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“Fine.” He crosses his beefy arms over his chest. Intimidation pose. Doesn’t work on me. I’ve got three inches and a hoard of his darkest secrets. “Stay calm and keep it in your pants.”
“Got it, Dad.”
He relaxes his stance to pick at the muffin again. “What did Ty do?”
I arch both eyebrows, allowing my outraged grievance to etch into my features. “It was a foster care outreach program she was photographing.”
His eyes bulge. He’s clearly commiserating with my disbelief since my past is no secret. “Shit, bro.” He huffs a breath. “That’s fucked up. You tear him a new one yet?”
“Next on my list,” I admit. “He kept himself near Natasha, Celeste, or Ivy all last night. Pussy.”
“Fucking pussy,” Gage agrees. “Tytan.”
As I dry my cup with a dish towel, I casually steer us in another direction. “On a different note, you’re working out again with Celeste?”
He nods. “She’s fun. Tough.” High praise from Gage regarding a female other than Ivy.
Considering this morning’s group text, I add, “Rescheduled for later because—”
“Yeah,” he cuts me off. “Can you believe they’re still going at it? And what the hell are they doing in the gym?”
“I don’t want to fucking know.” I stroke my forehead, impressed and confounded by Ivy and Wells and their freaky sex-ventures. “She’s only got two weeks until she’s squeezing that baby out.”
“Jesus, think they’ll lose steam after the little one’s here?” Gage’s whole face beams with that inquiry. He’s over the moon about this baby.
“Doubt it,” I say. “That’s a prime benefit of a houseful of uncles, right?”
He pats my back on his way to the stairs, still gleaming with the glow of his soon-to-be role. “Absolutely.”
I can’t wait for him to find out it’s a girl.
With that content thought in mind, I head for Ty. Maybe it will keep me from killing him. I rap on his door in an upbeat drumming.
He responds with an equally optimistic greeting. “C’mon in.”
Strutting inside, I slam the door behind me, saying nothing until his guilty eyes find mine. “A fucking foster care program, Ty? What the hell is your problem?”
He sinks into his chair and swivels with his chin held high. “No problem. It seemed like a fitting way to reveal who she really is.”
My clenched fist flies up to my mouth, and I puff into it, willing myself not to lose my shit right now. “By what? Forcing me to relive my twisted childhood? How dare you decide if, when, or how I ever think about those days. You throw that at me with no warning, with Celeste of all fucking people!”
As if I didn’t feel inferior to her uppity standards already. I spin in a half circle, unable to even look at him. All the emotion I’ve been holding in since she found me smoking behind the barn floods over me. And she didn’t even know.
“I flipped the hell out on her, thinking the two of you were in on it together. Fucking with me or something.”
I was handling it okay—until I wasn’t. One minute, I was enchanted by how she was lighting up that whole damn arena, making each kid feel like they were the only one she saw. The next, I was chatting with a boy who’d clearly had his hope snuffed out years ago. And I was the foster kid again. Never enough, cast aside, beaten, and embarrassed.
“That wasn’t my intention,” Ty says. And I love him enough to know he means that. He had some misguided notion of helping me. But I’m so unbelievably pissed.
“Jesus, fuck.” I drop onto his couch, dragging a hand down my face. “That might be how you convince yourself you’re healed and evolved—forcing yourself to witness abused woman after abused woman, reliving your worst nightmare as though that’s the answer. But you’re no better off than I am, Ty.”
That gets a rise out of him. “Don’t come at me with that shit. You think I don’t know I’m fucked up?” He juts out his chin, flapping his hand between us. “That’s where you and I are different, Liam. I won’t pretend I’m not damaged. Aside from how unfavorable this life is to meeting a special someone, that’s the reason I won’t even try. I have one selfish goal with those abuse cases. I’m hoping, someday, I can look myself in the goddamn mirror.”
I punch the couch. “Christ, I fucking hate you.”
“That’s a refreshing response to vulnerability,” he deadpans. “You should volunteer for a help hotline.”
“You’re impossible to be mad at, Ty. You’re too good.”
