The drive to his mother's house had taken twenty minutes longer than it should have — not because of traffic, but because Liam had taken the longer route without entirely meaning to, the specific, unconscious delay of someone who has decided to do something and is still, on some level, negotiating with themselves about it.
He pulled up outside and sat in the car for a moment before cutting the engine.
It had taken too long. That was simply true, and he wasn't going to dress it up into something more forgivable. He had ended things with Rebecca — properly, cleanly, without leaving room for the ambiguity Rebecca was skilled at inhabiting. He had gone to California and given Aurora what passed, in their particular language, for an apology. Both of those things had required something from him. So did this. The difference was that this one sat heavier, in the specific way that things sat heavier when the person you'd wronged was someone who had no armor against you.
