Trapped (Caged #2)(29)

Tria’s eyes locked with mine as she waited for me to continue.

“Dad worked a lot,” I said. “His phone rang most every day when he was home, but he always had it turned off between six and eight in the evening because that was family time.”

Not surprisingly, Tria’s eyes widened, and she even moved away a bit in disbelief as I kept talking.

“When I was growing up, those hours were off limits to anything else,” I told her. “Dad said if we couldn’t take two hours out of every day to spend together that nothing he worked for mattered. He meant it, too.”

I could see the confusion in her eyes.

“Not what you thought, huh?” I gave her a wry smile.

“Not at all,” she admitted. “I mean, you never talk about them. I guess I assumed…”

“I know,” I said with a nod. “I guess given where I am today, that would be a logical conclusion, but it wasn’t like that. Aside from our daily family time, Mom and I did a lot of things on a regular schedule, especially when I was young. Thursday nights were always movie nights with popcorn and whatever. The best nights were Tuesdays, though.”

“What was on Tuesdays?”

“Game night,” I said as a smile crossed my face. “There was a game room off the theatre with a pool table and a jukebox. There was another big table for board games and card games.”

“What did you play?”

“Lots of different things,” I said. “Parcheesi, cribbage, Mastermind…”

“Mastermind?” Tria giggled. “You mean the one with the different colored marbles?”

“Yep,” I replied. “That was one of my favorites. The best ones were backgammon and chess, though. Dad liked backgammon the most, but Mom and I loved chess. She was awesome at it, too. I was sixteen the first time I ever beat her at a game.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, and we started playing when I was five!” I laughed, remembering how Mom would play with nothing but her king, two rooks, and a pawn. I would still lose every time.

“It sounds really…nice…” She let her voice trail off, but I knew what she was thinking.

“They were good parents,” I said. “At least, during my childhood. They could be a little stuffy, and they dragged me to a shitload of boring-ass parties when I was a kid. Sometimes they pissed me off, but for the most part, they were good parents, ya know?”

“Not really,” she said quietly. “But I think I know what you are saying. So, was it the drugs that made them kick you out?”

“No,” I said. “Those came later.”

It would have been so much easier to lie to her. If I had just said yes to her simple question, then we could just blame everything on the drugs and forget the rest.

Definitely easier.

“My father and I…”

I couldn’t continue. Somewhere between my mind and my tongue, the words were lost. I couldn’t even picture the scenes in my head. A thousand metaphorical walls rising a thousand metaphorical feet into the air barricaded the memories of that time.

As it should be.

“We argued,” I finally said.

“Often?” Tria asked for clarification.

“Toward the end, I guess,” I said. “My father thought it was very important that I go into the family business, and I thought other things in life were more important. He didn’t care for my choices. Eventually it blew up, and I walked out.”

“He didn’t want you to fight,” Tria surmised.

I didn’t correct her. My teeth clenched together as a little skirmish inside my head broke out, and each side tried to rationalize whether or not the lack of correction on my part constituted a lie. Technically, the statement was true. Though he was supportive of the high school wrestling and martial arts as a hobby, he didn’t want me to continue fighting in college. He had expected me to focus on academics.

“I decided I was going to do what I thought was the right thing,” I finally said, neither confirming nor denying her assumption. “He said if I didn’t do what he wanted, I was going to be cut off, so I started to leave. He said if I left, I couldn’t come back, so I haven’t.”

“And this was when you were seventeen?” Tria asked.

“Yeah.”

“Ten years ago?”

“Yeah.”

“And you haven’t spoken to either of them since then?”

“I have not.”

“Liam,” she said in her it’s-time-to-chastise-me-for-saying-something-stupid voice, “you have completely avoided your parents for that long based on one argument?”

“It wasn’t just a simple argument,” I said, though my throat tightened up as I had to fight to hold up the walls. “Just leave it at that.”

“What did you fight about?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Then why don’t you contact them?”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Then what you fought about did matter,” she surmised.

“It doesn’t matter now,” I said again.

“Then tell me why you fought!” she demanded once more.

“No!”

Whatever was inside of me holding my shit together collapsed.