“I have always said that,” Michael agreed. “So what do you need from me, Liam?”
“I need a job,” I said.
I was never one to swallow my pride, but it was the only choice I had.
Chapter 7—Swallow the Pride
“Jesus, Liam, you’re a mess.”
Michael hauled me into the back of the car with Damon’s help. The rain had turned bitterly cold, and I was shivering in my lightweight jacket. Damon took the gym bag I had over my shoulder and tossed it in the trunk of the Rolls Royce.
“Is there a blanket back there?” Michael called out the open window.
“Of course, sir,” Damon replied. A moment later, he wrapped one of those plaid stadium blankets around my shoulders.
Very little was said as Damon drove us to Michael’s mansion on the far north side of the city. I stared out the window and watched streetlights and cars go by, trying to keep any and all thoughts out of my head at the same time. Thinking just…hurt.
Michael must have called ahead to let his wife know I had contacted him because she was waiting for us on the porch when the car drove around the driveway. She even held the door open as I stumbled into the foyer and tried not to slip on the marble floors with my wet shoes.
I kicked them off, and Michael’s butler hauled my shoes off with a look of distaste. I ignored him and the looks he gave me. Chelsea came over and smiled up at me cautiously.
“Come with me,” she said softly.
She took my hand and led me up the stairs as if I had forgotten where the bathroom was. I didn’t have the strength to do anything but follow her lead, so I just watched passively as she sat me down on a stool near the tub and drew me a bath.
“Bubbles?” she asked.
I had just enough strength to raise an eyebrow at her, which made her laugh.
“Don’t tell him I told you,” she said, “but Ryan loves bubble baths. He says they’re just so relaxing when you’ve had a long day or things aren’t going well. You look like you could use some of that.”
Without waiting for me to respond, she dumped some purple liquid right under the spout and bubbles began to form. A mental image of Ryan—all six feet four inches of him—in the same tub covered in fluffy bubbles made me snicker a little.
“Don’t knock it until you try it,” Chelsea said with a smile.
She fussed around with the tub a bit more—smoothing out the bubbles so they weren’t all at one end and adjusting the water’s temperature. She pulled large, fluffy white towels out of the linen closet and placed them on the counter.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “I mean, I fucked up your son’s wedding, and I don’t think we’ve said ten words to each other in ten years.”
Chelsea’s brow furrowed.
“You’re Michael’s nephew,” she explained simply. “I’ve been waiting to do this for you since you went away all those years ago. We’ve even talked about it.”
“Talked about it?” It was my turn to be confused. “What do you mean? Who’s talked about it?”
“Michael and I have,” she told me. “When he would worry about you, we’d talk about how someday you would come back to the family. Michael thought you might come back here first, and we knew you had been in such a bad way…well, we figured you would need a little TLC when you decided to ask for it. It was so hard for him to stop asking you to come home, but it made you so angry when he brought it up. Michael was afraid you would get really hurt out there, and it made him feel better when we’d talk and plan for this day.”
Chelsea’s eyes glistened as she looked at me.
“He loves you so much, Liam.”
I stared at her blankly. I remembered how often Michael used to come around and try to get me to talk to him—open up, come back home, take a job offer—but I had always told him to fuck off and leave me alone. Eventually he didn’t come around as much, but when he did, he used a more subtle approach, and I ended up with visits only once or twice a year.
I had always been a total dick toward him when he came around.
“No one ever gave up on you, dear,” she said as if she were reading my mind. “When you pushed everyone away, we knew it was just a matter of time. You can’t drag someone back from darkness until they’re ready to go with you.”
She shut off the water, stood up, and came over to me. She reached out and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, hugging me against her. Reflexively, I placed my arms around her middle.
“Your own mother should be doing this,” Chelsea said softly as she shook her head, “but somehow I don’t think you want me to call her.”
I licked my lips and leaned my forehead against Chelsea’s shoulder. She smelled like fruit salad.
“Not right now,” I replied quietly.
She leaned back and placed her hands on my cheeks.
“She misses you so much,” she said. “They both do.”
I stiffened at her words, and my shoulders crushed inward against my body. When I glanced at her, there were tears in her eyes even though she smiled through them.
“I’ll leave you to it.” She waved a hand at the tub. “There are some of Ryan’s pajamas on the counter for you. Michael’s having the cook make up a decent dinner—it doesn’t look like you’ve been eating well.”
I decided not to give her the details of just how accurate that statement was.
Chelsea closed the door behind her, and I dropped my wet clothes on the floor before sinking into the tub. It was warm, and the bubbles smelled nice. Feminine, to be sure, but it didn’t smell like Tria. The scent is what I imagined grandmothers smelled like, though I couldn’t remember my own. My father’s mother died when I was a baby, and my other grandmother had passed before I was born.
The bath felt good enough that I didn’t even care that I was going to end up smelling like an elderly woman. I leaned back against the end of the tub and sank down to my chin with my eyes closed.
