Chapter Three LIAM
Chapter Three
L IAM
I was out of my seat before I had the coherent thought to move. My hands fisted at my sides, and my blood roared through my veins like a tidal wave. Everything crashed and clanged around in my head—nothing clear enough to process.
It was just . . . loud.
So loud.
No . That was the only thought I could pluck out of the entire mess.
When I was younger, my mum used to let me watch The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show . She hated setting me in front of the telly, but sometimes she needed the break. And I always loved the parts where Charlie was at school, his teacher’s voice some distorted, strange sound that didn’t make any sense.
When I speared my hands into my hair and tried to take in a deep breath, tried to make sure I was still breathing at all, the lawyer’s voice likewise pierced the chaos in my head.
I stared at him for a beat and noticed his mouth was very much moving, but I could not understand one fucking word he was saying.
Right. There were other people in the room.
Zoe was in the room.
Amie’s best friend, whom I didn’t actually dislike. I just didn’t know how to fucking talk to her. Every time we were in the same room, she’d look at me with those bright golden-green eyes, and because I’d never seen eyes like that, I always felt the urge to growl at her until she went somewhere else.
Zoe, who at the moment had her head in her hands, her mass of wavy hair falling over the sides of her face so that I couldn’t see those eyes and definitely couldn’t tell one way or the other what she thought of this bleeding idiocy.
Her shoulders trembled slightly, and a cold slice of panic knifed through my ribs at the thought of this making her cry.
“No.”
The word came out in much the same way that I’d pushed out of my chair. Zoe stilled at the sound of my voice. The lawyer stopped his yammering and tilted his head to the side.
He cleared his throat. A delicate little sound. Like he was about to cross a minefield covered with shards of glass and wasn’t sure how to navigate it without losing a fucking limb.
“I know this is a shock,” he said slowly. “We can talk through all of your reservations.”
“Don’t need to.” I set my hands on my hips. “I said no. Don’t want kids. Never have, and Chris fucking knew that.” My voice got louder. The panic churning restlessly under my ribs did too. It felt like a bomb was going to explode through my skin.
Apparently, the news was enough to make Zoe, the sweet friend with the sweet face and the golden eyes, explode too.
“But they chose you,” she yelled, turning in her chair.
I wished she hadn’t.
No one could be quite prepared for a look to gut them clean through. But she managed it effectively. She wasn’t any happier about this than I was, but buried in her face, pushing through all the other things she was likely feeling, was the kind of naked grief that was uncomfortable to meet head-on.
Her eyes, as bright and glossy as the surface of that stupid table, shone with it, and despite how much I wanted to, I couldn’t look away.
“They chose you,” she said again, more quietly this time. “Because they thought it was best for Mira to have both of us.”
“I didn’t ask them to.” I kept my voice low. Kept it even and steady.
A fucking miracle, really. And maybe she recognized the dangerous quality of that low, even, and steady tone. But she tilted her chin all the same.
“They didn’t have time to ask.”
Fucking. Hell.
Was I bleeding?
If she’d swung a steel beam into my balls, it would’ve had less of an impact. I held her relentless gaze for only a moment before conceding to the winning blow.
Her phone screen lit up on the table, and the picture saved as her background image snagged my attention.
It was Mira—cheesy smile, messy face, and her mum’s eyes.
I rubbed at my chest, surprised that I could still feel my heart working.
Zoe noticed me staring and took a quick glance at the phone. “Forgive me for being rude; I need to answer a question for the babysitter.”
A hundred questions sprang to the tip of my tongue, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t hold the first one back. “Who’d you leave her with?”
I felt her eye roll more than I saw it, because her fingers were flying across the screen. “Rosa lives across the street from me, so she was Chris and Amie’s neighbor too. She raised four kids and has twelve grandkids, so she’s perfectly capable, I promise.” Zoe set the phone down, then settled back in her chair with a dejected slump. “She’s been ... helping.”
Byron took the silent moment after her statement to raise his hands. “I think maybe we should take a five-minute break and get a drink, maybe cool our heads a little bit now that the shock has worn off.”
Slowly, I arched my eyebrows. “Has it now?”
Most of the rookies hated it when I talked to them like that. They’d shrink back into their lockers when I used that tone. Because they knew it meant they should proceed with caution, if they’d done something to piss me off.
“I can’t imagine how hard this must be for both of you,” he continued, undeterred. “Zoe, you’ve done a wonderful job with Mira, from what I’m told.”
She sighed. “Thank you. She’s ... she makes it easy.” Her voice gentled. “Mira is a great kid.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
My skin was too tight and my temper too fragile, fraying at the edges like a rope about to snap. I pinched my eyes closed, conjuring her smiling little face. I hadn’t seen her for at least a month, during one of my last visits to Chris and Amie’s.
It hurt to remember them. Remember how things used to be.
But sometimes I did exactly that—drowned myself in the past because the pain was so much better than the sadness.
