“Don’t play games, Mother. Never, and especially, especially not today.”
“Games?” Patti opened her mouth to say something, then closed it and focused on selecting a tea from the basket and putting it into the pot, the scent of chamomile filling the air at once. “I came all the way from Michigan to repair our relationship, only to be forced to watch you nearly get ripped to shreds by shrapnel from your own truck. This is the first conversation you’ve willingly initiated with me in years. So believe me, whatever other faults you can assign to me, playing games isn’t on the menu.”
“Then why lie about Jaz?”
This time, Patti looked at him with an utterly confused expression. “I didn’t.”
Liam sighed, laying his hands on the table. Running an insurgency operation in Afghanistan was downright easier than discussing his love life—or lack thereof—with his mother. “For someone who has made her opinion on my inability to maintain a meaningful relationship clear to me on multiple occasions, this sudden romanticism is unbecoming. To say the least.”
“How can I have done that when you’ve never told me about a single girlfriend?” Patti demanded.
Liam’s hand curled into a fist. “So you didn’t tell me I was and always would be a useless burden to have around? That I was one of those rare people born incapable of—”
“You’re going to hold my words from twenty years ago against me now?” Patti’s voice shook as she interrupted. “I was trying to raise two children without enough money for rent and barely enough for food. I wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t even adequate. But I’ve always loved you. How could you think otherwise?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it was the part where you decided to exile me from the family. And then tell me not to come back. To put your boyfriend on the phone to tell me that you didn’t want me and that no smart person ever would.” Words that Liam had never intended to say aloud to Patti now poured from him, and he couldn’t quite understand why, except that ever since meeting Jaz, he needed to know.
Blood drained from Patti’s face. Her hands trembled around the glass so badly that the water spilled over the edge and trickled down her wrist. “I didn’t think you remembered that. I prayed that you didn’t. I said and did a lot of things back then that I’m not proud of, but that certainly doesn’t make all the drivel true. How can you even think any of it could be true with the man you’ve become?”
Patti took a sip of her water, not meeting Liam’s eyes, her own ringed with moisture.
“You don’t know how bad things were back then, Liam. How little I had to give you. If things had kept going as they were, you’d have had to drop out of school to get a job. And then when Lisa was attacked on top of everything—”
“When I let her be attacked.” If Liam wasn’t going to pull punches with Patti, he certainly wouldn’t with himself either.
“You fought like a gladiator. Bobby Johnson was eighteen years old and on the football team. You were a malnourished eleven-year-old boy. But you didn’t stop until he knocked you so hard that you were bleeding on the floor. And not even then.” Patti traced the small scar above Liam’s eyes, her touch feather soft. “Hell, why do you think Bobby’s father offered to pay for your military schooling?”
“To get me to shut up,” said Liam.
“Yes,” Patti admitted without blinking, “but it wasn’t just that. Even when you were eleven, we all realized you were a force to be reckoned with. It was Bobby’s father who saw it first, and not just because he wanted to protect his son. He took me aside and told me that you were more of a man than his Bobby ever would be. He was the one who suggested Trident Military Academy, because he’d gone there himself. He told me he hoped paying your tuition was a tiny way toward balancing the wrong of the world.”
“You never told me that.”
“No.” A tear streaked down Patti’s cheek. “Because Mr. Johnson wanted to protect Bobby, and so his offer came with strings attached. You get the best schooling and a chance at a future that I could never give you, but in exchange, you wouldn’t be around to exact the vengeance we knew you’d want. I don’t know if it matters, but Lisa agreed with the plan.”
“So you let me think that you didn’t love me,” Liam whispered. “That I wasn’t lovable.”
“It was the only way to get you to stay away. You don’t understand—being with us wasn’t safe for you. One return home, with you all spit and vinegar, and your tuition would have been pulled. I didn’t want to push you away, Liam. I hated pushing you away. But it was the only way to keep your future safe.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Liam whispered.
“For the obvious reasons at first. You hated taking anything from anyone, and you were so righteous. And right. Then because I was humiliated about what I’d done.”
Liam stared out the window, his heart bleeding. How could he blame his mother for pushing him away to keep him safe when he’d just done as much to Jaz? How could he know she was wrong without admitting the error of what he’d done? He hadn’t given Jaz a choice. And unlike the impoverished, overwhelmed Patti, he had every reason to know better.
“Liam. What is it?”
He realized Patti had his hand between hers at the same time he saw a tear fall down from his cheek onto their clasped hands.
“I think I just took a page from your playbook,” he said softly. “And I know from firsthand experience the effect that has. Except I don’t have the excuse of being alone and overwhelmed.”
“True,” said Patti. “But that also means you don’t have to wait until you get older and wiser before you start fixing things.”
Liam selected Jaz’s number from his phone, his car speaker filling with the sound of the dialing digits.
Jaz’s phone rang once, twice, five times, then disconnected without even going to voicemail. The same as it had the last three times he’d attempted to reach her. Right. Liam turned off the phone and pulled into a spot near Jaz’s apartment building, taking the stairs up two at a time to her door.
He rang the doorbell and followed it up with a knock even as the ding dong dong still echoed from the chime. Yes, he knew he was acting like an anxious teenager. And he didn’t care. He wanted to talk to her. Needed to talk to her.
Liam’s shoulders tensed as he heard the footsteps approaching the door on the other side. The lock snapped open. Liam’s stomach clenched. For a moment, his whole body tightened and he nearly took off right back down the stairs he’d just climbed—but he caught himself in time to be standing still as the door finally opened.
And Sebastian filled the doorway.
“Where’s Jaz?” Liam asked.
Sebastian lifted a brow. Behind the tall young man, Liam could see boxes filling Jaz’s apartment. Not just the couple that were brought over from his place, but many, many more. Rolls of packing tape and brown paper littered what Liam could see of the furniture. What the hell? It looked for all the world like she was moving, but why and where? He’d paid the rent on the apartment and knew for a fact that Jaz had nearly no money left in her bank account.