Chapter 189

Aria’s POV

Finding no luck at Markus’s, I returned home. I wanted to tell Liam about the strange invitation I’d found, that asked me to be at some fancy venue on a Saturday night, but something about Liam that evening was making me hold my tongue.

After all, didn’t he say he was also going to be out that evening, to go to some work event with Joanna? It didn’t feel right, keeping this a secret from him, but if he wasn’t going to tell me what was really going on with his work event then maybe he didn’t get the right to find out what was going on with me either.

After all, I’d asked everyone I could think about regarding Saturday’s events. Jackson and the other drivers hadn’t been invited. Neither had been Anthony.

“Maybe it’s just a party for investors,” Jackson had tried to reason, entirely for my benefit, I was sure. He had no love lost for Liam, and was entirely suspicious of Liam’s recent behavior with Joanna.

Jackson made that suggestion, but we both knew that was unlikely. Investor parties still wanted the drivers there. Sometimes the rest of the team too. For Jackson, the start driver of the team, to be left out from the invitation meant that something else was likely going on.

Now, Liam continued to act suspiciously. He was avoiding being in any room of the house with me without the kids also present. While I was pleased to see him home again, and spending so much time with the kids, it was still unsettling that he couldn’t seem to stand being alone with me.

Even if I walked into a room and he was there, he would immediately excuse himself and return to wherever the kids were.

With the days until the Saturday event ticking by one by one far too quickly, and since I couldn’t get Liam alone to talk about any of this, my own worries amplified a tremendous degree.

It did seem suspicious…

Liam’s mysterious work event aligned exactly with the time and date of my own mysterious invitation. Could they be for the same event?

You will want to see this, the unknown handwriting had said.

Markus had claimed that he had no knowledge of the invitation, but that could have been a lie. It could have also been Joanna who sent it. She’d been trying to convince me to leave Liam for months. Maybe she knew something was going down and wanted to rub it in.

Of course, my own suspicions could be making me chase shadows even on a sunny day.

Wasn’t it also possible that this could be an invitation to a surprise party of some kind? Only, it wasn’t my birthday, and I couldn’t think of any events going on. Even so, jumping to the absolute conclusion wasn’t good for me or my mental health.

All these secrets were making me paranoid.

Now that Liam was back home more regularly, he returned to making meals some of the evenings. While the kids played, I walked into the kitchen to speak with him. Cooking, he wouldn’t be able to sneak out of the conversation easily.

“Liam?” I said.

At the sound of my voice, he nearly jumped straight out of his skin. “A-Aria?” Some of the tomato sauce he’d been stirring flicked out across the floor. “Shit. Sorry.” Setting the spoon aside, he grabbed a towel and bent to clean it.

“Let me help you,” I said, grabbing the wet wipes.

As we both reached for the stains, our hands brushed. Liam glanced up at me, and I met his eyes.

Briefly, our usual spark passed between us.

A sharp longing cracked through my ribcage. I missed him so much and longed for how things were starting to be, before Markus came into our lives.

Looking at me, Liam’s eyes softened, almost as if he could discern my sadness. “Aria…”

I desperately wanted things to go back, but I couldn’t just ignore all the secrets building up like a wall between us. If he could just be honest… about Saturday, but about everything else too… maybe we still had a chance of making that happen.

He’d already told me we would talk on Sunday. For as close as Saturday felt, Sunday seemed like a hundred years away. By then, I worried, it would be far too late to clear the air between us.

“Is there anything we should talk about, Liam?” I asked. “Before our planned talk on Sunday?”

Liam held my gaze for a long moment. In that moment, hope rose up inside of me, bright and beautiful.

We could save us. We could! We just needed to talk and then –

Liam looked away. “No. But we should talk early on Sunday. As early as we can.”

My hope plummeted back down into the dark pits inside of me. Cold replaced the warmth inside of me.

“Are you sure?” I asked, my last effort.

Still not looking at me, he nodded.

What else could I say? Swallowing down my disappointment, I focused on cleaning the sauce as Liam stood and returned to cooking.

Neither of us said another word until the kids came in for dinner.

William’s POV

Something was going on with Mom and Dad. They were acting weird with each other. Distant, and kind of like they couldn’t stand to be in the same room with each other.

William had seen something like this before, when Dad would get so mad at William’s real mom, Sophia, that he never wanted to be in the same room with her. At least, not without William there.

Mom, Aria, and Dad were pretending right now, for William and Joe. Maybe they thought William and Joe wouldn’t be able to tell, but William and Joe weren’t nearly as oblivious as their parents thought. They saw all kind of things.

So when Mom and Dad were fighting, even if they were trying to hide it, William and Joe knew right away.

After dinner, William pulled Joe aside. They were supposed to be doing homework, but this conversation seemed more important. William spoke quickly, knowing they only had a few minutes alone before either Dad or Mom came looking for them – likely in a way to avoid talking to the other.

“Something weird is going on with Mom and Dad,” William told Joe.

Joe nodded, agreeing right away. “They’ve been fighting, but now it seems like they aren’t talking at all… That’s worse than fighting, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” William admitted, but it felt worse to him.

Joe started to frown, his face crumpling up with a sudden thought – and sudden misery. “Do you think they’ll get a divorce?”

That worry immediately make William’s face crumple up even worse than Joe’s. It came with a terrible ache in his chest.

If Mom and Dad broke up, what would happen to him? Joe really belonged to Mom and Dad, so he’d have a home with them. But William was just an adopted kid. If they broke up, who would want him?

Then, a thought occurred to him that was even worse than all those that came before.

It made him positively freeze where he stood just inside Joe’s bedroom. The blood drained from his body, and he felt like he was going to throw up.

If Mom and Dad didn’t want him anymore, did that mean he was going to have to go back to Sophia?