Chapter 108: A Day With Mateo.
Liam wanted to ask Darren what he’d actually been doing at the gym in the first place, because if Sophia had said they’d met there, that meant recent contact—contact Darren had apparently kept to himself. But Darren offered nothing more, and Liam decided against pushing for details in front of Sophia. Whatever that was, it could wait.
Instead, he turned to her, keeping his tone easy.
“Why don’t you let me take Mateo for the rest of the day? Give yourself a break. You’ve clearly had a stressful afternoon.”
Sophia hesitated. This wasn’t a small thing to hand over—trusting someone else with her brother wasn’t something she’d ever really practiced, not since it had just been the two of them for as long as it had been. She glanced past Liam toward Mateo, silently asking if this was something he wanted.
Mateo was doing a genuinely terrible job hiding how excited he was at the prospect. His shoulders had straightened, his eyes brighter than they’d been all day.
That settled it more than anything Liam could have said.
“Fine,” Sophia said finally, though something in her expression suggested she still had a dozen questions stacked up—starting with why Liam had been at the school in the first place. She let it go for now. Not the time.
“Text me if anything comes up,” she added.
“Of course.” Liam said with a thumb up.
Darren, for his part, barely glanced her way through any of it. His attention was elsewhere entirely—on his phone, on the little girl waiting a few feet off, on anything but Sophia. It wasn’t rudeness.
He simply had zero interest in that particular direction, which Sophia herself seemed to register with something like quiet relief.
A man that unbothered by her presence was easier to trust with her brother than one performing charm.
Darren’s phone buzzed, and he stepped a few feet away to take the call, leaving Liam to finish up with Sophia alone.
They talked a little longer—nothing substantial, just enough for Sophia’s shoulders to finally start dropping from wherever they’d been sitting near her ears since she first spotted the empty spot where Mateo should’ve been.
When they finally pulled away, Liam caught the look on her face in the side mirror—something settled, something almost grateful. Her brother having a man in his life who actually showed up, actually cared, wasn’t something she’d been able to provide no matter how hard she tried to be enough on her own.
Mateo let out a long breath in the backseat, visibly relieved. He’d clearly braced for a scolding that never came.
Darren, meanwhile, had crouched down to the little girl still waiting by the curb, handing her a clean $20 bill and telling her good job. She nodded and scampered off without complaint.
Mateo wanted to ask about a dozen things—who the girl was, if she was really Darren’s sister, what exactly qualified as normal in this friend group he’d apparently been adopted into—but he didn’t want to ask in front of her, so he filed the questions away and stayed quiet for the drive back to Liam’s place.
“Any stops before we head in?” Liam asked, glancing at Darren through the mirror.
Darren shook his head. “Nah. Think I’ll just camp out. Gotta help you get your head right for tonight anyway.”
“Help me how, exactly?”
“Moral support. Motivational speeches. Whatever you need.”
“That’s not a real service.”
“It’s a very real service. You’re welcome in advance.”
Liam rolled his eyes but didn’t argue further. Having Darren around before the dinner with Mrs. Harriet wasn’t the worst idea—if nothing else, it kept his mind occupied instead of spiraling over every possible way the night could go sideways.
They pulled into the lot, and Mateo went quiet the second they stepped inside.
This was his first time seeing where Liam lived, and it was immediately clear this wasn’t the apartment of an average anything. The space alone dwarfed what he was used to—clean lines, expensive-looking furniture, the kind of quiet order that suggested money without needing to announce it. Mateo did his best to keep his expression neutral, sixteen years old and trying very hard to look unimpressed, and mostly failing.
Darren clocked it and smirked but said nothing, dropping onto the couch like he owned half of it.
“Homework,” Liam said, turning to Mateo before either of them could get comfortable.
Mateo blinked. “What?”
“You have homework?”
There was a pause—just long enough that Liam could tell Mateo was weighing whether lying was worth the effort. He decided against it. “…Yeah.”
“Then that’s first.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Get it done, then you can do whatever you want.”
Mateo groaned, dragging his backpack off his shoulder like it had personally wronged him, but didn’t argue further. He dropped onto the floor near the coffee table and started pulling out books with the enthusiasm of someone facing a firing squad.
Darren watched the whole exchange with mild amusement. “Didn’t peg you for the homework-first type.”
“I’m not going to be the reason his grades slip. Sophia would kill me.”
“Fair point.”
Mateo, meanwhile, had spotted something across the room—the gaming console set up beneath the TV, controllers neatly stacked beside it.
His head snapped up. “Wait. That’s true, you have a console now.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I play after?”
“Why not,” Liam said with a shrug. “Finish your homework first, though.”
Darren’s eyebrows lifted slightly, genuinely surprised. Last time he’d been in this apartment, there’d been nothing remotely resembling a gaming setup—no console, no controllers, nothing suggesting Liam owned anything that wasn’t strictly work-related or expensive for the sake of being expensive. He put the observation away without comment, deciding this wasn’t the moment to bring it up.
Mateo, satisfied with the answer, put his head down and actually started working, pencil moving across the page with newfound motivation now that there was a reward sitting visibly across the room.
Liam moved toward the kitchen, grabbing water for everyone, half his mind already drifting toward the dinner ahead of him and the conversation he still needed to have with Mrs. Harriet. But for now, at least, the apartment was quiet in the good way—Mateo scribbling through math problems, Darren sprawled across the couch scrolling through his phone, the afternoon settling into something almost normal.
“You’re good with him, you know,” Darren said, not looking up from his screen.
Liam glanced over. “With Mateo?”
“Yeah. You didn’t strike me as the type.”
“I contain multitudes.”
Darren snorted. “Sure you do.”
Mateo, from the floor, muttered without looking up, “He made me do fractions before letting me touch a controller. That’s basically a war crime.”
“Character building,” Liam said.
“Feels like abuse.”
“Noted. Finish the fractions!”