Chapter 29 #2
Grace finally turned to face me and my stomach tightened when our eyes met. She looked a little more pale than usual, purplish shadows visible under her eyes, like maybe she hadn’t been sleeping much either.
And she was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
“Of course,” she said softly, eyes scanning my face.
“I think we’re ready for that,” I said. I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of trusting her emotional health to a stranger, but my daughter needed more help than I knew how to give.
A familiar pang of guilt radiated in my chest. I probably should have set her up with someone weeks ago.
“I’ll get you the numbers by this afternoon,” Grace said. Then she squeezed my arm in an encouraging sort of way. I stilled, the feeling of her hand on my bare skin both comforting and painful at the same time. Painful, because I wanted more. I was always going to want more from her.
But Grace’s eyes filled with regret, and my stomach dropped right down to my knees. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
I watched her face, wondering if she was going to bring up our fight in her kitchen. “For what?” I finally urged.
Her voice shook when she answered. “I should have been here that day.”
Wait…what? She was sorry for taking a personal day? “Grace, that wasn’t your fault.”
She shook her head, curls bouncing on her shoulders. “It was. If I had been here—”
“You’re allow to take a day off, Gracie. Hell, Josie and I took one yesterday. It’s not your fault something happened when you weren’t even here.”
She didn’t look at all appeased. “I feel awful about it,” she went on.
“Josie was having such a hard time that she ran away. And I was sitting in a restaurant drinking with my girlfriends and bitching about my love li—” She caught herself before finishing, pressing her lips into a tight line, but I was pretty sure I knew what she’d been about to say.
She went out with her girlfriends to bitch about her love life. Meaning me. And the argument we’d had a few days ago.
There was so much I wanted to say to her.
I wanted to apologize for being distracted when Chloe was here.
I wanted to tell her that I was done pretending we weren’t real—that I should have insisted on being open about our relationship from the very beginning.
And after my conversation with Andrew, more than anything, I wanted to ask her about what had happened all those years ago.
“Have dinner with me Friday night,” I said suddenly. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”
She bit her lip and I struggled to keep my gaze on her eyes. Staring at her lips would just make me want to kiss them, and even I knew that wasn’t a good idea in the middle of her classroom while parents and aides darted in and out with their kids.
“I can’t.” She looked genuinely regretful. “I agreed to go to some charity thing with Andy.” She raised hopeful eyes to my face. “Tomorrow?”
I bit back a curse. “I have a game tomorrow.”
“Of course.” She shook her head. “I knew that.”
“Saturday then.”
She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again before nodding. “Saturday works.”
“Thank fuck for that,” I muttered, and Gracie laughed, hitting my shoulder.
“No swearing in my classroom!” Then her eyes widened as she looked around, as if only just remembering where she was.
“I should get going,” I told her, even though I wasn’t due at practice for another hour. I just wanted to make things easier on her—I didn’t want to be the asshole stressing her out at the beginning of her work day. “But I’ll talk to you later?”
She gave me a soft smile. “Later.”
With an hour to kill, I figured I’d stop off for a bagel and some coffee. But before I could park my car at the closest Starbucks, my phone rang. Chloe.
A surge of rage shot through me. Evelyn had talked to her the day Josie ran away, explaining what had happened, and Chloe had tried to call me twice since then. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to her. What was I supposed to say to the person who caused my kid so much pain?
But I knew I couldn’t avoid her forever, so I parked and answered the call. “Chloe.”
“Oh my God, Liam!” she cried, breathless. “How’s our baby? Why haven’t you answered my calls? Is she—”
“Josie is fine, for the most part,” I cut in, voice tight. “She was pretty shaken up about the whole thing, but she seemed to be doing better today.”
“Oh, thank, God. I couldn’t believe it when my mother called and—”
I interrupted her again. “What do you want, Chloe?”
She was quiet for a beat. “She’s my daughter too, Liam,” she finally said, voice sharp. “I have every right to know how she is.”
“Funny, you haven’t been very concerned about how she’s been the last six months.
” The second the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back.
Resorting to school yard taunts was not going to help anything.
