Page 5 of Dream On, Liar

Oliver nodded, but his eyes remained fixed on her as she crossed the room and left us. When his eyes met mine, he simply shook his head before dropping down on the couch.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked, making sure my tone was sincere.

“She’ll tell you if she wants,” He replied, the tone of concern just as evident in his voice, as Milo settled in his lap.

I glared, realising this was not something small, and considering the history of secrets and lies our family had—something he also knew—it only raised my guard. “You’re my best friend.”

“Yes. And I’m her boyfriend,” His usual calm tone irked me, unbothered by my clear frustration. We’d done this more times than I could count, but Oliver King had the patience of a saint.

“At least tell me she’s okay.” I snapped after a moment of silence.

A rare flicker of doubt passed through his features as he dragged a hand over his jaw, the movement sharp, distracted. “She will be.”

Part of me knew he’d said those words to reassure me but it was clear he didn’t believe them much, just something he hoped.

Before I could push further, both of our attention was pulled on the moving screen as my father appeared on the panel.

My heart dropped to the acid of my stomach.

Oliver frowned. “Did he tell you he was doing this?”

I shook my head, my hands moving with a mind of their own, picking up the remote.

But there was something deep in my gut, screaming at me to not do it. To turn it off and spare myself the pain.

I wished I had listened to it, instead of pressing the unmute button.

2

Maeve

I HAD A CONDITION.

It was called ‘Never Getting Over Anything,’ and as it turned out…it was clinical.

Mum loved to point out that it was a quality I got from my father. But it was the way she said it, like she was displeased about yet another thing I’d gotten from him. It wasn’t like she was the one who’d picked him out or anything. No, in her mind, I was responsible for the things my father did.

It’s because he isn’t around to be blamed, and she sees you an extension of him.

Mr. Wilson’s—my school counsellor—voice echoed in my brain, and I resisted rolling my eyes, focusing on the road ahead of me.

It hadn’t mattered that, over the years, I’d come to understand his words held a truer meaning than I’d wanted to believe at thirteen. Mum had only ever seen me as an extension of the man who left her after promising he wouldn’t—her words, not mine—and never, not once, as an extension of herself. Even as a child, I’d grown sick of hearing “You’re just like your father” whenever I did something she didn’t like, despite having no real sense of who my father was in his everyday life. When I’d tried to mirror her instead, copying her habits and behaviour, she had only looked at me with sharp eyes before turning away, as if I were something easier to ignore than understand.

Eventually, I’d grown tired of trying to please someone who had never wanted to be pleased.

I liked to think it had started when my school counsellor first said those words to me. Or maybe at fourteen, when my therapist told me, “She might be carrying unresolved feelings about your father, and without him there, those feelings could be directed at you in ways that feel personal.” It had sounded a lot like what Mr. Wilson had said, only wrapped in careful language that wouldn’t get her into trouble. I had preferred Mr. Wilson’s bluntness. Still, it hadn’t been enough to make me stop trying. Instead, I’d marched into his office and told him that the year I’d spent on his waiting list had been a waste of everyone’s time.

Even at eighteen, I’d tried one last time to please them both, choosing a degree I knew would make each of my parents happy.

But, unfortunately for me, my mother had decided to rip that bandage off four years later.

It hadn't just been the day I'd graduated, or the night of my graduation party. If it had only been that, I'd like to think I would've eventually got over her announcing that she was marrying her long-term boyfriend; James, and was three months pregnant...during a speech that was supposed to be about me.

But there was something about her choosing that day, which also happened to be my twenty-first birthday, that made it land differently. More than that, it had been the first birthday, the first real milestone in my life, where both my parents had been there. Which meant her timing hadn't felt careless. It had felt deliberate, like a slap I hadn't seen coming but somehow should have.

As a kid, I’d split my life into fragments, milestones, school breaks, holidays, always with one parent missing. Sometimes both. By twenty-one, I thought we’d at least learned how to honour the small routines that mattered. Instead, Mum had let me believe that this one day, the one I’d told her mattered, actually meant something to her too.

It hadn’t.