Released (Caged #3)(57)

It was actually really f*cking weird.

Too weird.

Too much.

I pushed her away from me and raced across the room. I ended up next to the window instead of the door, so I had no way to get out. I just leaned against the ledge and counted the plum tree’s lame excuse for fruit.

“Liam, can you tell your mom what you are thinking right now?”

“She f*cking let him,” I mumbled.

“Let him what?” Erin pressed.

I turned and glared at my mother.

“You didn’t stop him,” I stated. “You just let him…let him say all that shit. He said all that shit to Aimee and scared the crap out of her. She didn’t know what to do, and she wouldn’t tell anyone after that. You let him…”

“I knew he was right, Liam,” Mom said softly.

I tensed and was about to walk right the f*ck out because staying meant possibly punching out my mother. Erin stopped me with a hand and made me sit back down.

“Julianne, could you please clarify what you mean by that? It sounds like you are agreeing with Douglass’s harsher words toward Aimee.”

“Not the words themselves, no,” she said, “but the thought behind them. If you were out of each other’s lives, you wouldn’t have been so hell-bent on becoming a father at seventeen. You weren’t ready for that kind of responsibility.”

“How did you know what the f*ck I was ready for?” I bellowed as I turned to glare at her.

“Because you were my son!” she cried back. “You still are, and I still know you—even if you haven’t been in the family all this time! I can see how much you’ve changed…grown. Even since the wedding, you’re different.”

I looked back to the window and tried to keep my breathing from going completely overboard. I couldn’t think straight when that started to happen.

“He only wanted to protect you,” I heard her whisper.

“Well, he didn’t!” I snapped. “He didn’t f*cking protect me at all!”

“I know!” she sobbed. “It didn’t work! Nothing worked! And then you were…you were just gone!”

I didn’t move from the window as I tried to tune out her crying. It didn’t work, which wasn’t surprising. My chest clenched, and though I wasn’t hyperventilating any longer, I was still dizzy.

“We looked for weeks, Liam,” she said. “After…after the funeral. There was no sign of you—none! The police kept looking for you, but every time they thought they found you, it was someone else. When the report came in…when they finally did really find you…”

Another choking sob.

“You…the way you were living…and you wouldn’t leave! You wouldn’t talk to us! You said you’d rather go to jail than come home with us! You had been strung out for…for days, they said! You almost overdosed! Liam, you used to lecture our friends about smoking when you were in kindergarten, and you were using heroin!”

A shiver went thought my body.

The warehouse.

I knew the place she meant. There were vague, heroin-clouded memories of police cars, an ambulance, a coroner…but nothing concrete.

Been dead for days…

Should be condemned…

Goofy, drugged-up kids…

“Liam?” Erin’s voice floated over to the window and bounced back into my face. “Can you speak to me?”

“I…I don’t remember…” I admitted. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“Would you sit back down?”

I let her lead me back to the chair—the one opposite Mom on the couch. A blood vessel in my temple throbbed, and I stared at the area rug on the floor. In order to push the memories from my head, I tried to make some sense out of the patterns on the rug. I couldn’t. It was random and pointless.

“Liam?” Erin asked again. I eventually looked up at her after she repeated my name a few times. “Do you remember what we talked about before? Your concern about Tria when she first told you she was pregnant?”

“Um…” I cleared my throat again. “Yeah.”

“There were things you were thinking then…things you said to Tria.”

“That shit…” I wanted to say it didn’t matter—that it wasn’t the same. I wanted to deny it all, but I couldn’t. Instead, I looked up into my mother’s eyes for the first time.

Pants creased, hair beginning to fall out of its pins, makeup smeared.

When had she ever done anything but try to make it right? When had I done anything but try to push her away?

“I…I…I can’t…” I stuttered, and then I remembered what Erin said earlier and started tapping my finger on my knee.

“I think that’s enough for now,” Erin said immediately. I could see my mother’s surprise, but it didn’t matter to my counselor. Twenty seconds later, she had ushered Mom out the door. She was gone less than a minute before she came back in and knelt beside me.

“You okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think…maybe.”

“Pretty intense?”

“Yeah.”

“Good intense?”

“Not sure yet.”