Page 98 of Gravity of Love
The same suffocating sensation that had sent his dad to the deck began to choke Liam, and he decided to call this father-sonTaster’s Choice moment and head inside. As soon as he turned to leave, his father said something that made it impossible to walk away, impossible to even move, to blink, or to even breathe.
“I know I fucked up,” he gritted out. “A lot. With your mom. With you. Even with Tristan.” Each name clearly pained him to say, as if he was counting old bullet wounds. “I was hard on you.Too hard. I know that now. But it was never because you were… ‘less than.’ Or not my flesh and blood. Youweremy son. Youaremy son.” He hesitated, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, then laughed bitterly. “When you were growing up, I was hard on you, harder on you than Tristan because, let’s face it,youare not a ‘fuck-up,’ and, well, as my father would say, Tristan’s a bright boy, but he likes his own reflection too much, if you know what I mean. He’s selfish. He was never going to change the world.” He took a shaky breath. “You,youweresmartandgood, and I knew you had the potential to make a real difference in this world. And so I treated you howmydad treated me. He was hard on me.” He let out a harsh laugh. “He wasa lotharder on me than I was on you.NothingI did was ever good enough for him. I could never please him. It didn’t matter how hard I tried or what grades I got, I could always do better. Heconstantlyreminded me what adisappointment, what adisgraceI was because I wasn’t living up to my potential. And I don’t know, I guess… that’s what I thought a good father did, because I was constantly trying to prove to him that I was good enough, and in a sick way it worked. I did end up being successful, in my career at least.That’swhy I was hard on you, not because youweren’tmine, but because youweremine. You were always mine.”
For the first time in his life, Liam recognized something in his dad's face that wasn't calculation or contempt—it was truth, raw and unfiltered, cracking through decades of careful control.
“You know, when you were born, I wanted youto be Tristan Edward the fourth, to keep the line going. I didn’t care about DNA. But your mom insisted we name you after her brother.”
“Her brother?” Liam blinked. “Mom had a brother?”
The information fell into him like a pebble into a deep well—endless, echoing.
“Liam Caputo.” He nodded. “She never talked about him with anyone. He died in a car accident when he was sixteen. She was ten and was never the same after that. He was her shield from all the shit her own mother put her through. She was a drinker, and there was a lot of screaming, your grandmother was a piece of work.” He cleared his throat. “I asked her about him a few times, but she’d always change the subject, I think it was just too painful for her.” Liam’s dad took a deep breath and met his gaze, his expression so open he barely recognized the man standing in front of him. “You know I’d never say a bad word about your mom, but I wanted to tell you the truth from the beginning. I knew your mom was pregnant when we got together. I didn’t care. Michael, was a…he was a real…”
Liam waited, not moving, not breathing. No one talked about his birth father. Not any of his four sisters, not Teresa, not Kerri. He never asked, because he felt strange bringing him up. He’d seen photos, family photos, everyonelookedhappy. But were they? Really? His father cheated on Teresa. She had no idea about Kerri or Poppy until his father’s funeral. And Teresa and Kerri didn’t know about Liam and his mom Celeste until he emailed them after he found them through the DNA site.
Teresa, her parents, and his sisters, embraced and welcomed Kerri and Poppy into their family, and they all did the same for him, but there was this huge Michael Davies sized elephant in the room no one spoke about.
His dad shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter. Not to me. I never even knew his last name. That’s whyI didn’t know that you had…that that’s why you changed…” His dad exhaled. “The point is, I wanted to tell you.”
Liam felt himself deflate. He wished someone would tell him something about the man he shared half of his DNA with, other than he clearly had a type and it was petite brunettes with light eyes, and he also had no issues lying.
“I even bought a book we could start reading to you as early as a year old so you could understand the difference between biological and adopted dads,” he continued. “But your mom freaked out… she said sheneededit to stay secret. She was so scared you’d hate her or think less of her. And by the time I realized how much damage the lie was doing, I think it was…it was too late. We even fought about it the night before she passed. I told her I wanted to tell you the truth, that you weren’t my son but I loved you like you were, and reminded her I’d always wanted to tell you, and she just kept reminding me I’d promised never to treat you any differently, which wasn’t my point. When I saw it was upsetting her, I dropped it. I was going to talk to her again about it the next day, but then… it was too late. She was gone, and then you were gone.”
