“What did you just say? The same way my what?” I repeated tersely.
“The same way your father waited for your mother.”
“My father?” I frowned. “I don’t understand.” I glanced over his shoulder again, but the doorway was empty.
“Remember how I told you mates didn’t always end up together the night of the pledging ceremony?”
Ice filled my veins. “My father had a mate?”
“No. My father had one.”
What did Heath having a mate have to do with my father-
Oh… Oh.
My hand climbed up to my mouth. “My mom was your dad’s mate?”
He didn’t nod. Didn’t speak. Just looked at what his revelation was doing to me. At the thoughts detonating inside my skull.
My mother had been intended for Liam’s father, not for my own.
Yet she’d picked my father.
She’d loved him, not her mate.
“It created quite the stir back in the day,” Liam said, walking over to the bed to sit on it. The stiff mattress creased under him. “Your mom was sixteen and had already been dating your father for three years. And my father… Well, he wasn’t looking to settle. But the mating link made tensions rise. I don’t know the full story. Just bits and pieces. My father was an angry drunk, but a voluble one.” Liam rubbed his hands up and down his thighs. “A month or two into the link, he decided he did want to be with your mother, so he tried to woo her away from your dad. But, Maggie, she was in love with your father.” He studied one of the lines of sunshine that slashed the squeaky clean linoleum floor. “So you see, I don’t put much stock in mating links, Ness.”
He raised his gaze back to my face. Although I was no longer clasping my mouth, it still gaped. I wasn’t sure whether it would ever close again.
My mother and Heath?
I shivered.
“Maybe the moon, or the wolf God, or whatever’s up there”-he gestured noncommittally to the ceiling-“opens connections between people, but in the end, those people are still masters of their own destinies. Of their own hearts.”
Dust motes spangled the air between us, coming in and out of focus.
Liam didn’t speak for a long moment as though understanding that I needed time and silence to process this.
“You and August have history. And unlike my father, August is a good guy, so I understand if you’re confused about how you feel about him-”
The chill that had enveloped my body was replaced by lava-hot heat. I palmed the back of my neck, hoping my cool hand would drive the heat back down.
“-but don’t forget how you felt about me before he came into the picture.”
How the hell did he know I felt conflicted about August?
Was it obvious?
I didn’t want to have this conversation with Liam, the same way I hadn’t wanted to have it with Matt.
Matt!
He must’ve talked to Liam. Shared our weird conversation.
I couldn’t handle this right now. I blinked out of my daze and started toward the door, my strides hurried.
“And, Ness?” Liam called out.
I didn’t stop. I just kept walking. I didn’t want to hear anymore. I couldn’t take anymore.
But his voice trailed after me, clanking inside my mind: Remember that how you felt about me had nothing to do with magic.
I clamped my hands over my ears-not that it could keep his voice out-and sped up, exiting the hospital.
That night, over dinner, I asked Jeb about what Liam had told me, because I’d begun to have doubts. Doubts that Liam had planted this story inside my mind to redirect me toward him. He knew how deeply I’d admired my parents’ love, how deeply I wanted what they had.
Jeb raked his hand through his thinning hair. “How did you find out?”
“Liam told me.”
I prodded the shrimp on my plate with the tines of my fork, just pushing it from one side to the other.
“It’s true.”
I whipped my gaze off the shrimp.
“Should’ve seen your father… ” He got this faraway glint in his eyes. “Callum was terrified he would lose her, terrified she’d pick Heath, but Maggie never even spared Heath a glance. Your father was her first love. Her only one.”
He inhaled a rickety breath and rocked onto his feet, gathering our plates without asking if I was done. He took them to the sink, scraped the rice and crustacean remnants into the bin, then hand washed both plates thoroughly.
“True love is rare, Ness. But Maggie and Callum, they had it,” he added, wiping his hands on a towel.
“Did you have it too? With Lucy. Before… everything.”
“I thought I did. Perhaps I did.” He folded the towel, then refolded it. “To be honest, I don’t know anymore.” He set the plates on the drying rack before scrubbing down the sink and countertop.
My uncle was a surprisingly neat person. I wasn’t sure why I’d assumed otherwise. Because he’d had a staff of cleaners?
Speaking of… “What’s happening with the inn?”
Without removing his attention from the countertop, he said, “I’m trying to break the deal Everest-” His voice caught on his son’s name. He swallowed, which made his Adam’s apple joggle in his scruffy throat. “I’m trying to break the deal he struck with Aidan, trying to prove he wasn’t in his right mind when he struck it. What with Becca’s death… ”
I hadn’t thought of Becca in a long time. Was Everest with her now? Did people find each other again in the afterlife? Was there an afterlife? I scraped off a congealed splash of coconut-curry sauce from the dining table with my fingernail.
“My lawyer believes I have a real chance at dismantling the deal, but he warns me it might get pricey and could take a long time. He also warned me that he got a visit from a colleague yesterday who advised him to back off.”
I felt my lids pull up real high. “He was threatened?”