My eyes widened and my jaw dropped, but no sound came out.
“Few months later she and my dad got back together, and he’s raised me as his own, but they raised me to know who Chase was. And before Mom and Chase ever got together, Chase’s family had pretty much already adopted her because she was best friends with my aunt Bree and wasn’t talking to her dad or something, I guess. So we have this weird family that consists of my dad’s family, my mom’s dad, and then Chase’s family—who my mom considers her family. It’s confusing as shit, and we’re all close.”
“That is confusing,” I mumbled. “And just . . . just oh my God.”
“Yeah.” He took in a heavy breath, then released it and stared up at the ceiling again. “But you need to know all that to understand the tattoo.”
When he didn’t say anything for a while again, I squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to tell me, Liam.”
“I told you I grew up knowing about Chase,” he began, his eyes still glued to the ceiling. “There wasn’t one morning of surfing with Dad and Uncle Konrad that there weren’t stories of him. Then, of course, whenever we were with my grandparents—Chase’s parents—stories were told. No one wants his memory to fade even after all this time, and I get it to an extent. Kristi and I don’t understand completely because we didn’t know him, but we know how important it is for them. But as I got older, I stopped looking like my mom, and started looking more and more like Chase. Because of that, there were times where my grandparents, Aunt Bree, or Mom would just start crying when they were looking at me. Even my dad sometimes, I’ll catch him staring at me with a distant look, and I know he’s back in college with his best friend.
“The stories—shit, I could tell you stories about Chase like I had been there. But I have no real emotional connection to them, and to have my family randomly crying or accidentally calling me Chase when they saw me started getting on me. On my nineteenth birthday, my mom was trying to get me to do a bunch of things—I don’t even remember. But everyone was there, and she was busy, so she rambled off a list of things really quick that she needed me to do, and I said something to her. Two words. Just two fucking words, and my entire family went dead silent and then all the women started sobbing.”
“What did you say?” I asked when he didn’t offer anything else.
Liam finally looked over at me and shrugged. “I said, ‘Okay, Princess.’ I was just being a dick because she was giving me a list of things to do on my birthday. Out of all the stories they’d told me about Chase, no one had ever mentioned that he called my mom ‘Princess.’ Ever. So my dad finally told me why everyone was crying, and that, mixed with how I looked just like him . . . it was too close to home, and I kinda lost it. I went off on all of them. Told them to get over what happened, that it’d happened long enough ago that they shouldn’t be upset anymore. My dad was yelling at me to shut up, and I just kept going. I was pissed and said I wasn’t Chase and it wasn’t fair that they all kept putting his life on me, like they wanted me to be him for them or something. I said it wasn’t my goddamn fault I grew up to look like him . . . and then I looked at my mom and said, ‘If you would’ve kept your fucking legs closed, I wouldn’t have to deal with everyone’s bullshit now,’ and then I left.”
“Liam . . .” I said on a breath, shock apparent in the one word.
“I know. I went back to my dorm and didn’t talk to any of them for a week, and not one of them tried to contact me. I didn’t blame them. I said the worst thing I could to them. They don’t want me to be him, I knew that even then. I knew all they wanted was for me to know who he was. Like I said, I was being a dick. It had just started feeling like the Chase thing was forced on me all the time. My middle name is Chase, and a friend of the family only ever calls me LC—for my first and middle name—or Little Chachi. He and his wife always called Chase ‘Chachi,’ so once I started looking like him, the nickname transferred over to me. But I didn’t really start looking like him until I got into high school, and then that’s all anyone could talk about. So for the few years before that birthday, I just felt like I couldn’t get away from his ghost . . . if that even makes sense. And then I let it get to me when I shouldn’t have.
“So when I’d cooled off and realized what I’d done and how I’d hurt my family, I went to get this tattoo. Brian—the guy who came up with the Chachi nickname—is a tattoo artist who worked with Chase and is still close with my parents; he does all of our work. I went to see him, and of course he’d already heard about what I’d done on my birthday. When I told him what I wanted, he just smiled and sat me down. Once it was done, he told me something I still remember like it was yesterday—probably because it was the first time he’d ever been serious around me. He said, ‘What you did was fucked up, LC, but we’ve put a lot on you that no kid should have to deal with. When Chase died we all had to cling together to keep going—this family of strays loved that guy, and I think we were all terrified of forgetting him. So we made sure we wouldn’t. Your mom and dad’s intentions were from the heart. Chase meant a lot to both of them, and they wanted you to know the dad you would never get to meet. Did we put too much pressure on you? Maybe. Even though having you here and seeing Chase through you has been the biggest blessing of my fucked-up life, I don’t want you to be him, and I know they feel the same. Is it crazy looking at you and seeing him? Yeah, dude, it’s a fucking trip. But it’s the best goddamn trip I’ve ever been on.’ ”
My lips tilted up in a small smile at the remembered words. “And then you went to apologize?” When Liam nodded absentmindedly, I asked again, “So what do the letters stand for?”
“My last name is Taylor. Chase’s last name was Grayson—that side of my family’s last name is Grayson. They want to remember him, and they wanted me to know him for a reason. So this is my way of accepting and embracing that part of my life.”
I watched him for a couple minutes before whispering, “I think that’s beautiful.”
His light blue eyes flickered to me, and he huffed softly.
“You’ve never told anyone that story?”
“No, none of my friends even know about Chase,” he admitted.
Moving over so I was sitting in his lap, I rested my head in the crook of his neck and my body melted against his when he tightened his arms around me, holding me close. “Thank you for telling me.”
He pressed his lips to the top of my head, and kept them there as he murmured, “Thanks for listening, Moon.”
July 23
Liam
AFTER I PULLED up in the driveway, I looked over at Kennedy and my body relaxed when I noticed her carefree expression. I’d been dreading this night, afraid of what it would mean for us, and what it might cause her to do—like run. But when I told Kennedy that my parents wanted her and Kira to come over for dinner, she’d surprised me by immediately agreeing like it was nothing . . . like she was agreeing on what movie to watch.
“Nice house!” Kira said from the backseat before stepping out of my car.
“You ready for this?” I asked cautiously.