Gnawing on my bottom lip, I whispered, “I’m not ready to risk it.”
He pressed his forehead to mine, and his proximity had me closing my eyes.
“Please, Aoife. I’m thirty-seven. It never mattered before, but . . .”
When his words trailed off, I stiffened underneath him. “Is something happening with the business?”
That was about as much as I’d ask, as deep as I’d delve.
His laugh was short, but he shook his head. “Not more so than usual.”
That made me relax. Him wanting to be a father before he hit forty made sense to me. But it scared me to think he wanted to knock me up just in case he got taken out by the Colombians that were causing the Five Points trouble.
“Let me think about it?” I asked, surprised by the way he’d thrown this at me. Finn could be an asshole, and no mistake, but it was the first time he’d asked something so major of me.
If I was being honest, to me, this was even bigger than him proposing, and we were Catholic, for Christ’s sake. Marriage to us was until death. No take backs.
But . . . a child?
A little boy with Finn’s dark hair and Fiona’s blue eyes.
A little girl with my red curls. . . .
I gulped at the very prospect.
He released a sigh and pressed a kiss to my lips. “Okay.”
I could tell I’d disappointed him. I curved my arms around his waist and tugged him close. “Do you know how my Mom died?”
He stiffened in my embrace. “No.”
“She died in an accident. A car careened into her, thirty miles over the speed limit. She was on life support for a week, and then, I had to make the decision to . . .” I couldn’t even say ‘switch off the machines’ without my eyes welling with tears.
“I understand,” he appeased, bussing my temple.
“When she died, I was alone. All alone in the world, Finn.” I closed my eyes because those damn tears wanted to fall. “I don’t want our baby to be alone.”
“He wouldn’t be. He’d have us.”
“You could get hurt, Finn. I could. I-I mean, it’s not like you’re a regular businessman, is it? We have men with gunshot wounds coming to our door, and over dinner, you get calls about prostitutes being raped. . . .”
A kiss was pressed to my forehead. “That doesn’t mean our child will ever be alone. Lena would love them until the dawn of a new age.”
I thought about that, then said, “That’s a funny way of phrasing it.”
“Lena’s a funny woman all round.”
I had to snicker at that. Then I pinched his side. “Don’t be mean.”
“Hell, I’m not. She’s the first to admit it.”
Because I knew he was right, I laughed. “You think she would?”
“I know it. And you don’t have to worry about me. I don’t work out on the streets. Not like Aidan Sr., Jr., and Eoghan.”
That had me gnawing on my bottom lip. “We could still be hurt, though.”
“Yeah, we could, but your mom wasn’t involved in Five Points’ business, Aoife, and she got hurt. That’s life, baby. Sometimes, we get dealt a shit hand.”
I knew he was right. Knew I was being irrational, but I also knew I was being rational. All of this was so fast, and throwing a baby into the mix was just nuts. But I knew it meant a lot to him, could see it in his soulful blue eyes.
It was then I realized how they’d changed.
I’d always thought of them as ice cold, so starkly blue that they were frigid. But now? As he looked at me, I saw the difference.
There was a light to them. A warmth that curled around my heart like an embrace.
“Okay,” I breathed, overwhelmed by the difference in the way he looked at me.
Those beautiful baby blues flared in surprise at my words. He frowned. “Huh?”
“I won’t take the pill today.” It was madness, but hell, he was right. It could take years for my cycle to regulate—I hoped.
“You promise?”
I promised him. And three hours later, I promised him more things.
To love him in sickness and in health.
To be true to him through the good times and the bad.
And to hold him for richer or for poorer.
As I made those vows, and as he made them to me, something settled inside me.
I was in St. Patrick’s; the huge church was frigid even though it was temperate outside, and there were only a handful of people standing in the pews.
I had no family here, no one except for Jenny and the other waitresses from the tea room, and yet, with each vow I spoke, I was enveloped into a new line.
I became a part of the O’Gradys and the Donnellys, and it filled me with a warmth I hadn’t realized I’d been missing since my mom’s death.
I missed her. Terribly. I wished she were here, even if she’d have bitched at me about marrying Finn. I’d have given my left tit for her to have walked me down the aisle instead of Aidan Sr. To have had her with me as I went out and bought a simple white suit, not a dress, for the ceremony.
Lena had tried for us, though.
I hadn’t thought about flowers. Hadn’t thought about little bags of birdseed. But she had.
As I’d walked with Aidan toward Finn, Lena had given him a bouquet for me to hold. And on the way out, with Finn at my side, a newly inked marriage certificate back in the chapel, I saw the floral touches that Lena had arranged.
When we made it outside, the Donnellys swarmed us from the back, and they pelted us with a shower of birdseed. Finn and I laughed, ducking our heads as the grains collected in our hair, and I knew that smile of his would forever be imprinted on my memory banks. His sheer, unadulterated joy at that moment made him look ten years younger and a hundred times more handsome in his navy-blue suit.
As he turned around to chide Conor for tipping his bag of seeds down the back of Finn’s collar, I saw it.
The truck was big.
Out of place in this neighborhood.
It wasn’t the most affluent of places, but this van was beat up enough that it caught my eye. And then, the door to the side slid open as it started down the road.
I saw the two men hanging to the sides before I saw the guns.
Frowning, I reached for Finn, grabbed his arm to warn him, but before I could, they fired.
After the crowing laughter from the brothers, the joyous tears from Lena, the staccato bursts of gun shots interspersed with screams sounded all the more obscene.
And just as my happiness turned to dread, my pure white suit which Finn had insisted upon because of my virginal status before he’d deflowered me—as he called it—bloomed red. Where before, there’d been joy, now there was only pain.
And blackness.
To be continued in
SCREW ME
Afterword
You won’t have long to wait for this reveal because, as I upload SCREW YOU and ready it for publishing, the second book in the duet, SCREW ME, will be winging its way to the editors shortly.
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Thank you, as always, for reading.
Serena
xoxo
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Screw You: A Screwed Duet (Five Points, Hell's Kitchen Book 1) Page 21