SafetyInNumbers-Final (8 page)

“I remember and I didn’t hate you because I saw what he was doing to you with my own eyes. There was no way to deny that or pretend it wasn’t happening. He was going to kill you.” Liam closed his eyes, hoping to block that memory. No matter how many years passed, he could easily picture that moment as if it happened yesterday. “Do you really believe that knowing why is going to change what I saw?”

Chris just looked at him, his expression saying more than any words that it was exactly what he believed. Like Chris, he didn’t want them to lose each other, but unlike Chris, he couldn’t imagine any scenario where he blamed his brother. If they had to stay here all night until Chris believed that, then that’s what they would do. “Okay, let’s put this all to rest once and for all. Tell me when it started.”

“About three months after they got married.” Chris looked relieved that he was asking and, oddly enough, that gave him a little boost of courage.

“Really?” Liam tried to think back to that time, but all he remembered was school, work, and sports. “Was I really that oblivious?”

“No, not at all,” Chris was quick to reassure. “You were crazy busy with the team and trying to keep up with your school work. Plus you had just taken on that part-time job after school.”

Having Chris reiterate his thoughts made those reassurances sound like excuses. They were living in the same house, their bedrooms right across the hall from each other. How could he have been so blind? “I remember that, but I should have noticed the bruises.”

“No one saw the bruises. Don’t wonder what you could have done or what you should have seen. He was smart enough not to hit where it would be obvious.” Chris took a tentative step closer. “It’s not your fault.”

Now that reassurance actually made him feel like everything was his fault. What would he do if it had been? “Did your Mom know?” When Chris nodded, the rage hit so hard and fast that Liam thought his head might explode. Martha had treated him so kindly, always making his favorite meals, encouraging his dreams, and doing little things to make his life easier. That bitch had allowed her own son to be abused for years while she treated her step-son like a king? And Chris still supported her? “Why didn’t you tell the cops? She would have gone to jail. She deserved to go to jail!”

Chris shook his head, the movement slow and unsure. “He was threatening her, too. I wasn’t sure at first, but he eventually admitted it.”

That didn’t make it better for him. Why wasn’t Martha’s first instinct to protect her son at all costs? He couldn’t imagine fear preventing him from protecting a child, especially his own, and he couldn’t believe Chris thought it was an acceptable excuse. “Does knowing that help?”

“Yes. No.” Chris threw up his hands in defeat. “It should help, shouldn’t it? But she let him...no, it doesn’t really help.”

“I don’t get why she didn’t come forward after he was dead.” There would have been no need to keep David’s secrets at that point and two very good reasons to shout them from the rooftops. “If she told the truth, we wouldn’t have gone to jail.”

“You’re absolutely right, Liam, and I have to live with that. Honestly, I didn’t think we’d go to jail for defending ourselves and I didn’t want her to go to jail for being too afraid to do the right thing, so I told her to keep quiet.”

Liam had no problem imagining Chris protecting his mother the way she hadn’t bothered to protect him. “You’re blaming yourself, aren’t you? Chris, whether anyone predicated it or not,
we did
go to jail and she had the power to get us out
. At some point she needed to mother-the-fuck-up!”

“It’s not gonna happen. She’s dying.” This was news to Liam, though he knew Martha sent the occasional letter. Chris stopped letting him read them when he lost his mind over Martha’s insistence that her son should support her, even though she knew he had nothing. Now knowing she was complicit in her son’s abuse, he would do everything in his power to stop Chris from sending her money.

“You’re planning to go see her, aren’t you?” Liam asked, but he already knew the answer. Of course Chris would go see his dying mother, that’s what a good son would do. “If you think for a second we’re going to let you see her alone, you’re out of your damn mind.”

For a long moment, they stared at one another until Chris finally nodded. It took another moment for the anger to recede enough that he could continue. There was one question that haunted him the most and he still wasn’t sure he was ready for the answer, but they needed this to be over. Chris couldn’t go on believing the answers would make them lose each other, and had he known that was his fear, Liam would have forced this conversation sooner. “Did he ever…you know…did he sexually abuse you?”

Chris took another step closer and shook his head. “No, never.”

“Swear it.” The police tried to get Liam to denounce his father as a serial abuser and pedophile, but until they threw that word at them, Liam hadn’t even thought it. There was no denying his father was physically abusing Chris and had been for a long time, but was his father a rapist too? It was selfish to even think one was worse than the other, some last ditch attempt to believe there was some good in the man who raised him, and knowing that kept him from ever sharing that fear before.

“I swear it didn’t happen.” Everything in Chris’s tone and expression said he was telling the truth, and Liam had to believe he wasn’t lying to protect him.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped you.” They’d sworn to be brothers no matter what and that they would be there for each other. Did Chris think he wouldn’t believe him the way the cops hadn’t? Or that he would stand back and let it happen the way Martha had?

“Or he could have hurt you too. I couldn’t take that chance.” Chris took his hands and squeezed them gently. “I knew you would try to help me if I told you, but I didn’t know what he would do to you if you tried.”

That he’d been living some idyllic childhood while Chris was suffering in silence to protect him made him want to hurl. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“I’m sorry for that, but I’m not sorry for trying to protect you. It won’t stop me from always wanting to protect you.” Chris looked at him expectantly and Liam knew there was only one question left to ask. The one that Chris believed would change everything.

“What’s going to change if I ask?” Liam knew Chris wouldn’t need him to elaborate. The big
why
had been looming between them since the night Liam walked in and found his father beating Chris into oblivion. He’d never asked and the answer Chris gave the cops hadn’t explained anything.

“I don’t know. You might hate me.” Chris took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “If we walk out of here right now, without you asking, you’ll always wonder and it will eat at you. It would be easier, but we’ll be stuck right where we are now.”

