Margaret well. She was the woman he had chosen to marry, the mother of his child. He had loved her until he couldn’t anymore.

Everything was going great until Ainsley let it slip to her mother that George had recently started seeing someone. Her mother went off the rails soon after that, and though it never got as bad as it did years prior, she was never the same again.

Even before Ainsley graduated from high school and went off to college, her meetings with her mother had already become rarer, with the older woman citing she was feeling too unwell or that there was something important she had to see to.

It was as if, after realizing there was no more chance that she and George could get back together, she had lost interest in the only remaining connection they had.

***

After a couple of hours in the car that the sleep-deprived Ainsley had mostly spent snoozing, George stopped at a diner so they could get something to eat.

It was there that George inquired, “How are you getting along with Sebastian?”