Chapter Twenty-Two LIAM
Chapter Twenty-Two
L IAM
“Why don’t you tell me about your family of origin, Liam?”
I exhaled slowly, somehow managing to keep a growl from emerging along with it. “Do I have to?”
Carol, fucking sadist that she was, merely gave me a calm, steady, patient smile. “I can’t force you to tell the truth, no. But it will help. Both of you bring history and baggage and trauma into this situation. It’s not just about Mira; it’s equally about you and Zoe. How the two of you communicate, how you manage inevitable disagreements. Those are all swayed by what you’ve been through.”
My options were slim.
I could bolt through the door. And there was a window behind Carol’s head. If I shoved her out of the way and used a lamp to break the window, I might be able to squeeze through before they dragged me back to that bloody couch.
To my right, Zoe sat with her legs crossed and her hands clasped in her lap. Slowly, I turned my head to pin her with a look. She gave me an apologetic smile.
I narrowed my eyes.
Carol tilted her head. “You seem upset by this change of direction. Would you like to talk about that?”
“Not particularly,” I drawled. “I thought this session was for Mira.”
“And it is. My colleague is with her in the main living area; I believe they’re playing with blocks right now.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, speaking softly enough that only Zoe could hear me. “Can’t we play fucking blocks at home for free?”
Zoe cleared her throat.
Right. I dropped my hand and sucked in a large, fortifying breath.
My whole body felt squeezed tight with tension, like these two women had set me in a man-shaped vise and were cranking the handle over and over and over until I had no choice but to spill my fucking guts onto the floor.
Carol smiled. “She’s a bit younger than we normally start with our kids. Usually, we wait until they turn three before initiating any form of play therapy, but given the circumstances of losing her parents, I think it’s wise that we establish a bond with her as she grows older.”
A lift of my eyebrows was all the concession I could manage.
She tilted her head. “A distrust of therapy is incredibly common, Liam. Where did that start for you?”
I leaned back on the couch, my shoulder brushing Zoe’s, and I settled my hands over my stomach so I could study Carol. She was friendly enough. Short gray hair and a grandmotherly manner that probably instilled a sense of comfort in all the little kiddies she saw every day.
Probably knitted the purple sweater she was wearing, even though it was easily seventy-five degrees outside. And the pearls around her neck looked real.
Next to me, Zoe inhaled slowly. She smelled like something fresh and clean and sweet. I couldn’t name it. The entire drive over, I’d tried to place what that smell was and couldn’t.
I imagined I’d have a better chance if I tucked my nose underneath that soft spot just below her jaw, where her scent was the most potent.
Those thoughts wouldn’t help shit, which was likely why we had both wandered into the kitchen with dark circles under our eyes. No sleep for either of us, as we’d been thinking about what had happened.
Thinking about what hadn’t quite happened.
Carol smiled patiently, completely undeterred by the silence that followed her question.
Of course we’d found the most stubborn therapist west of the Mississippi. She’d wait me out—I could see it in those shrewd eyes of hers.
“My mum had me sit down with a shrink when I was maybe ten?” I said. “Complete wanker, he was. Had a little notebook that he wrote in when I refused to answer his stupid questions about what I was feeling and why my mum had sent me there. I went twice. Never said a single word to him, and in front of me, he told my mum that I’d do well with intensive psychiatric help someday.” I shrugged. “When I told her I didn’t like him, she cried the whole way home and never made me go back.”
Carol’s eyes got sad. “I’m sorry that was your experience. I don’t blame you for not trusting people in our profession. But it says a lot that you’re willing to let Mira have a different experience. Do you feel like you’d trust people more if you’d been able to talk about your parents’ divorce at a young age?”
I trusted people just fine.
It was myself I had less faith in.
“I never told you my parents were divorced,” I answered evenly.
My voice was the only even, calm thing about me. Inside, everything burned. The flames were too high, threatening to flow over dangerously.
It was far too tender of a place to poke when I was already walking on the edge of my sanity after the kissing.
