Chapter 105

Liam’s POV

With renewed determination, I drove home, eager to talk to Aria and try to convince her to return to work with the team. But when I walked into the mansion, I was surprised to be greeted by Joe, but not William.

My stomach twisted, remembering that Aria was going to take William to see Sophia today. I’d hoped things had gone better than I had expected, but William’s absence wasn’t doing much to give me confidence.

In the kitchen, I found Aria, working on making lasagna from scratch. That was William’s favorite meal. Something was definitely going on.

“Aria?”

“Oh, welcome home, Liam,” she said.

A flash of bliss flooded me, hearing the woman I loved welcome me home. But as quickly as it arrived, the good feeling was gone. We had other issues at hand right now. As a dad, I didn’t have time to waste being selfish.

“Where’s William?”

“He’s in his room,” Aria said. “He wanted to be alone.” Glancing at me over her shoulder, she added, “Maybe you could check on him?”

I was going to anyway. “Of course.” I wanted the facts first though, before I would go up there and put my foot in my mouth. “What happened today?”

Aria turned back to her dinner-in-progress. “Sophia said things. To me and to him. I expected… most of the things she said to me. But what she said to William surprised me. I thought she loved him.”

I’d thought that too. “What did she say?”

“She called him a disappointment,” Aria said, then explained how Sophia seemed to blame William for my lack of desire for her.

“That has nothing to do with William,” I said.

“We both know that,” Aria said. “But does William?”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“Good,” Aria replied. “Thank you. He didn’t even want to stop for ice cream on the way home.”

Things were serious then. William would never turn down ice cream, unless he felt like he didn’t deserve it.

Damn it. I never should have let them go to that jail. I should have sat William down and explained how his mother was not worthy of his dedication and affection.

He wouldn’t have believed me. He might have even started resenting me. But at least then, he’d be mad at me but saved from the hurt of knowing that his mother hated him.

At William’s closed door, I knocked. “William? It’s Liam… Uh, Dad. Can I come in?”

Leaning toward the door, I listened closely for an answer, but I didn’t hear anything.

I knocked again. “William? You in there?”

“It’s open,” William said.

Grabbing the doorknob, I pushed open the door.

William was laying on the floor on his stomach. One of his elbows was on the carpet, with his chin resting in his palm. With his other hand, he dragged one of his race cars back and forth over the carpet.

“Hi William,” I said softly.

He didn’t reply.

“Tough day, huh?” I asked, moving closer. When I was close enough, I sat down on the carpet. Taking one of his other cars, I started moving it in a similar motion to how he was doing, making the car drive back and forth at a slow pace.

“Yeah,” William replied.

“Your mom wasn’t very nice to you today,” I said. When he looked at me, I replied, “Aria told me.”

William looked away again, back to his car.

“You don’t have to go back there, you know,” I said. “Just because she’s your mom doesn’t mean that you have to see her if you don’t want to.”

“She said mean things to Aria,” William said.

“Mean things to you too,” I added.

“She always does that,” William said. “But I didn’t like her saying that stuff to Aria. She was making Aria upset.”

I’d have to talk to Aria again later, apparently, to get the full report of what was said. Comforting William was my first priority right now, but making sure Aria was okay was a close second.

“I didn’t like that,” William said. “She shouldn’t have said those things.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I wouldn’t have liked that either.” In the past, Sophia had cursed me out using every foul word under the sun. I didn’t particularly care – until she started adding Aria in her vile outbursts. That was when I started to lose my temper with her.

“I don’t like my mom anymore,” William said. “I don’t want to see her.”

“That’s okay, kid. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

William fell quiet for a minute. Then, right as I was about to ask if he was okay, he started again, “I wish Aria was my mom.”

My chest grew tight, listening to William’s hopes and his pain. Sophia had been given the opportunity to raise a happy child in William. For years, he had loved and followed her blindly. But now, it seemed, after everything that happened, William had finally broken the ties of Sophia.

Now he wanted Aria as his mother.

“You could ask Aria, you know,” I told him. “I bet she wouldn’t mind having the job, if you asked her. But make sure you are sure first.”

“I’ll think about it,” William said, though there was hope in his voice now that hadn’t been there before.

Leaning forward, I ruffled William’s hair. “Aria’s making lasagna tonight.”

That perked him further. “She is?”

“Uh huh.”

William even started to smile. “She’d be a good mom.”

“She is a good mom,” I said. “You just need to ask Joe.”

William started to focus, like I just gave him the world’s best idea. “Okay. I will.”

Aria’s POV

With the lasagna in the oven, I moved toward the kitchen table and sit down. Just as I sat, Liam waltzed through the open doorway to the living room, spotted me, and then joined me.

“How’s William?” I asked.

“Better,” Liam said. “At least a little. He’ll need some time to deal with what Sophia said.

“I can only imagine,” I told him. The things she’d said to me were bad enough, and she wasn’t someone that I even particularly liked, let alone loved like William would.

Though, her words continued to bounce around in my head, despite my continued efforts to ignore them. Did they have any truth to them?

Why did Liam want to be with me? Was our marriage really only a matter of convenience to him? But he had said that he loved me. Even recently, he’d said it. Would he lie about that, even after all this time?

I didn’t want to think so, but remembering the past, I wasn’t sure.

If our marriage was one of convenience, made for some purpose other than love, perhaps Liam had always resented me, even from the start. Maybe what he perceived as love was just a sense of obligation, after finding out that Joe was his.

“Aria?” Liam said. Leaning down, he’d lowered his head into my line of vision. I hadn’t realized I’d been blindly staring at a part of the table and blinked a few times, coming back to myself. “You okay? I lost you for a minute there.”

“I’m okay,” I told him.

“What were you thinking about?” he asked. “You seemed a thousand miles away.”

I have no idea how to tell him the truth. It was embarrassing, letting Sophia affect me so much.

“It’s nothing,” I told him, but I could see the doubt in his eyes. Still, for now, he didn’t call me out, even though I could tell he really wanted to.

If I kept getting distracted like this, he would eventually would.

That meant I either needed to think of a way to find out the truth, or I needed to move forward, forgetting everything that Sophia said.

I didn’t know if I had it in me to forget.