The color faded from her cheeks. She looked impossibly young and vulnerable. “He’s my father?”
Father. The word hit Liam like a blow to the larynx. For a moment he couldn’t speak, and when he did find his voice, it was dull and flat. “Yes. ”
Her eyes rounded. “Oh, my God …”
He waited for her to say more, but she remained silent. It felt to Liam as if seawater were rising between them, rising, becoming a rippling wall that distorted their images. He tried to think of what it was that he should say, but that emptiness was inside him again, bleeding into the silence. Finally he told her the only truth that mattered. “I should have told you—”
“Is that why he’s really in town? To see Mom?”
“Yes. ”
“Did you know he was my father?”
He understood the question. She didn’t want to believe that he had lied to her all these years, and as much as he wanted to protect Mike, he wouldn’t deceive Jacey. That’s why she was so hurt now. “I heard the same stories you did. Mike told me that she’d been married too young, to a man who only wanted to party and have fun. I didn’t know it was Julian. I found out the truth when I went looking fo
r that dress you wore to the dance. ”
“The way she wouldn’t ever talk about my other dad … I figured he was a bum or a bad guy. Some loser she met in college. ” She paused, looking at him. “When I was little, she used to cry every time I asked about him, so I stopped asking. Jeez … Julian True. ”
Liam tried not to be hurt by the tiny, hitching smile that tugged at her mouth. What teenager wouldn’t be thrilled to find out that a famous movie star was her father? It didn’t mean she’d turn away from the father who’d always been there for her, holding her hand, kissing away her little girl’s tears. At least that’s what he told himself as the silence between them stretched on and on.
“When was she going to tell me? When we colonize Mars?”
It had come faster than he’d expected, the anger, and he didn’t know how to assuage it. There was no way to excuse what Mike had done to her. It was selfish and hurtful, and now, these many years later, they would all pay for the lie that had lain between them, curled silently in a silk pillowcase.
“I don’t know when she was going to tell you,” he said at last.
He could see that she was close to crying. She seemed to be holding the tears back one shallow breath at a time. “That’s why he came to the prom—to dance with me—but he didn’t say anything that mattered. How did he know Mom was hurt?”
“I called him. I … discovered that your mom responded to his name. I thought that if he talked to her, she might wake up, and it worked. She woke up yesterday. ”
“Julian woke her up—after all the hours we all spent talking to her?”
Liam winced. He felt hemmed in by all the times he’d told Jacey that love would reach Mikaela in her darkness. “Well—”
“Oh, my God, what if …” This time she couldn’t hold back the tears. She launched herself at Liam, landing in his arms as if she were a child again. She cried on his shoulder. The warm moisture of her tears seeped through his flannel shirt. When she drew back, she looked different somehow, changed, as if the tears had washed away the last, sticky traces of the little girl she’d been and made room for a young woman.
“I hate her. ” At the confession, she started crying again.
He touched her face. “No. You’re hurt and angry—and you have every right to be. But you could never hate your mom. She loves you, Jace—”
“What about you? She lied to you all these years, too. ”
He sighed. “Sometimes people lie to protect their loved ones. Maybe she thought … we couldn’t handle the truth. ”
Jacey sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Her eyes were glazed with tears as she looked at him, her mouth quavered. “He didn’t want me, did he? That’s why he never called or wrote. ”
Liam wanted to lie to her, but it was lies that had brought them to this sorry, painful place in their lives. “I don’t know Julian well enough to answer that. ”
He could see that she was shocked and confused and angry. The truth had pushed her out on a twisting, narrow road, and only she could find her way. “I’m sorry, Jace. For all of it. ”
She gazed at him, tears sliding down her cheeks. “I love you … Dad. ”
He heard the tiny hesitation, the way her voice snagged on the hook of new information, before she called him Dad. “I love you, too, Jace. ”
“We’re still a family,” he whispered. “You remember that. Your mom loves you and Bret—oh, shit, Bret. ” He jerked back so hard his head hit the window.
“The reporters. ” Jacey slid back into her seat and clamped the seat belt in place. “It’s three-thirty. He’s in music class. ”