Our entire situation felt precarious. And that was just me and Zoe. If this woman tried to rope my past into the conversation, I was likely to detonate in a messy burst.
A scar that was best left alone. An itch I couldn’t scratch because it was buried so deep beneath the surface.
The moment someone tugged at my past, a sticky discomfort spread over every inch of my body, and there was nothing I could do to make it go away.
So I ignored it. Until I couldn’t.
“You’re right, you didn’t,” Carol said. “I made an assumption when you only mentioned your mother, but I shouldn’t have done that.” She held up her hands. “Let’s change the subject for now. We can schedule separate sessions to discuss upbringings if that makes you both feel more comfortable.”
Zoe nodded, glancing sideways. “That’s fine with me.” She looked tentative. Her eyes were filled with hesitancy. Apology.
It made me want to claw my skin off.
This was the woman who’d met me fearlessly the entire time. For years, she had. Chased me down in the parking lot to give me a piece of her mind. Swung a bat at my head. Granted, she didn’t know it was me at the time, but even if she had, I couldn’t help but think she still would’ve done it.
A couple of kisses and she wasn’t sure how to handle me.
I stood before I knew what I was doing. “Gonna go check on Mira,” I said tersely. Neither woman said a word as I strode from the room.
What I found stopped me short.
They weren’t playing blocks anymore. They’d moved to a big farmhouse-style table in the area just off the kitchen. The surface was covered with papers, crayons, and colored pencils.
The young woman next to Mira had her head bent over her own paper while Mira scribbled messily on a giant piece of yellow construction paper. She’d hardly noticed that I’d entered the room, so I walked quietly.
The therapist sitting with her lifted her head and smiled encouragingly as I approached. “Want to color with us?” she asked.
I didn’t answer her, though. My eyes were trained on Mira’s paper. At first, I could hardly make sense of the shapes and pieces. Jagged lines of brown and yellow and red and blue and black.
The proportions were completely off. It would never win any art awards, not in any universe. And there was no doubt in my mind that I’d see that picture when I closed my eyes for the rest of my fucking life.
The longer I stared, the more I wondered if anyone else in the room had heard the break of my bones as my chest cracked wide open.
It was us.
My hand, a wobbly line, was on Mira’s. My hair was a giant black blob, and in the area of my face, she’d given me a straight line for a mouth. Zoe—clearly identifiable because of the wild hair and the big, red, crooked smile—was on the other side of Mira.
In between the larger figures flanking her, Mira was only clear because of the brown hair. Instead of her body, she’d attempted to draw a heart over her chest.
I crouched next to her, settling my hand on her back. She was so little. Sometimes that was easy to forget because of how bloody big her personality was.
“What do you have here, duck?” I asked quietly.
Mira stopped, beaming up at me with a smile so big that I felt it in my fucking soul. “I drawing a family.”
My vision blurred. Why couldn’t I fucking see anything? I blinked rapidly, trying to clear that shit away. “It’s really good,” I told her. Fucking hell, my voice was all wobbly and shit.
I covered my mouth with one hand and stood on weak legs.
The therapist at the table watched me carefully.
I hardly noticed, because it felt an awful lot like all the carefully constructed blocks of my world were coming down in a spectacular crash, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. What was left in the aftermath was a cloud of dust and me standing like an idiot in that room, with wet cheeks and a painfully tight chest.
My breaths came faster and faster, and I shoved a hand through my hair as I stared back at the door leading to the office I’d just exited. My fingers tingled ominously.
“If you need a minute, my office is empty,” the woman at the table said in a gentle voice.
I didn’t need a minute. An hour wouldn’t help.
I needed this out. I needed to slice out the poison because it felt like it was choking me, and I couldn’t handle the bitter taste in my mouth anymore.
I wanted the sweetness I’d gotten glimpses of before.
Mint and chocolate and whatever else she’d given me.
After taking only a few steps, I shoved open the door to Carol’s office.
Zoe glanced up in surprise. Her eyes sharpened when she saw my face, mouth falling open.
“I don’t like talking about my old man,” I said.
