Page 24 of One More Chance
I turned to face him. The noise of the kitchen seemed to fade, and all I could hear were his words echoing in my head. “I’m not,” I said. "But I’m trying." It was the truth I knew they were tired of hearing.
He shrugged, arms crossed over his chest, a wall of indifference rising between us. His face was unreadable beneath that mop of dark hair, the years of silence and distance written in the slump of his shoulders, in the way his eyes refused to meet mine.
"Whatever," Liam said before he slinked away upstairs.
Violet hummed in the background, a sweet carefree melody that pierced through the stillness. I knew the song well. Sloane used to sing it to her as a baby and I felt the pang of longing to hear her sing it one more time as Violet's voice carried into the kitchen. The tune was a reminder of how much I missed her, how grateful I was to still have her here, even though the cracks in our family were too large to ignore.
I still didn't know what had happened to Violet in my previous life. I had never understood how she'd… vanished. One day she was there, then the next? She'd disappeared after meeting someone from an online game.
The memories of her disappearance, of losing her, of the years of never knowing what happened to her… those memories still tortured me. The police had found chat records between her and several other online friends, one of whom called themselves Prince_Harming.
That was who she had gone to meet.
This Prince_Harming person had given Violet a location and time. When the police followed the address, it took them to an abandoned warehouse. The only thing they ever found there were tire tracks andsigns of a struggle. It had been one of the first, one of the last, and one of the only clues in what faded away into a cold case.
I still had nightmares of losing Violet. Even now, over a decade later, I asked myself:did I cause it? Is it my fault she'd been driven away?
But I was with her in this new life. And here with Liam. I was together with them and for a moment, I felt drunk on the simplest thing: gratitude. Gratitude that I was given this chance to heal the damage that Old Me had done, that his countless fuck-ups hadn’t completely destroyed this family, yet.
While Violet gathered everything she needed for her science fair projects, I climbed the stairs. Liam had taken refuge in his room after our tense exchange, a silent barricade that felt familiar. I stood outside his door, the hallway dim, the upstairs quiet but for the creak beneath my feet. I took a few deep breaths to collect myself before I knocked; a gentle tap, enough to sayI’m here.
He was thirteen now. Caught in that brutal, restless in-between stage of boy and man. The sharpness in his eyes lately wasn’t teenage moodiness; it was weariness. A kind of mistrust that didn’t grow overnight.
The truth was, he’d grown up too fast and I knew exactly why. My mistakes had seeped into the floorboards of his childhood. The lies, the fights, the absences? My wreckage had left fingerprints on his life.
And now I stood outside his door, hoping that it wasn’t too late to repair the damage that had already been done. I needed to show my son that he didn’t have to bear the burden I'd given him.
“Yeah?”
“Hey,” I said, pushing the door open a fraction.
He was laying on his bed, headphones in, lost in whatever storm raged inside his head. His eyes flicked up, but he didn’t pull theheadphones off, didn’t speak. That silence, that cold, distant silence, was more painful than any angry words he could’ve thrown at me.
“Mind if I sit?” I asked. He shrugged, the closest thing to permission I was going to get.
I sat on the edge of the bed, unsure how to start. What could I say?
I really fucked everything up, Liam. Your mom is broken and I destroyed the trust you have in me?
No, I couldn’t say anything like that. He didn’t need me to pile more weight onto his shoulders.
Instead I said, “Violet’s excited for the science fair.” I tried to sound casual, tried to bridge the gap with something neutral. “We're going to start working on her projects. You wanna join us?”
Liam barely moved, but I saw his lips twitch. He probably remembered the countless times I’d helped him with his own school projects. I used to be there for him. Hell, I used to be there for all of them.
“Yeah, maybe,” he muttered. “I don’t know.” He yanked the headphones out, tossing them onto the bed, then sat up, crossing his arms.
“Do you still like Echo Forge?” I asked.
For a second, something shifted, a flicker of connection between us. Liam’s gaze sharpened, a hint of curiosity breaking through his usual indifference. “Yeah. Why?”
“Wanna try to catch a show together? I think they’re touring near us soon.”
I felt awful for offering the boy something I knew would never happen. His favorite band was on tour, and they did plan to come through later this year; but I knew that the world would shut down in a matter of weeks. Everything was on the brink of collapse right now.
But, in that moment of us being father and son, I said it anyway. Because the concert wasn't what it was about. It was about the offer.It was about showing him I gave a damn. It was about wanting to be near him, about hearing him laugh, about remembering how to have fun together. Above all, it was about my son not flinching every time I entered a room.
Liam watched me like he was trying to figure out if this was real or another moment that would fade. When he spoke, I thought I heard the tiniest bit of hope in his voice. “Yeah, okay. I’d like that. You should check out their songs.”
