“About Maddie?” The name came out of her mouth in a little puff of air. Delicate. Fragile.
“Yeah. You don’t talk about her or anyone you care about. Maybe because I’m not important enough to share her with.” He was a rat-fink, bloody, nasty, scumbag bastard, but he wanted everything from her, even if he couldn’t give it back to her. He wanted her every emotion. He wanted her history. He wanted her problems and her worries. He wanted everything that was Avery Charles to belong to him.
She sat up, reaching for one of two robes that had been folded on the nightstand. She stood, covering her body, her hands shaking as she tied it around her waist, and Liam realized this was it. This was when she told him he wasn’t good enough and that she’d had a good time, but she needed to find a man who was worthy of her. Someone good and kind and better educated. Someone she would want to try to have another child with.
She was quiet for a moment, the air between them stale and hard, but her voice was soft when she finally spoke. “I got a call from my mother-in-law today. It upset me. It was quite horrible. She’d seen an article in a magazine that reminded her of something I had done.”
“Go on.” He sat on the bed, not wanting to scare her off.
“I still think of her as Mom. I shouldn’t. We haven’t been close in years, but I keep hoping. For a while, it was because she was the only link I had left to Brandon, but now I think she’s the only link I have left to the me I was back then. Everyone is gone. It’s hard sometimes to be the only one who knows what it was like to grow up the way I did, who remembers Maddie and Brandon. I’ve been clinging to the hope that they’re going to forgive me someday, and I can have a family again.”
A well of despair fed her voice, threatening to cut through him. He wished he’d never asked, but he couldn’t make her stop talking now that she was open. He reached out for her. Maybe she could tell the story more easily if he held her.
She stared for a moment, longing plain on her face, but she shook him off. “If you still want to hold me after I tell you the whole story, I’ll gladly take it, but you have to listen first.”
“What did you do that you needed forgiveness for?” He couldn’t imagine Avery doing anything to hurt someone. Did her in-laws blame her because she’d been driving the car? According to the reports he’d read, she’d been blindsided. She’d had the right of way.
“I told you I was in an accident.” She’d told him in only the vaguest of terms. “I was driving. Brandon was in the passenger seat, and Maddie was in her car seat behind him. It was late. We’d been at a party but neither of us had been drinking. I was still breastfeeding, and Brandon had never had a drink in his life. We were both pretty straight kids. Besides getting pregnant, I think the wildest thing the two of us did was go to the mall when we were supposed to be at the library.”
And Liam had been getting in trouble for as long as he could remember. He’d been in the SAS by the time he was just a tiny bit older than Avery had been when she had the accident. He’d killed more than once by then. His innocent had ended long before his teen years. “Go on.”
She took a long breath. “We were hit by a teenaged girl. I told you that much. I remember seeing the light coming at us and trying to move out of the way and then nothing. I went into a coma, and by the time I woke up, they had already been buried. Brandon and Maddie had been buried together, and I didn’t even get to go to the funeral. Lydia had to take care of it herself. Later that year, she had to go to the other driver’s trial alone because Frank had shut down. That trial was so hard on her, but he wouldn’t go. He’s never gotten past losing his only son. She was the one who came every week and sat with me. Lydia came to the first couple of surgeries.”
“Sweetheart, I am not seeing any need for anyone to forgive you,” he said gently.
“A few years passed and that was when she came to see me.”
“She?”
“Her name was Stephanie Gibson. By all accounts, she was a good kid. She was only two years younger than me, but I felt so much older at the time.”