a lot alike.”
I smile. “Guess that’s why we can’t get along.”
“Probably. What did you do?”
“She saw me with another girl.”
He whistles, and I can see the disappointment registering on his face. Yeah, old man, I’m cut from your cloth. “She loves you. Give her some space then you do whatever it takes to earn her forgiveness if you truly love her.”
“How’d you get Mom to forgive you?”
“I didn’t. That was Susie’s doing. I knew I had cut your Mom too deep. So much was lost between us that I knew I’d never get back what we had. But Susie wasn’t ready to lose her best friend. Susie promised to never see me again, but your mother told her no. Said she wanted me to be happy. I know Susie loves me, but she’ll never love me the way your mom did. That love is rare”
“Do you still love Mom?”
“I’ll always love Diane. She gave me you boys and despite all my fuckups she finds room in that big heart of hers to still care about me. She checks in on me every couple of days and sends me care packages for my chemo treatment days.”
I nod. “Thanks for the talk, Dad.”
“I hope we’ll be doing more of this, Killian. I love you, son.”
Fuck. A stray tear finds its way to my cheek and I get choked up. “Love you too, old man.”
Chapter 22
Liri
“I can’t believe you don’t have the tree up.” I shove another cookie in my mouth.
“Well, I wasn’t sure if you’d come home or not, and Theo is with that woman. Cooper has invited me to go to Aspen with him. You’re more than welcome to come along. Cooper adores you.”
“So are you guys like a thing?”
“If you must know we are talking, but we’re going slow. You’ll remember last year Cooper stopped coming around. Now it’s not what you think. He found out about Theo’s affair, and he was conflicted because he loves him like a brother. They’ve always been close, but he’s always loved me too. He didn’t know what to do, so he stayed away and told Theo he needed to be honest with me.”
“Does Theo know about you and Cooper?”
“No. We’re going to tell him tomorrow over dinner.”
“Ouch.” I smile.
“You’ll be here.”
“He’s coming here for dinner to be told that his best friend is screwing his wife?”
“Liri!”
“Sorry, Mom. It seems a bit harsh.”
“Not really. He’ll be bringing Tanya. He wants you to meet her.”
“Stop. You can’t be serious. You guys want me there for all this drama?”
“Theo thinks that we can be mature and that we will still be able to do vacations and holidays as a unit.”
“What does that even mean? Are you okay with it?”
“I don’t know. I want to be able to remain friends, but when I first found out I was hurt.”