Like it or not, this was the mother of my child.
And Josie didn’t need me to attack her. She needed me to make this better.
“Listen, Chlo,” I said, voice more gentle. “I know that you love her.”
“I do,” she said, and I was surprised to hear the tremor in her voice. “I’ve been worried sick, Liam. And…and my mom said that she ran away because she was upset about my going to Houston. I just…I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to her.”
Well, damn. I was pretty sure Chloe actually sounded guilty. I didn’t think I had ever heard that particular emotion in her voice before.
“Josie misses you,” I said bluntly. “She has for a long time. She needs you to do better.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally, I heard her sniff. “I’m no good at this, Liam. We both know that. I’ve been a shitty mother since day one. I just…it doesn’t come naturally to me. It never has.”
Understatement of the year, right there.
“Nothing is turning out the way I thought it would,” she continued. “I thought once I had time for myself, I’d be able to figure out what I wanted to do, you know? That I’d finally find some passion of my own. But that didn’t happen.”
It was hard to keep an even temper with the whining note in her voice. We were supposed to be talking about our kid and instead she was bitching that life hadn’t turned out the way she wanted.
When Chloe and I first got together, she seemed over the moon about it.
She’d clearly been interested in me throughout high school, though I shut her down again and again.
It wasn’t until our senior year of college that anything had happened.
One drunken night at a house party had changed my entire life.
Chloe found out she was pregnant a few weeks later.
It had been stunning and terrifying but I’d been determined to do the right thing.
At the very least, I was committed to dating, to really getting to know each other and giving it a shot for our kid’s sake.
And Chloe had been right on board. When I proposed, she told me it was the happiest she had ever been.
I think it was the image she was excited about, not the marriage.
She loved the idea of being married to a pro athlete.
The money, the perks, the lifestyle—those were the things Chloe envisioned when we got married.
It didn’t take long for reality to settle on her.
I didn’t get called up to the big league right away, and being the wife of a minor league player did not seem quite as glamorous to her.
During the season, I was on the road as many nights as I was at home.
Days when I was in town were spent on long practices and grueling home games.
She was alone more often than not. Alone with a needy infant she had no desire to dedicate her life to.
It was easy to cast her as the selfish, shallow villain in my story. But Chloe had been young when we’d gotten married. And being married to a pro athlete really was difficult, even for the most committed individuals.
At least she’d had the balls to end things. I would have let our unhappy marriage limp along indefinitely, thinking it was my duty, that it was the right thing for our kid.
Suddenly, I felt exhausted by all of it. I was tired of being angry at her, tired of constantly questioning whether I could have done more, if I could have made things turn out differently. I was just tired.
“Why’d you come to Austin, Chloe?”
A quiet beat, and then another. Finally, she sighed. “I was lonely, okay? Kyle left a few weeks ago and—”
“Kyle?”
“My boyfriend,” she huffed. “I know I’ve mentioned him.”
I really didn’t think she had, but what did it matter? “He left.”
She sighed. “Yes. And the apartment just felt so big and empty. I started thinking that maybe I’d been too hasty, maybe I shouldn’t have ended things without giving us a real shot, you know?
I mean, God, Liam. We never even went to couple’s counseling.
” I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t remind her that I had begged to find a marriage therapist, and she had always refused.
“I don’t know. I guess I just thought if I came and saw you and Josie, things would start to make sense. I thought we could try again.”
I gripped the steering wheel tight. So her latest boyfriend had left her, she was lonely in an empty apartment, and that made her think she should revisit the marriage she had abandoned.
“But you left again,” I pointed out. “I take it you must have changed your mind when you saw us in Texas?”
“You don’t know what it’s like, Liam,” she whined. “You’re gone all the time. You’re constantly on the road or at the rink.”
“You knew that about me before you came to Austin,” I pointed out, somehow managing to keep from raising my voice.
“I guess…I don’t know. I thought it might be different.” She sighed loudly. “You have no idea what it’s like to struggle to find your place in the world, Liam. You are so fucking lucky to have always known exactly what you wanted to do.”