Page 102 of Reckless

“Who cares? My woman likes the extra tickle.”

Around my third drink, I had finally loosened up enough to talk.

“I don’t even know how to start apologizing after so many years.”

“Yeah, some nerve you have.” He smiled, but I saw the sadness on his face.

“You have to let me say it.” He looked at me for a moment, then he nodded. “I know it won’t change anything, but I am sorry. I was so stupid.”

“You were stupid? What about me? I made my pregnant girlfriend go to a frat party and I got wasted. I should have stayed home with her, not drink with your sorry ass all night.”

“She begged us to stop.”

“I know.”

“I lost control. I should have stopped.”

“At first, I didn’t remember much, but then the memories started coming back. I was the first one to lose control, Ty. Not you.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t break my spine. You didn’t almost kill me.”

“We were both to blame. The one thing I can’t just let slide is the fact you never came to see me. Not once. I couldn’t walk. I lost the life I imagined for myself and you just hid away.”

“I couldn’t handle it. Seeing you like this. In a way I still can’t handle it.”

Liam poured me another drink.

“I was a willing participant, Ty.”

“But you didn’t put me in a wheelchair.”

“Hey. I have learned to live with my disability. It’s not that hard anymore. I have a woman and a son. I love them and they love me. That’s more than you have. And Chloe said it earlier. We moved on.”

“Eavesdropping, huh? You still can’t leave her alone in a room with me.”

Liam reached over, grabbed me by the shirt, knocked something in the process and grinned in my face.

“I can’t walk but I can still give you a shiner to remember me by for the next few days.”

Chloe appeared seconds later completely awake.

“What are you two doing?” She walked over to us to see what fell down to the floor.

“We are just messing around,” I said.

“If Liam wakes up because of you, you will be putting him down.” She slapped my shoulder. I leaned back in my chair.

“Do you really like the beard? It looks like a bunch of squirrels tangled their tails and then died there.”

“I said she liked how it felt between her legs, not how I looked with it.”

“I shouldn’t have offered you booze.” Chloe sat in Liam’s lap and drank from his glass.

They looked in peace. Happy. And I couldn’t stop looking at them.

We spent the entire night together in their tiny living room. Talking about the past. Talking about everything I missed around Liam’s surgeries. I told them everything there was to tell about Hannah. Chloe told me Kieran came and left her an insane amount of cash and told her he would help her find a new job.

At some point, Liam woke up and came to us. He crawled into my lap. I assumed he did it because his father’s lap was still occupied by his mother.

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