Page 154 of Off The Ice
And then my heart stopped as another figure appeared behind her, approaching us
I didn’t know what to do at first. Couldn’t process what was happening as I looked at their face.
“Liam,” the voice said, and my blood ran cold.
I was staring at the man whose face I would wear in thirty years. I hadn’t realized it when I was a kid, and certainly not in all the time he’d been gone, but I saw it now. How eerily similar everything about us was, as if his genes were copied and pasted onto me.
I wondered if that’s why it hurt Mom so much to look at me, the way I knew it sometimes did when I watched her avert her gaze from me.
I resented that I could have gotten so much genetically from a man who provided so little to my life.
I clenched my jaw hard enough to break it.
This was too much.
All of it was too fucking much.
“What is he doing here?” I looked at Maggie, the sting of betrayal settling over me as I stared at her for answers.
“I was trying to tell you,” Maggie said, having the decency to at least look guilty.
“Liam,” his voice said to me for the first time in fifteen years. “Son—”
“Don’t call me that.” I scowled, my focus snapping to him. No part of me wanted anything to do with the man standing in front of me.
“Why would you bring him here, Mags?” I bit out. “Why?”
“I—” She opened her mouth but came up empty.
“I wanted to see you. Talk to you.” He stepped in as if he had the right. “To tell you how sorry I am and explain what a mistake it was to do what I did.”
I laughed humorlessly.
“Abandoning your family isn’t a mistake. It’s a fucking choice.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, infuriating me to my core. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. I needed space. Time away from your mother.”
“And your children?” I asked coldly.
“Let him talk, Liam,” Maggie snapped as if I were the bad guy here.
He swallowed. “I thought if I wanted to see you kids, I’d need to deal with your mother, and I just… wasn’t ready. But then time went by. Too much time. By then, I figured it was too late. Six months had passed. I was scared you wouldn’t want to see me.”
I shook my head. “Well, if you thought I wouldn’t want to after six months, I bet you can imagine how much I don’t want to after fifteen fucking years,” I snarled vehemently.
I was disgusted by his presence, feeling my skin physically crawl as I looked at him. I’d resented him since the day he left, and seeing him in the flesh only amplified that feeling tenfold.
“Don’t say that,” he pleaded, shooting a heartbroken look that did nothing to soften me. “I’m proud of you, Liam. I tell all my friends about what you’ve accomplished.”
“No,” I spat. “You don’t get to be proud of me. Nothing I’ve done has anything to do with you.”
He tried to interject, but I didn’t let him. Didn’t want to hear another word. “It might be your last name on my jersey,” I told him, staring him dead in the eye, “but I created a name for myself without you.”
He faltered,
“And I can promise you,” I said, enunciating each word to ensure he heard loud and clear. “When people hear the name Brynn, they sure as hell aren’t thinking of you. And neither am I.”
He flinched. Maggie had her head in her hands. And I needed to get the hell out of here. I’d wasted too many minutes on this guy already.