“I was gone, and you just thought okay fine?” Liam heard the petulant tone in his voice, he sounded like a child.
When his dad replied, his voice was stripped of its usual surgical detachment and sounded like someone had sandpapered it raw.
“I messed up.” The words were coming slowly, as though he was building them from scratch. “After your mom died... I wasn’t in the best place. I blamed myself for not knowing she was sick, for not... saving her. And that’s not an excuse, Liam, it’s just what happened. I was scared if I saw you, I’d betray her and tell you the truth. I’m not justifying my behavior, I should have chosenyou. That is where my loyalty should have been, but I think losing her the way we did and not being able to save her,I had so much guilt and shame around that, I felt like I owed it to her to keep her secret. Once I came out of that fog of grief and shame, you were gone. You were overseas. I wanted to reach out, but I didn’t know how, or what to say.” He shook his head and his fingers tightened around the wood railing, his knuckles turning white. “The longer I waited, the worse it got. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, months turned into years and suddenly it had been a decade and it was just…so much time had passed and I figured, it was too late and I only had myself to blame. But it’s not what I wanted, Liam. I promise you, it was never what I wanted.”
As Liam stared at his father’s face, eyes rimmed red and wet, jaw caved in on itself, he realized he’d never seen him look this old. He’d always seemed ageless, like some statue that never needed to be dusted or polished, but now he was just... tired. Human.
“I thought about calling,” he continued, “every day. A dozen times a day, I’d pick up the phone, stare at your number, and then put it back down. I figured you were better off without me. That I’d just make things worse.” He squinted at the horizon, as if the next words were written there. “I drank. I drank a lot. I mean,a lot. It got so bad, about five years ago, I almost lost my license.”
What the fuck? Liam hadn’t known any of that. But why would he? He barely talked to his brother, just a random text here and there, over the past eleven years, and hadn’t spoken at all to his dad.
“And that scared the shit out of me, because my work, the operating room was something I never questioned. I was always good at it, but I wasn’t good at much else. Except maybe being your dad, when you were little.” He quickly qualified. “Before things got complicated.”
Liam didn’t remember a time it wasn’t complicated.
“I went to rehab,” his father went on. “Ninety days, two states away. They said it would give me perspective, but mostly it made me realize how much I’d ruined. I’ve been sober for four years. And every day I thought about calling you, and every day I didn’t, because I figured you’d tell me to go to hell.”
Liam was silent. There was nothing to say. He wanted to believe he would have listened to his dad if he’d called but he wasn’t sure he would have.
His father’s voice got low, almost a whisper. “I love Cora. I love her in a way I never thought I could love anyone again, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same as the love I had for your mom. Or the love I have being yours and Tristan’s dad. That was the only thing I ever did that mattered. The one thing I didn’t want to fuck up.”
Liam couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“When you were a baby,” his father grinned, “I used to get up for the three a.m. feedings, even if I had a surgery at seven. I’d drive you around the Golden Gate Park, because you wouldn’t sleep unless the car was moving. I’d go through three tanks of gas a week. Your mom thought I was crazy, but I didn’t care.”
Liam remembered his mom telling him that. She would tell him that story every time they were by the park. She also added that she thought his dad was crazy.
“When I taught you how to ride the bike you got for your fourth birthday,” he began, “you said you were ready to take off your training wheels after two lessons. I didn’t think you were. You waited for me to go to work, took them off when I wasn’t home, fell off and broke your arm in the first ten minutes.” He shuddered out a laugh. “When your mom called me, I think I cried harder than you did. Your mom made me promiseneverto let you do anything dangerous again.”
Liam remembered the cast, the itchy discomfort, the way his father signed it in blocky, all-caps letters: “TOUGH GUY.” Heremembered the taste of the mint chip ice cream his dad brought him home that night, and how they ate it together, straight from the carton, while watching The Terminator on DVD, a movie his mom said he was ‘too young’ for, but he loved and felt so grown watching.
“And I was the one who built your Pinewood Derby cars with you. You did most of the painting, but I did the sanding. We placed second every year because of those damn?—”
“Patels,” Liam finished in unison with his dad.
