“Tria doesn’t like the fighting anyway,” Michael reminded me. “Maybe it’s time for a change.”
I nodded my head slowly as I looked at my uncle.
“I’ll do anything,” I told him.
“You’ve got a job with me,” he said. “I’ll get you set up on the payroll Monday, and you can stay here as long as you like. Has Tria…has she gone to a doctor yet? How far along is she?”
“I don’t know. Shit, Michael, I have no idea!”
The panic I had been fighting for days was dangerously close to overwhelming me again. My hands started shaking, and I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I started to get dizzy, and I jumped when Michael’s hand made contact with my skin.
“Whoa, Liam!” Michael’s hand rested on my arm. “Relax—we’re going to work all this out.”
I shook my head again.
“There’s nothing,” I whispered. “Nothing I can do—not now. It’s too late.”
“None of that now,” Michael said gently. “The Liam I’ve known all his life is still in there somewhere, and he never gave up on anything. This ranks up there with the most important things in your life, so you’re not going to give up now. If you were going to, you’d have a needle in your arm instead of a conversation with me.”
Raising my head, I met his gaze, and we looked at each other for a long moment.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said quietly. “Everything is in her hands—I don’t have any choices here.”
“Of course you do,” Michael said. “How you react to all this is your choice. So let’s focus on that, shall we?”
I nodded.
“Okay,” Michael said as he took a long breath, “let’s think about the goals here.”
“Goals?”
“You must have a goal,” Michael told me. “Don’t you remember? Figure out where you are, where you want to be, then start taking steps to get there.”
“That sounds like something Dad would say.”
“He did. Many times. So what’s first?”
“I need work.”
“No—goals first. Getting a job is just a stepping stone, not the end goal. What’s your end goal?”
He focused his dark eyes right on mine and held me in his gaze for a moment. I knew exactly what he was saying; it was a lesson ingrained in me from a very early age. I could still hear his words: “Figure out what you want or need. Then come up with the steps to attain it. Know your target. Then set your sights and make it happen.”
“I want my family—me, Tria, and the baby. I want us all together.”
Michael’s smile spanned his whole face in a way that was probably really creepy to anyone who didn’t know him. His eyes widened and his eyebrows rose as he gave me a broad smile.
“Now that’s a goal!”
*****
After arguing for quite some time over the breakfast table, Michael and I managed to rule out a ton of potential positions with the hotel side of the business. He wanted to set me up as an executive and give me six figures, and I reminded him that I never did get that business degree and didn’t even have a high school diploma, for that matter.
The lack of a diploma limited the jobs I was qualified to even apply for, and I wasn’t willing to take nepotism to the next level by allowing him to hand over a job I wasn’t even remotely capable of doing. Despite everything else, I still had an ounce of pride left, and I knew I didn’
t need anywhere near the kind of money Michael was offering. I just needed a basic job with a steady paycheck.
Michael hauled over a laptop and started searching the database of open positions. Almost all of them required at least a high school diploma, and Michael was trying to push me away from doing janitorial work at one of the buildings. I rolled my eyes and let him keep looking though I was pretty certain it was going to be the only job I was qualified to do.