The hot water warmed me, and the food Michael’s cook made nourished my body. After I couldn’t eat any more, Michael took me up to one of the guest rooms and helped me crawl into the bed. He probably wanted to talk to me some more, but I was out as soon as my head made contact with the pillow.
*****
Waking up in Michael’s house was surreal.
There was a desperate, childish part of me that wanted to believe everything I had gone through was just a dream, and I was currently back in high school after having spent too many hours playing video games in the basement rec room with Ryan and Mandi, and it had been too late to drive back home. As tempting as it was to pursue the fantasy, the pounding in my head, the itching on the inside of my arm, and the knowledge that there was a woman out there who needed my help when I was too big of a mess to give it to her brought me back to reality quickly.
I rolled over on the soft Egyptian cotton sheets and rubbed my face on the pillowcase of the same material. After all these years, it still seemed familiar. Strangely enough, I didn’t find the comfort comforting. I would have preferred to wake up on my one hundred and fifty thread count sheets from Big Lots with my arms wrapped around Tria. That was my definition of comfort.
I yawned and shook my head a bit. Except for my thumping head, I didn’t feel too bad. I had slept pretty well and wondered how much of that had to do with a long soak in lavender-scented water.
“Are you awake?”
Michael appeared in the doorway, and I waved him in.
“How are you feeling?”
“Okay, I guess,” I responded with a shrug. I propped myself up on the pillows and took a few breaths. “Better, definitely. Thanks.”
“Chelsea thinks you’re going to stay,” Michael said as he sat down in the chair next to the bed. “I told her not to get her hopes up…well, my hopes up, really.”
As much as my pride wanted me to just say a quick thanks and get out, I couldn’t do that anymore.
“Can I?” I asked quietly. “I mean, just for a while? Until
I can get my shit together?”
“You can stay here as long as you want,” Michael told me. The relief and excitement in his eyes were obvious. “I’d like nothing more.”
“Are you gonna…gonna tell Dad I’m here?”
“Not if you don’t want me to,” he said, “though at some point he’s going to notice. He and Julianne do come to dinner on Sundays.”
“I’ll make myself scarce,” I offered.
“You know that isn’t going to be enough.”
“What day is it?” I asked.
Michael let out a long breath.
“Wednesday.”
“Then I have a while to think about it, right?” I said. “I have to get myself together, or I’m screwed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tria…she said I had to do some stuff before she’d…well, before she’d consider taking me back. I need a better job—”
“What the fuck?” he muttered.
“It’s not like that!” I snapped back, knowing he had misunderstood. “She just…she needs me to be right…for her and…”
“And?” Michael asked when I didn’t continue.
I shook my head, crawled out from under the sheets, and went to my gym bag on the other side of the room. I opened it up and pulled the fabric-covered book out of it. I turned the page over and showed him what had become of my original list.
Make a list
Clean the apartment
Make appointment with the head shrinker
Get the psycho prescriptions filled
Talk to Mom
Get my shit together
Get Tria back
Get a job
Don’t buy smack
Find a better place to sleep
Michael read over the list, including the few things I had added since being on the streets.
“We can cross these out,” he said as he pointed to the last two items.
I nodded.
“I just need a job,” I finally said. “Yolanda dropped me as a fighter, and I can’t find any other work. I didn’t have the rent money, and now…well, I can’t find another job. I need money for Tria.”
“You said you broke up with her,” Michael reminded me.
“She left,” I corrected.
“I think I’m missing something here,” Michael said. “Why do you need money for Tria if you are no longer together? Are you supposed to pay her to get back with you?”
“No!” I yelled. “She isn’t like that!”
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time,” he said cynically.
“I don’t have anything, Michael!” I reminded him. “It’s not like Amanda and her grubby little hands trying to get everything for herself!”
“You do, too!” he growled back, ignoring my comment about his daughter-in-law. “You know it, and plenty of other people know it. There’s never been a change to the will, Liam. All of this belongs to you in the end.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Doesn’t stop it from being yours,” Michael replied. “You’ll own a controlling interest in the hotels, too.”
I growled inwardly and rubbed my eyes. I didn’t want to think about all that shit, let alone talk about it.
“I need money for Tria,” I said.
“Why?” Michael asked. He leaned back a little and crossed his arms as he eyed me expectantly.
“She’s pregnant,” I finally said quietly.
Michael’s eyes widened.
“Does she know?” he asked in a hushed voice. “I mean…about…about…”
“Aimee,” I whispered. My stomach tightened, and I leaned forward a bit to try to hold myself together.
Michael’s head tilted forward once in acknowledgement.
“I told her, but it was too late,” I went on. “I’d already fucked it all up. I have to be able to help her, Michael. Even if she won’t talk to me, she doesn’t have the money or the doctor and vitamins and all that shit. I need to be able to support her so she stays healthy. If anything happens to her…”
I couldn’t say anything else, and Michael nodded solemnly.
