Chapter 6 #2
“In people who survive things they shouldn’t have had to.” It’s a test to see if she’ll react, though I’m sure she will.
That pulls her attention back to me. Really back, this time. There’s a second where her eyes are on mine, showing me the way her emotions are swirling with memories and thoughts.
I was right. I didn’t want to be right.
“You always talk like that?” she asks.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re dissecting people.”
“Only when I’m trying to understand them.” And I’m definitely getting there with her.
“And do you understand me?” she challenges.
Probably more than you’d like. “Not yet,” I say.
She holds my gaze for a second longer then looks away.
Score one.
The silence drifts for just a moment before she reaches into the cabinet beside her and pulls out a handheld strainer.
“Don’t worry,” she brushes it off casually. “It was just foster care…”
“Foster care? What about it?”
“You said ‘people who survive things,’” she says. “That’s usually not a guess.”
Fair point. “Yeah. I was in the foster system.”
She drains the pasta, movements slower now. “Me too.”
I figured. There’s a difference between people who grew up with stability and people who learned to create it themselves. “What was it like for you?”
She snorts softly. “You want the highlight reel or the honest version?”
“Honest.”
“First home sucked,” she admits bluntly. “Family had a kid already and she hated me. Parents didn’t do much to stop it.”
I don’t interrupt, letting her explain freely.
“She made it… clear I didn’t belong,” Liv continues. “Everything was hers. Everything was off-limits. I was just… there.”
Making her feel temporary, unwanted, and disposable, I assumed. I know the feeling.
“They moved me after a few months,” she adds. “Second place was better. Not warm, exactly, but… stable.”
“How so?”
“The couple worked a lot. I was the only foster kid so there wasn’t any drama.
” She shrugs, setting the drained pot of pasta onto a different burner on the stove.
She cracks an egg into the pan, tosses the shell into the trash, and starts stirring.
“I learned how to take care of myself pretty quick.”
I glance around the apartment again. Yea, that tracks.
“Guess that stuck,” she admits, following my gaze.
“It did,” I agree.
She drops half of a stick of butter into the pot, moves it back to the still hot burner, and starts stirring again.
I can’t take it anymore. I need to know. “An egg?” I ask.
“Adds protein. Plus, it makes it creamier,” she explains casually.
Huh, learn something new every day I guess.
“You’re turn,” she continues. “What was your foster story?”
I let out a breath, crossing my arms. “Short version? I got lucky.”
She looks back at me, a perked brow topping her face.
“I bounced around a bit,” I continue. “Then I got placed with a single man. And it… stuck.”
“Stuck how?”
“He adopted me.”
Her expression shifts, the other eyebrow raising to meet its twin. Curiosity and surprise fill her eyes. “A single man?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t think they allowed that.”
“Well, he had plenty of reason to get them to believe that he wanted to help a wayward kid.”
She turns back to the stove to tear open the packet of cheese powder. The brightly colored orange dust falls into the pot. She starts stirring it next. “Why’s that?”
“He’s a CEO…”
“You’re kidding.”
“I don’t kid about things like that.”
“What kind of… wait,” she turns back to me, spoon falling into the pot. “Thornton?”
“Yep.”
“No, I mean, Arthur Thornton? You’re not-”
“I am,” I reaffirm with a nod. “He’s my adopted father.”
The Thornton name isn’t too uncommon in town, let alone in this part of the country.
The family had originally settled in the area, then scattered out throughout the Northeastern states.
There’s plenty of Thorntons but since the headquarters of my father’s company is in town, it holds more pull here than elsewhere.
My grandfather had started the tech company in the mid-60s, raising my dad to know the inner workings of the company and its products.
After leaving for college to get some more headway, he’d returned, taking on a supervisory role of one of the subbranches.
But after a year, his parents passed away suddenly in a car crash, leaving Arthur Thornton as the primary owner and sudden CEO of Thornton Technologies.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “So, you went from foster care to… what, penthouses and private schools?”
“Something like that.” It’s what people always assumed about me, but since they’re right, I don’t take it to heart.
“And you chose…” she gestures vaguely at me, “…this?” There’s no judgement in it, just genuine confusion.
“I didn’t choose it in spite of that,” I say. “I chose it because of everything before it.”
She goes quiet, so I continue.
“There were things,” I continue, voice lower now, “things I saw before I got out. Things no one stopped.” My jaw hardens at the memories. Images flicker, ones that I don’t let surface fully. A man’s voice, too close and too loud. A door that didn’t lock.
I shut it down.
“After I got out,” I say, “I decided I wasn’t going to be the guy who looked the other way.”
Her gaze doesn’t leave mine, but the look behind it has changed. She isn’t just watching me anymore; she’s admiring me, for reasons I can only imagine until she tells me. “That’s very noble of you,” she says softly.
“It’s not noble,” I reply. “It’s necessary.”
“You could have had a cushy ‘Chief of Whatever’ kind of job. The kind that pays six figures while you sit on your ass all day.”
“I didn’t want that. I wanted to do something for the world,” I tell her, though I’m sure she already knows and understands. “Besides, I don’t do well with downtime.”
She huffs slightly, nearly a laugh, turning back to the stove to add the milk and stir one more time. She scoops herself a bowl and settles into one of the two barstools. I take the one next to her.
“You ever think,” she starts slowly, scooping a spoonful of cheesy noodles, “that maybe we’re both just… wired for this?”
“For what?”
“Running towards things other people avoid.”
My mouth twitches slightly. “Yeah. I’ve thought about that.”
After taking a bite, she continues. “I should want safe, normal, predictable. Like others.”
“But you don’t.”
“No,” she says, her gaze flicks to mine. “And I definitely shouldn’t find the whole ‘badge on the belt, possibly dangerous’ thing attractive.”
It’s my turn to huff a quiet laugh. “Good to know,” I murmur.
She points her spoon at me. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late.” Way too late.
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling as she takes another bite. “You sure you don’t want any?”
“Maybe I’ll give the egg mac a shot,” I give in, brought to the point where I’m genuinely curious.
She starts to get up but I put my hand out. “Don’t. I saw where everything is. Keep eating.” I couldn’t sit while she serves me anyway, let alone after she worked a long and emotionally taxing shift.
I get up, moving around her kitchen with ease while I get a bowl, spoon, and scoop myself some of the noodles from the pot. I settle back into my seat, noting the way her eyes look hopeful that I’ll like it as I stick the first bite in my mouth.
I do, and… it’s good. Simple but good. And she’s right, it is creamier.
“Don’t look so surprised,” she mutters though she’s still smiling.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m impressed.”
“That’s worse!” She lets out a boisterous laugh.
I smile; I can’t help it. Actually smile, something that her eyes lock on to.
My mind is off the food, far from thinking about the noodles and cheese.
It’s on the way she deflects pain with humor.
On the way she notices more than she says.
On the way she’s already brushing up against something dangerous… and doesn’t fully realize it yet.
Or maybe she does but is choosing to watch from a distance, to assess from afar to see it all in a way that she can’t from up close. Like she’s looking at an entire patient instead of a specific wound.
That’s a problem. Because now I’m involved. That puts her innately closer to danger. And I don’t want to walk away from things like this.
Or people like her.