Page 64 of Trusting Liam (Taking Chances 2)

He tilted his head to the side and looked at me like he thought I was making a mistake, but didn’t say anything else as he stood and began walking out until he got to the door. “My other suggestion is for you to take the rest of the day off, you need this weekend away from the office, and the weekend is starting right now for you.” Eli stepped out of my office, but popped his head back in. “And by ‘suggestion,’ I mean that’s an order from your extremely stern boss.”

I smiled and huffed, but listened to what he said. Gathering up my stuff, I drove home, changed, and grabbed my board to head out to the beach. I usually only surfed in the early mornings, but since I wasn’t able to distract myself with work at the moment, I needed to do something to clear my head.

I’d only been out there for about thirty minutes when I caught sight of a man not far up the beach,

standing up, watching me. Instead of paddling back out, I hung my head and walked over to him.

“Is this the day for people to give me lectures? Should I go see Brian after this?” I asked sarcastically, and dropped down next to where my dad was standing.

Once he was sitting down next to me, he asked, “What other lecture?”

“It wasn’t really. Eli just wanted to know how I was doing with the Kennedy situation, and told me he thinks I should go talk to her. And then he ordered me to leave early for the weekend . . . so I came here. Speaking of, how did you know I was here?”

Dad shrugged. “Saw your car. I had to run an errand since your mom’s and my anniversary is coming up, and saw your car on my way out and back. Decided I’d stop to see why you were here—but I figured it had something to do with Kennedy.”

I sat there for a couple minutes trying to figure out if I wanted to ask him what I’d been thinking for the past couple weeks. Dad just sat there waiting for me to begin. “When it was you . . . what did you do? And would you do it again?”

“With your mom and Chase?”

“Yeah.”

Dad exhaled slowly and leaned back so he was holding himself up on his elbows. “Well. When I found out she was pregnant I asked her to leave, and that was it for us for a long time. I knew you weren’t mine, and it didn’t take more than a minute to figure out who your dad was. I’d known how Chase felt, and I saw how your mom looked at him. While Chase waited for your mom to decide between the two of us—before she knew she was pregnant, and after—he did what you’re doing. He stepped back. And if he were here, I have no doubt he would tell you how big a mistake that was.”

“Mistake?” I blurted out. “Why?”

“Because your mom ended up taking a long time to decide. Even after Chase found out that we had broken up, she still told him she couldn’t be with him, and didn’t tell him that she was pregnant for months.”

“Months,” I echoed, my voice dead even though I was fucking terrified that Kennedy would draw this out for the same amount of time.

“Months,” Dad repeated. “By the time your mom was ready to tell him, and ready to give him a chance, they didn’t have very long before he died. He missed a lot of time with her because he stepped back. If he would have pushed it more, or been around instead of hiding from her, I have no doubt your mom would have broken down sooner.”

“And what were you doing during that time?”

“Staying away.”

I laughed, but it didn’t sound right. “So are you saying it was a mistake for you to do that too?”

“Nope,” he said simply, and I looked back at him.

“How is that supposed to help me right now? You said Chase would’ve regretted stepping back, but you stepped back and didn’t regret it.” I paused for a second, and then said, “But at that time, it wasn’t really a decision between the two of you anymore since you and Mom were broken up. So your situation wasn’t exactly the same as mine.”

He thought for a minute before saying, “It was, and it wasn’t. Your mom knew she’d hurt me, and one of her main reasons for waiting so long was because she didn’t want me to get hurt even more by being with Chase and shoving their relationship in my face all the time. Then, when Chase died, even though your mom had broken up with him right before, she was still too torn to be with me. She thought it would be spitting on his memory.”

“But you were together a couple months later,” I hinted, and he nodded.

“The way your mom has put it was that she loved Chase, and was in love with me. From the beginning, and through the whole thing. Even though she told me she wanted me to find someone else, she and I both knew that we would eventually be together again one day. But then Chase died, and it confused things as well as sped them up.”

I shook my head and stared back out at the ocean. “Doesn’t matter how many times I hear the story . . . I’ll never understand how you went through any of that.”

“I went through it because I loved your mom and you.”

“Dad?” When he made a grunting noise, I asked, “When it was back to being a choice of being with you again or not . . . did you still stay back?”

“No. Hell no. She told me she couldn’t be with me, and because of Chase’s death I was questioning what I thought I’d already known about us being together again. But I told her I would be there for her and you. Not just because of how much I loved the two of you, but because Chase was my best friend and I know he would’ve done the same if the roles had been reversed. So I was there, at your grandparents’ house, every day. Never pushing her, just always being there. Well—I may have pushed her a couple times.”

I smiled and looked back to see him grinning. “She was with you, then no one, then Chase, then no one, and then you again. So Chase was there waiting for a relationship, then you both stepped back, and then you were there.”

“Pretty much.”

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