“Maybe you should tell me what happened.”
I pulled my knees up to my chest, rested my chin on them, and recounted the last couple of weeks to Michael. I managed to get through it without actually vomiting though I considered it a couple of times.
“So, I gotta have a job,” I finished. “I gotta make enough to be able to support her, and I can’t fight at the moment—not without someone to get the fights lined up and train me and shit.”
“Tria doesn’t like the fighting anyway,” Michael reminded me. “Maybe it’s time for a change.”
I nodded my head slowly as I looked at my uncle.
“I’ll do anything,” I told him.
“You’ve got a job with me,” he said. “I’ll get you set up on the payroll Monday, and you can stay here as long as you like. Has Tria…has she gone to a doctor yet? How far along is she?”
“I don’t know. Shit, Michael, I have no idea!”
The panic I had been fighting for days was dangerously close to overwhelming me again. My hands started shaking, and I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I started to get dizzy, and I jumped when Michael’s hand made contact with my skin.
“Whoa, Liam!” Michael’s hand rested on my arm. “Relax—we’re going to work all this out.”
I shook my head again.
“There’s nothing,” I whispered. “Nothing I can do—not now. It’s too late.”
“None of that now,” Michael said gently. “The Liam I’ve known all his life is still in there somewhere, and he never gave up on anything. This ranks up there with the most important things in your life, so you’re not going to give up now. If you were going to, you’d have a needle in your arm instead of a conversation with me.”
Raising my head, I met his gaze, and we looked at each other for a long moment.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said quietly. “Everything is in her hands—I don’t have any choices here.”
“Of course you do,” Michael said. “How you react to all this is your choice. So let’s focus on that, shall we?”
I nodded.
“Okay,” Michael said as he took a long breath, “let’s think about the goals here.”
“Goals?”
“You must have a goal,” Michael told me. “Don’t you remember? Figure out where you are, where you want to be, then start taking steps to get there.”
“That sounds like something Dad would say.”
“He did. Many times. So what’s first?”
“I need work.”
“No—goals first. Getting a job is just a stepping stone, not the end goal. What’s your end goal?”
He focused his dark eyes right on mine and held me in his gaze for a moment. I knew exactly what he was saying; it was a lesson ingrained in me from a very early age. I could still hear his words: “Figure out what you want or need. Then come up with the steps to attain it. Know your target. Then set your sights and make it happen.”
“I want my family—me, Tria, and the baby. I want us all together.”
Michael’s smile spanned his whole face in a way that was probably really creepy to anyone who didn’t know him. His eyes widened and his eyebrows rose as he gave me a broad smile.
“Now that’s a goal!”
*****
After arguing for quite some time over the breakfast table, Michael and I managed to rule out a ton of potential positions with the hotel side of the business. He wanted to set me up as an executive and give me six figures, and I reminded him that I never did get that business degree and didn’t even have a high school diploma, for that matter.
The lack of a diploma limited the jobs I was qualified to even apply for, and I wasn’t willing to take nepotism to the next level by allowing him to hand over a job I wasn’t even remotely capable of doing. Despite everything else, I still had an ounce of pride left, and I knew I didn’
t need anywhere near the kind of money Michael was offering. I just needed a basic job with a steady paycheck.
Michael hauled over a laptop and started searching the database of open positions. Almost all of them required at least a high school diploma, and Michael was trying to push me away from doing janitorial work at one of the buildings. I rolled my eyes and let him keep looking though I was pretty certain it was going to be the only job I was qualified to do.
At twelve bucks an hour, I could at least work enough hours and make enough money to get Tria some health care. Michael seemed to think I would lose my mind doing such work, and I wasn’t going to argue that point. It didn’t matter, though, because I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t get Tria back, and this was still the first step.
“Hmm…” Michael hummed as he tapped a finger on the mouse button. “This could be interesting.”
“What’s that?” I asked. I moved a little closer so I could see the screen.
“If I recall, you did a little stone setting in your youth, did you not?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Not a lot or anything, but I can do the basics. Bezel and tube settings, at least.”
“Well maybe we have something for you here.” Michael looked over at me with his brows raised. “It’s one of the main shops—the one over on Glendale. There are two open positions for stone setters.”
He pointed out the relevant portion of the website listings, and I leaned over to get a better look. The position was for someone who could do fairly simple bezel and burnish settings, which I had done many times in my sophomore year of high school. I was no expert at it, but I had made a few nice pieces for my mother’s birthday that year.
“That’s your basic sweatshop, isn’t it?” I asked. “I mean, it’s not like you get a lot of artistic work going on there. Just set a stone and move on, right?”
“True,” Michael agreed, “but you’re qualified for it.”
He tapped the screen with his finger, and I looked over at the qualifications. He was right—it didn’t require a high school diploma and only specified minimal experience. For the briefest moment, I was hit with a wave of optimism.
Then something else hit me.