‘I’m so sorry.’ She was
shaking her head, obviously getting over the shock of his announcement faster than he was. ‘I know you told me she died when you were younger, but I didn’t realise.’
‘How could you have?’ he clipped out. ‘I’ve not mentioned it before.’
‘It must have been so hard for you, growing up without her.’
‘Harder for my father. She was the love of my father’s life. He has never cared for anyone the way he cared for her.’
‘Except for you.’ She nodded, thinking she understood.
And he could have left it at that, with Talia thinking he’d opened up and that she knew more now. He didn’t have to say anything more.
‘No, he’s never cared for anyone else, especially not me.’
Confusion lapped in her eyes like the soft waves on the shore behind them. For a brief moment he wondered what it must be like to have a family care so much for you that you couldn’t quite grasp the idea of a father not loving his child. Then he shut it down because, frankly, what was the point of even thinking that way?
‘Especially not you?’ she prompted gently, when he didn’t say anything else.
He told himself to stop talking, but the words kept coming.
‘My father has never forgiven me.’
‘Forgiven you?’ Her brow knitted in confusion. ‘I don’t understand.’
He waited, suppressing the urge to ball his hands into fists to fight off the gamut of...feelings that were crowding around the periphery of his mind.
Her face cleared abruptly, then assumed an expression of abhorrence.
‘He blamed you?’
‘She died in childbirth, and I was the baby.’ It took all Liam had to keep his tone even. ‘As far as my father was concerned, the cause and effect were undeniable.’
Was he really trying to explain his complicated relationship with the old man to Talia? He had never felt the need to explain himself to anyone, ever. More than that, he could never have allowed himself to be so vulnerable in front of anyone before—even Talia. Yet now there was something inside him making him say things he told himself he didn’t want to say.
‘That’s nonsense,’ she snorted delicately.
‘My father feels otherwise.’
‘He really blamed you?’ Talia asked tentatively, her voice shaking as if she couldn’t quite believe it.
‘He was grieving.’ Liam shrugged. Because what else was there to say?
Talia, it seemed, was having none of it. Her expression was growing tighter and angrier by the minute. For him. Another ball of warmth and light to file away for later.
‘And you’re making excuses for him? What about your grief?’
‘I didn’t know her.’ The words came naturally. An echo of a thousand times his father had ever spoken to him, and he’d grown to believe it in time. More than that, he’d evolved to feel that way. ‘You can’t lose what you never had to begin with.’
‘You can’t really believe that!’ Talia exclaimed. ‘She was your mother, and you never even got the opportunity to meet her. Of course you can grieve. How can you think you don’t have that right?’
‘Because I don’t,’ he answered simply.
Because his father had told him, over and over, from the moment he was born. And because, no matter what logic as an adult might dictate, the bald statement was so deep inside him—so ingrained—that Liam had never felt any different.
He didn’t know how to.
‘So why are you telling me any of this?’ she asked softly, with a tinge of sadness that shot right to his core.