With my eyes closed to the people watching me, I clawed up the memory.
Mira was tugging at the hem of my shorts, grabbing for whatever food Amie had prepared for us. “This is my dinner, kid,” I told her. “Don’t you get your own?”
Amie laughed, scooping Mira up into her arms to blow a raspberry into the little girl’s neck. Her giggle pulled a reluctant smile to my face.
“You talk to her like you talk to the team,” Amie teased. “Here.”
Then she deposited Mira in my arms and laughed at the shock on my face. “I don’t know how to hold kids,” I told Amie. Mira squeezed my nose, and I made a low growling noise that made her laugh.
She pinched my nose a second time, then smiled that little smile, with bright-white teeth and eyes that shone expectantly.
So I made the noise again.
Amie grinned at us, patting me on the arm. “See ... you do just fine, Liam. You just need a little push every once in a while.”
I swiped a hand over my mouth now, pulling out of the memory before it could make things worse.
“Mr. Davies,” the lawyer said, “if you don’t think you need a break, please take a seat, and we’ll start going through all of this.”
I didn’t move. “Don’t need to take a seat.”
The fucker smiled.
A soft smile. A gentle smile. Like he understood .
He didn’t understand shit.
“Please.” He gestured to the chair.
For a split second, I thought about picking it up and heaving it across the room.
But I wasn’t with my team. I wasn’t surrounded by people who knew me, who knew the man I was underneath the horrible urge to lob objects when shit knocked me sideways.
So I closed my eyes again and thought about that cute little shit who pinched my nose to make me growl, and then I yanked the chair backward so I could sit down. Beside me, Zoe took a slow, deep breath.
I bet she wasn’t thinking about breaking chairs.
When I pulled mine closer to the table and calmly rested my folded hands on the surface, her shoulders relaxed incrementally.
I’d done that. I’d made her tense.
The realization tasted like acid in my throat, burning all the way down.
Byron nodded again. “Good. Keep in mind that figuring out the best way to do this will take time and honesty on both your parts.” He gave me a steady look. “It will require patience .”
I cocked an eyebrow and clenched my jaw.
Byron didn’t so much as blink. Somehow, the skinny lawyer with wire-rimmed glasses had bigger balls than half the guys on my team.
He continued. “And if you’re willing, I’d highly suggest meeting with a counselor—together and separately—to help you navigate the inevitable stresses that will come with the two of you sharing guardianship of Mira.”
“No.”
They both looked at me.
Byron was unsurprised. Zoe was annoyed.
Good, because I was annoyed too.
“That’s it?” she asked. “You’re just gonna say no to whatever you don’t feel like doing?”
I crossed my arms and studied the table. “I don’t need a counselor, because I’m not fit to be anyone’s guardian.”
“On that we agree,” Zoe said sweetly. Then she smiled.
It was not a nice smile. The sweet friend might not have been into throwing chairs, but she sure as fuck was thinking about punching me in the nuts.
“Regardless,” Byron said, “your best friend and his wife felt that you were fit. Both of you.”
Briefly, I flicked my gaze over to Zoe. Then I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t seem terribly surprised by any of this.”
She swallowed. “Amie and I ...” Her voice trailed off. “We had a conversation about it when they were making their trust decisions. She told me there were only a couple people she could imagine trusting with Mira, and I was one of them.”
I tilted my chin up and stared at the ceiling for a beat. But I could feel her golden bloody eyes fixed heavily on my face.
I turned back to her and met those eyes unflinchingly, a zing sliding down my spine when she didn’t look away.
“Me being the other,” I finished.
“Apparently.”
Byron cleared his throat, then slid the folders closer to us again. Mine had traveled a bit farther than Zoe’s when I’d slammed it back down onto the table.
“I know it doesn’t help right now,” Byron said, “but there were a few loose ends in Chris and Amie’s trust. Naturally, they felt like they had plenty of time to have conversations with everyone involved.”
I clenched my fists.
“Where do we start?” Zoe asked. “Mira is with me at my house right now, but ...” Her voice trailed off, and she glanced in my direction. “I don’t even know where you live.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I managed.
“Here we go,” she said on a sigh. “You are impossible.”
“On the contrary. I’m going to make this very, very easy for you.” I spread my hands out wide. “I’ll send you a check every month to help out with Mira, and you’ll never have to deal with me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you being serious?”
“I am.” I shot her a smile, then aimed one at Byron, who was sitting back in his chair and eyeing me with interest. “Tell me where to sign and I’ll be on my way.”
He blinked a couple of times. “Ah, nothing for you to sign at the moment. This was ... informational in nature. We’ll deal with finances at a later meeting; that’s when I’ll have bank paperwork for you.”
“Excellent.” I pushed my chair back and notched my fingers at my temple in a salute. “Byron, have a lovely day.” I glanced down at Zoe, who gaped at me, eyes wide. “Valentine, I’ll drop a check in the mail.”
And I walked out before I could do any further damage.