Page 96 of Gone for You

He points at me. “Let me guess. You.”

“Yup. Me. My mom came here, had me, then left when I was still a baby. Weeks old, baby.”

“Holy hell.”

“Yeah. Anyway, that’s only part of the story. When my grandparents found out, they all but disowned my father. I never knew them”

“What? Why?”

I point to my face. “Because I’m not white.”

“I think I need a drink.”

My laugh lacks any trace of humor. I lean against my desk while he takes a seat on the couch. “Oh it gets better. The night of Lily’s wedding we went back to my place and there was a huge breakthrough. For both of us. Liv finally let her guard down and opened her heart to me. Then life happened. My dad called to inform me that my mom had died. I thought she’d been living back in Mexico all these years but it turns out, she’s been here in the states. Had a daughter even. All these years, I thought she just didn’t want to be a mom. Turns out, she didn’t want to be a mom to me.”

“I don’t think…”

“No. I know. But you know what? I’ll never know. I’ll never have those answers.”

“Maybe her daughter does.”

“Possible. But I’m not about to go look her up to find out. If she’d have wanted to find me, she’d have found me.”

“Your sister? How do you even know that she knows about you?”

“She knows. Dad said she didn’t want anything to do with me, though.”

“This is crazy. Okay, so what does that have to do with the fact that Liv isn’t here?”

“All this time, I thought she would be the one to run. I knew she had fears of commitment. But it turns out, I have a few issues of my own.”

“So you pushed her away before she could do the same to you.”

“No.”

He raises his eyebrows at me. “No?”

“Fuck you,” I smirk.

He barks out a laugh. “Aww, does the truth hurt big bad Ethan?”

“Who the hell ever called me big and bad?”

Rex shrugs, relaxes back into his seat. “Well, it was fun while it lasted, I suppose. Having her around, I mean. If you couldn’t hack it when the first bump in the road hit, then you don’t deserve her.”

“Are you trying to be the bad cop here? Because it’s not going to work on me.”

“Unfortunately, no. I’m being totally serious. You don’t deserve her if this is how you’re going to treat her.”

I move around my desk, stand behind my chair, cross my arms. “Maybe you’re right, I need to move on.”

“I never said to move on.”

“You implied it.”

“No I most certainly did not. I said to pull the stick out of your ass and stop being a prick around here,” he says.

“You did not.”

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