I wasn’t yelling. I didn’t bark it out. Every shred of control I was capable of summoning funneled straight into that one thing.
Carol sat back in her chair and watched wordlessly, but I kept my eyes on Zoe.
“The only thing I remember about him is how he sounded when he yelled, which he did a lot. When he called my mum names and kicked a chair into her path to trip her when she walked past. And what he looked like when he punched her in front of me for the first time.” My hand curled into a fist—it was huge when I looked down at it. “Full on, no holding back, and I was sitting five feet away. I’ll never forget what it sounded like when his fist hit her face.”
Zoe sucked in a sharp breath, her eyes filling immediately.
“After he hit her, I screamed at him to stop,” I rasped, “and he turned right toward me, so fucking pissed off that I’d tell him what to do. That fist never disappeared, and my mum jumped right in between us. Told him that if he was still mad, he should take it out on her.”
My entire frame trembled, and I forced the words out. They were bitter and vile. “He didn’t. Probably just smart enough to know people would notice if she turned up completely black and blue. He went to the pub instead—where they always fucking idolized him, treated him like he walked on bloody water. She packed us a bag each, took all the cash she’d been hiding in her sock drawer, and we walked out of the house. Never went back. Never saw him face-to-face again.”
Silent tears tracked down Zoe’s cheeks, every single one of them carving up my heart.
With a closed fist, I tapped my chest. “But I see him every time I look in the fucking mirror because I look exactly like him. My whole life, I’ve been reminded how much I’m like him, and when you hear that enough at seven and eight and nine and ten years old, you start believing it. Even worse when you’re older. I promised myself I’d never put myself in a position where I could hurt someone like he hurt her.” I was choking on the words, so they came out tight and urgent and fierce. “I did everything I could to not end up like him. Found a way to channel all this anger I have rooted deep inside me. It’s ugly, and I hate it. I won’t do it to you, Zoe. Or her.” My voice cracked. “It scares me fucking witless to think I might. I’d never forgive myself.”
Zoe had a hand over her mouth now because she was crying openly.
I dashed my palm over my cheeks. “I don’t like talking about him,” I said brokenly.
She inhaled raggedly. “Why are you talking about him now?”
“For her,” I managed. But that wasn’t true. Or not entirely. So I held Zoe’s gaze and thought of all the ways she’d shown me how to be brave. “And for you.”
Her chin trembled.
Carol cleared her throat, a delicate sound that echoed like a gunshot.
I blinked.
“Thank you for sharing that, Liam,” she said.
I nodded, but even if she paid me a million dollars, I wouldn’t make eye contact with that woman while I had tears in my eyes. I already felt like I’d been stripped naked in the middle of the fucking room.
“It takes a lot of strength to break the cycles of abuse,” Carol added. “I give you and your mother all the credit in the world for doing that.”
“I didn’t do shit,” I said. “She’s the strong one.”
Neither woman argued with me, and I was thankful for that. But I was too busy staring down at the floor to know whether they wanted to.
“Can we be done for today?” I asked in a raw voice that I hardly recognized.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Carol answered. “I hope you’ll come back, Liam. My door will always be open to you. Both of you.”
Zoe stood, and as much as I didn’t want to look at her, I found my attention shifting to her face.
Her eyes were slightly red from the tears, and she was smiling softly at Carol.
When her gaze moved to mine, my legs threatened to buckle. I knew that if they did, I’d end up on my knees in front of her, my head pressed against her stomach and my arms around her.
No one in the world had ever looked at me like that.
The understanding in her face was more than I could handle, especially with the sharp buzz of vulnerability still hanging thick in the air.
But there was so much more buried there, things I couldn’t name and didn’t dare try to define. All the things I’d insulated myself from, if I was being honest.
Zoe would be able to gut me with the simplest of actions because I’d all but rolled over at her feet.
“Ready to go?” she asked.
No.
Yes.
I didn’t know anymore, but I nodded all the same.
The only thing I knew for sure was that there was no going back from this. And based on the look in her eyes as we loaded Mira into the car and started on our way home, the conversation that waited for us was about to get a whole lot bigger.