Chapter 17

Liv

“What was that about?”

Chase just got back downstairs from putting Katie to bed. His parents left to go back to their hotel—they’re flying out at the crack of dawn tomorrow and didn’t want us all to have to wake up to see them off—so it’s just the two of us in the living room now.

“What was what about?”

“When your dad was talking about the guys who took over the business. And you looked like you wanted to take a bite out of someone.”

He shrugs, but I’m starting to know Chase a little better, and I don’t buy it.

“Seriously, Chase.”

“It’s nothing.”

I wait. I’ll wait all night if I have to, and I can see him starting to get uncomfortable in the silence, and then he says, “It’s a long story, Liv. And water under the bridge.”

“Didn’t look like water under the bridge.”

“It just pisses me off. When he talks that way about it. Because I could have kept all that from happening if he’d left me the business. Or even sold me the business.”

“Why didn’t he?”

Chase folds his arms and looks away. “He didn’t think I could hack it.”

“What do you mean he didn’t think you could hack it?”

“Are you sure you want to open this can of worms?”

I nod.

“I had a tough time as a kid, which means they had a hell of a time with me. ADHD and a whole card deck of undiagnosed learning disabilities. Didn’t learn to read till I was almost ten. It’s still slow going for me if I have to read anything long.”

He pauses, as if waiting for me to react. It’s startling but not, somehow, shocking. I mean, Chase is a crazy-smart guy, but not a book-smart guy, the other kind. It doesn’t make me think any less of him that he’s not book smart, not when I know how capable he is in so many ways. I know even more of them now than I used to, having seen what a great dad he is, and knowing how much Mike values his work at the store.

His eyes search mine, and there’s a look in them—as if he’s still waiting for my disappointment—that I don’t much like, but he takes a breath and goes on.

“Homework was hell. Projects were hell. Teachers couldn’t handle me; I got kicked out of elementary school and then out of the private school my parents tried next. My mom homeschooled me for a while, and then she couldn’t handle me, so they sent me to a different private school, and—the short version is that my parents have always seen me as that kid. Troublemaker, class clown, not going anywhere. They sent my brother to Yale and didn’t even talk to me about college. Which is—I mean, I get it. I didn’t do anything to challenge their assumptions. But it still stung when they sold the business instead of giving me a shot at running it.”

“I can see why,” I say quietly. I sit down across from him on the couch.

“They wanted Henry—that’s my older brother, you’ll probably meet him at some point—to take over the business, but he went and got a medical degree and became an emergency room doc. He was basically their perfect son, except for the not-taking-over-the-business part. And I guess I assumed it would be mine, since it wasn’t his. When my dad told me he was selling it instead of passing it along to me, he said, ‘You have no idea how much it hurts me not to be able to pass this business on to one of my sons, but it would kill me to watch someone else destroy what I’ve worked my whole life to build.’ ”

I flinch. “Jesus, Chase, that is so unbelievably harsh. What kind of dad—?”

“A dad who meant it,” he says quietly, and my heart squeezes.

“But you’re not that guy now. Not at all. I mean, the whole time they were talking about you at dinner, it was like they were talking about someone else completely. I couldn’t recognize that guy. Why don’t you get in their faces and tell them it’s bullshit, the way they see you? The way they talk about you?”

He shakes his head. “Because I don’t have to. It doesn’t matter how they see me. I know who I am, and what I’m capable of. Once I knew Thea was pregnant, I did everything I could to get my act together. I doubled down on all the tutoring and therapy and medication and meditation that people had been trying to get me to take seriously for years. Even more to the point, I started taking responsibility for myself. And I did it. I figured out how to be a competent adult and a good dad. That’s who I am now, and that’s what I focus on. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have let Katie come live with me. If I thought I wasn’t capable or competent to support her and raise her, you better believe in a split second I’d have found another place for her. My parents wanted to take her. They tried to convince me they should. But I said no. I said this was the right place for her. And I believe that.”

My mouth is all but hanging open in disbelief. “They—they said they should take her instead of you?”

He nods.

“Chase, how can they—That’s—” I’m speechless. Sputtering.

“God knows I wish they saw me as I am and not as I was, but to be fair to them, there was a time in my life I had trouble keeping a goldfish alive. They felt like they’d be lucky if I ever moved out of their place, let alone held down a job and supported my kid. They give me a little more credit each time they see me, but it’s going to take years before I fully convince them I’ve got this. But it’s okay, Liv. It’s really okay. I know I’ve got this.”

The thing is, I can tell he means it.

He’s amazing. I mean, he tosses the whole thing off like it’s not a big deal, but he turned his life around, went from being a guy whose own parents didn’t trust him to inherit the family business to being a guy whose boss wants him to take over his.

It doesn’t matter to him how they see him. Like he said, he knows who he is.

And now I know who is he, too.