Page 68 of Lillian

“Kids do change your life. Theyarea drain financially and emotionally. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s one thing to want to be back in my life, but you couldn’t have anticipated that I would come with a toddler now.”

“First of all, the first time I saw you again, you had Grace with you. I’ve wanted you—both of you—in my life since that day. Second, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m not exactly strapped for cash.” I make a show of looking around my very comfortable penthouse. “Third, the emotional stuff, I’m sure it’s hard. That’s why we have each other to lean on. Don’t try pushing me away now. It’s only going to piss me off, and I’m not going anywhere.”

She tilts her head at me and frowns. “I’m not trying to piss you off.”

“Good, then we’re on the same page. I’m in this for the long haul. Two point five kids and a white picket fence,” I declare, grabbing her free hand and twining our fingers together.

Another unconvincing tilt of her lips. I sigh. “Spit it out.”

She chews on her bottom lip for a moment, deciding whether it’s worth it, maybe. “I’m not sure what your parents’ relationship is like…but you know it would kill me if I found out you were sleeping with other people, right?”

My hand stills in hers as I realize what she’s worried about. I could fucking kill my father for putting these kind of thoughts in her head. For making her doubt not only my fidelity toward her, but my intentions with her and Grace. “Yes, my dad is a bastard. He steps out on my mom all the time, and I’m sure she does the same. But I willneverneed anyone but you. You will always be more than enough personality for me, Frasier. That, you can trust.”

I can’t help making a little joke out of it because the thought of cheating on her is honestly so ridiculous it boarders on fucking funny.

“I hate you,” she whispers, laughing slightly.

You love me,I mouth back.

“I do.” She shrugs, staring at me again with that infuriating searching look.

“Woman, if you don’t stop looking at me like that.” The brat smirks.

“I was just thinking…that I feel like I know you, right? I mean, four years ago, you were my best friend. You knew everything about me, and IthoughtI knew everything about you.”

Ouch. But fair. “But?” I prompt, moving past that.

“But we don’t know each other, do we?” I feel like I still do know her, but I play along. Also, I don’t want to admit how much I was able to learn from my PI. That could get a little dicey.

“What do you want to know, Lil?”

A lift of her shoulder. “I don’t know. Tell me something.” She pauses, then adds, “Tell me something from the last four years that I don’t know about you.”

I think back to what I’ve done since we broke up. Embarrassment washes over me as I realize I haven’t done a whole lot of anything. “Work.”

Her blank stare makes me even more embarrassed before she breezes past it. “Okay. Tell me something you didn’t tell me when we were together before. A secret.”

“A secret?” I repeat. She nods, playing with my fingers still in her hand.

“Okay…” From my childhood, maybe? That’s pretty much the only topic I avoided with her years back. It takes me a minute to think of a good one. But then, when I have one, I have three. They might bring the mood down even more, but fuck it. Love isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it’s messy. “When I was young, I used to dream about having different parents. Like mine died in a car accident, so then our nanny took me and Becca in. And the fucked up thing is that those were good dreams.”

Her face is neutral, not outwardly damning me for my confession, so I go on. “A year before we met—Becca was thirteen and I was twenty-nine—she was starting to show behavioral issues. For days, it was getting worse and worse. I thought it was just hormones. Typical teenager things, I’m not sure. She’d fly off the wall, get overly emotional, about the smallest things. If you even so much as teased her about the way she wore her hair that day, she’d dissolve into a fit of tears that were so gut-wrenching, I used to think they were fake. Like she did it for attention. I had no idea what… It wasn’t until days later that I found her in her bedroom with a bottle of my mom’sValium. A new prescription, and all the pills were gone.”

It was the scariest night of my life. One I’ll never forget. I wasn’t even living at home at the time, but for some reason, I came back for the evening. There was this feeling in my gut, I can’t describe it. Almost like nerves, I guess. But it felt like a badomen. With the way Becca was acting and the text she had sent me that morning telling me she loved me, I listened to the voice in my head, showed up with takeout for two knowing Mom and Dad wouldn’t be there, and that’s when I found her face down on her bed. Her breathing was shallow, her pulse weak but there.

The doctor said I must have gotten there right after she lost consciousness, and that it saved her life.

A firm grip on my hand brings me back to the present; my gaze had gone distant without me realizing it. Silver lines Lillian’s eyes and she looks at a loss for words, so I try to lighten the mood with my third confession. “And when I was sixteen, I adjusted the grip on my dad’s golf clubs right before a big charity golf tournament. Made all of them from thinner, cheap material. Got my ass handed to me that night, but he lost, so I think I was still a winner after.”

The laugh I get at that is a little watery, and I feel like shit for bringing the mood down. But I wanted to put myself out there. Make up for lost time. Lay myself bare. Still, I don’t want to be the reason she cries tonight.

“Your turn,” I decide.

“My turn?”

“Yes. Tell me three things from the past four years.”Please, dear fucking God, let there be no intense dating history. I might be driven to drink.

“Hmmm,” she starts and looks at the TV as she thinks. And thinks for a long time. But I sit there patiently, watching the way her eyes unfocus, the way she bites her lip, the little freckle under her eye. “Okay.”

---