He hated that Chris was right, but there was no way he could ever hate Chris. The answer wasn’t going to make him feel better, but his response would convince Chris that he had nothing to fear and that was the only reason to ask the question. There was just one man to blame and he wasn’t standing in this room. He was dead, and if Liam could go back, he’d kill him all over again.

So he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, mimicking his brother’s defensive stance, and asked, “Do you know why he did it?”

Chris opened his mouth and closed it. Right up until he asked it, Liam could see that Chris was prepared to answer. Then, all of a sudden, he wasn’t. Again Chris opened his mouth, but only a sob came out. When Chris tried to pull his hands away, Liam held tight. They’d come this far and they had to see it through together. He didn’t know where it came from, but suddenly he was confident that they would be stronger for it.

“Chris, it’s okay. He didn’t win that day and we’re not going to let him win now.” Liam took the final step, closing the distance between them and taking his brother in his arms. “You’ve been carrying us for so long, the rock I always knew I could rely on. Now it’s your turn to rely on me. Tell me and trust me to do right by you.”

Chris grabbed him up tight and buried his face in Liam’s shoulder. “You were so smart, so talented, and had such a bright future ahead of you, but he knew you missed your mother. So he got you a mother, but he didn’t want another son. Everything he had was invested in you and he refused to let anything take away from that. My being there took away from you.”

“No, that’s crazy.” Liam leaned back and forced Chris to look at him. “Listen to me, I had everything. You coming into my life didn’t take away from it, it gave me a brother. That was the best gift ever.”

Liam searched through the emotions on Chris’s face, trying to make sense of his explanation and the pain radiating from every inch of him. “Chris, is that what he told you? Did he tell you that you were somehow ruining my life?” The answer was right there for him to see, no words necessary. Chris curled into himself, clearly expecting the worst. “No, no, that’s not true. It’s not.”

“Yes, it is. Maybe it wasn’t back then, but it happened anyway.” Chris tore himself away and kept going until several feet separated them. “You watched me kill your father. You lost your family, your future, and spent two years in jail because of me. I took away your whole life. That’s the truth. Even if it wasn’t always the truth, David knew I would ruin you and he was right.”

It took every ounce of strength he had not to run across the room and shake Chris until he realized how wrong he was about everything. The only reason he didn’t was because he knew the next words out of his mouth were going to be the most important words ever said between them. If Chris continued to believe that it was his fault, David won. If Liam started to believe that it was his fault, David won. That bastard had been winning and making their lives miserable long enough. It would end here and he had to find the right words so Chris would believe it with as much conviction as he believed that he was to blame for everything.

“I can’t fix everything, but I’ve been saving up money for you to go back to college. There’s enough for about four semesters right now. Will that be good enough to get you started?” Chris’s voice sounded distant and hollow, and Liam hated it more than he hated the silence. “I’ll keep saving, keep working extra jobs, until you’re done with law school.”

“Wait, what do you mean you’ve been saving up for me to go back to college?” That couldn’t be right. Liam always believed Chris was living on a shoestring and often denied himself the things he wanted so he could send money to Martha. “Chris, I swear, if you tell me you’ve been living like a fucking pauper so you could pay for my college education, I will kick your ass all over this warehouse.”

When Chris just shrugged, Liam lost it. He was across the warehouse before the thought solidified in his brain and kept moving until he had Chris pinned to the wall. “You have a lot of nerve throwing my words at me when you didn’t mean them!”

“What?” Chris’s confusion only pissed him off more.

“Bros stick together no matter what. That was our promise, right? Right?!” At Chris’s hesitant nod, Liam demanded, “Did you mean it?”

“Of course I meant it,” Chris cried. “Everything I did…”

“Was to protect me! What about you? It’s not a one way street where Liam gets everything and Chris gets nothing.” Liam shook Chris hard. “That’s David’s way of thinking and it means dick to us as brothers. He was a liar and an abuser and a...a...lowlife, cock-sucking, motherfucking twatwaffle! Don’t you stand here and tell me he won. Don’t you dare!”

“Uh.” Chris blinked a few times, then his lips started to twitch and he dropped his head back against the wall. “Twatwaffe? Really?”

As Liam watched Chris try to rein it in—eyes squeezed shut, lips pursed tight, shoulders shaking—he knew his words were right. `Cause, god help them, if they could laugh together after all that, they could do anything.

“LCMT for short,” Liam deadpanned. Chris grabbed him up in a tight hug and then the two of them were laughing so hard that they couldn’t tell whose tears were whose. He’d never felt cleaner or clearer in his life. They slid to the floor, still clinging to each other as they laughed and cried until they were both drained of emotion. “You’re my brother and I love you, and I’m so sorry that he made you believe that you were somehow less than me. It’s not true and it never was. I hate him so much, just him, because he ruined both our lives. That’s where all the blame belongs, not here between us.”

“Promise?” Chris asked hopefully.

“Promise, pinky swear, blood oath...tell me what will convince you and I’ll do it. You should hate me and I honestly don’t know why you chose to love me instead, but I’m gonna hold you to it.”

Chris grinned a little. “We’re already stuck with each other. You don’t have to get all stalkerish about it.”

“God, I missed you.” Liam chuckled and tightened his hold. “I know that sounds weird because I really did understand your silence, but I’m really glad to hear your voice again.”

“It doesn’t sound weird. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long time.” Chris kissed the top of his head and hugged him tight. “Let’s go home.”

“Chris?” Liam asked as they climbed into the truck. “We’re gonna do this together from now on, right?”

“Together, brother,” Chris promised, his voice stronger than it had been all night.

Chapter 8