5. Emma #2
No, he needs to hear it from me in person. I need to see his face when I tell him, make sure he understands, and make sure he is safe. I am still staring at his picture when the phone rings in my hand.
Liam.
“Hey, you,” I say, and warmth arrives in my voice without reservation.
“Hey sis.” He sounds winded and young and so painfully like himself that my throat tightens. “Diego says hello. He also says the dining hall should be charged with crimes against food.”
“Poor Luis used to say the exact same thing when he was there.”
“He wants Maria to open another restaurant here.” Diego must not know about Maria or the trouble his family is in. He would not joke about this so casually if he did.
I suppose the Moralez family and I have that in common. We keep the youngest ones in the dark for as long as we can, convincing ourselves that ignorance is the same thing as safety.
“Maria would practically live in the kitchen, feeding you college kids twenty-four seven until she needed an IV drip from exhaustion.”
He laughs, and for a few seconds, the knot in my chest loosens.
“When are you coming to see me?”
I look down at the counter.
“I’m playing Houston next week,” he says before I can answer. Excitement rushes into his voice. “It’s a home game. My first one. Coach thinks I’m ready.”
“That’s amazing, Liam.”
“I know my official season doesn’t start until next year, but they’re giving me a few games to see how I handle it. And if I do well, Coach said I might get a chance to play in the fall exhibition this year.”
He rattles through every detail, barely stopping to breathe, and my heart squeezes. He sounds so happy. So proud. All he wants is for me to be there, sitting in the same place I always have been.
“I need you there, Emma,” he says. “Like always.”
“Liam, I really want to come.”
The excitement drains out of his voice.
“What do you mean you want to?”
I close my eyes.
“You’ve never missed one of my games.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you talking like you might miss this one?”
“I just started this job. I don’t know if I can ask for a day off yet.”
“You have to ask Alex for permission to watch me play?”
The hurt beneath the question makes my chest ache. “It’s not like that.”
“It sounds exactly like that.”
“Liam—”
“No, seriously. When are you coming?” He pauses, and when he speaks again, the excitement has thinned. “You haven’t visited a single time since I moved. You keep saying I can’t come up there, and every time I ask when I’ll see you, you give me another excuse.”
“Bug—”
“I know you’re busy, Em. I just didn’t think you’d ever be too busy for me.”
The words hit exactly where he means them to.
“That’s not fair.”
“I’m not trying to be fair.”
A metal door bangs near him. Voices drift across the line, followed by the sharp crack of a ball hitting leather.
He is in Austin, surrounded by teammates, sunlight, and the future I fought to give him.
I am in Dallas, standing in a penthouse that belongs to a man who has narrowed my life down to whatever he allows.
“I want to be there,” I say.
His voice is quieter now, and somehow that hurts more than the anger. “But you’re not going to be.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Then tell me why.”
I press my palm flat against the counter.
Alex wouldn’t allow it.
A black sedan has been circling you.
A stranger is asking questions about your sister.
The truth crowds my throat, but I cannot force any of it past my lips. Not over the phone. Not when one wrong word could frighten him without giving him enough to protect himself.
“It’s complicated.”
He lets out a breath that sounds almost like a laugh. “Everything with you is complicated now.”
“I’m trying to work it out.”
“You’ve been saying that for weeks.”
The hurt in his voice strips something raw inside me.
“I miss you, Em.”
My eyes burn.
“I miss you too.”
“Then stop making me feel like I’m the only one who does.”
The silence stretches until I sense him preparing to end the call, and panic pushes me toward the question I have been avoiding since I saw Diego’s social media page.
“Diego posted a picture of you.”
“Yeah?”
“Your hair.”
His tone changes immediately. “What about it?”
“You went blond.”
“It’s my actual hair, Em.”
I shut my eyes.
I had prepared myself for Liam’s teenage rebellion. I was so afraid I would not know how to handle it that I checked out every parenting book the Pinehaven library had and stayed awake making notes after he went to bed.
How to set boundaries and listen without judging. To let a teenager make mistakes without allowing those mistakes to destroy his future.
But the rebellion never came.
Liam followed the rules. He came home when he said he would, told me where he was going, and rolled his eyes without ever slamming a door in my face. I thought I had been spared that particular battle.
Maybe he is simply a late bloomer.
For years, I stood him beneath bad bathroom lights and worked brown dye through his blond hair. I did the same to my own, burying the red beneath a shade no one would remember. Red catches the eye. Blond does too.
Brown disappears into the crowd.
Now he is eighteen, three hours away, and finally free to make decisions without me standing over his shoulder. The first thing he has done is strip away the disguise and step back into his own. How can I fault him for embracing who he really is?
“It looks good,” I say.
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m not. I just wish you’d told me before you changed it.”
“Why? You never explained why it had to stay brown.”
My fingers tighten around the edge of the counter.
“There was a reason.”
“Then maybe you could finally share that with the class.”
I look toward the windows, though the curtains hide the city from view. “We didn’t want anyone from our past finding us.”
“Is this about the debts?”
“Yes.”
The answer sounds weak, even to me.
“The Hartleys are from our past,” he says. “They found us, and nothing happened. Alex gave you a job. Why are you still acting like someone’s coming to get us?”
If only he knew how much damage the Hartleys had already done.
His voice softens. “You used to tell me everything that mattered.”
No, I didn’t.
I told him what time we needed to leave. Which name to write on his schoolwork. Why we could not invite friends home or stay in one place too long. I gave him enough truth to make him cooperate and buried the rest beneath rules he was too young to question.
The whole truth would have swallowed his childhood.
“Just be careful,” I say.
He lets out a sharp breath. “There it is again.”
“Liam—”
“You’ve said that my entire life. Watch the road, be careful who you trust, and come straight home.” His frustration rises with every word. “But you never tell me what I’m supposed to be careful of.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
I grip the phone harder.
The Accord.
The men who killed our parents. The men who almost killed us.
The people who’ve been following me.
The black sedan appearing outside your campus.
I should tell him. Mel is right. He is not a child anymore, and I am no longer close enough to watch every door for him.
But I cannot unload ten years of terror over a phone call while he stands alone outside a training room.
“What boogeyman am I supposed to be scared of, Em?”
My mouth opens, but the truth refuses to come out .
“I have conditioning,” he says after a moment. All the anger has drained from his voice, leaving only disappointment. “I’ll call you later.”
“Liam, wait?—”
The line goes dead.
I lower the phone and place it on the counter with both hands, afraid that if I move too quickly, I might throw it against the wall.
I stare at the dead screen until it goes black in my hand.
Then I set it down and start dinner. I fill a pot, salt the water, chop the onion and garlic.
The knife rises and falls at the same steady pace.
My eyes sting, but I keep cutting. By the time the water boils, the apartment smells of food.
I leave the pot simmering and clean the board, the knife, and then the counter.
There is nothing left on it.
I wipe it again.
The cloth drags over dry stone. My fingers tighten around it until they ache, but I keep moving over the same spot.
Outside, the windows turn dark and fill with city lights. Dinner sits untouched, waiting for Alex. The counter shines beneath my hand. I keep scrubbing even after my arm burns because stopping would mean thinking about Liam’s voice before he hung up.