by Sienna Blake
I lifted my hand and placed it on his chest over his heart. It’s okay, heart. I’m here. Let me hold you together.
“He was critical of everything I did. My grades weren’t good enough. I cost too much money. I was lazy. Such a disappointment. Nothing was good enough. I…was never good enough.”
I watched his Adam’s apple bob in the dark. “He threw me against a wall once when he was really mad. And he raised his fists at me once as if he would hit me, but…” He let out a long breath.
But he didn’t.
That was what was left unsaid.
It didn’t have to be physical to hurt. The cold disapproval of the ones who were meant to love you unconditionally was enough to leave scars.
“I’m so sorry, Danny.”
He shrugged, trying to pretend like it didn’t matter, but I knew it did. I could see the well of hurt he kept hidden behind the moody, aloof exterior.
“It’s what his father did to him, so…”
“Doesn’t make it right.”
“It’s fine. I’m over it.”
He was lying. God, was he lying. And it broke my heart into pieces.
All I saw was a little boy who needed his father’s approval. Why else would he chase after the same dream as his father? Trying to outdo him, trying to get his attention, to earn his respect?
Danny pulled me closer, if that was at all possible. He let out a sigh and I felt his muscles relax a little.
“I’ve never told anyone,” he said in a voice so quiet I almost missed it.
Those near-silent words were sharp enough to slice through my heart.
“I’ll keep your secret here,” I said, indicating my heart, “and won’t tell a soul. Promise.”
“I know you won’t. I…I trust you.”
His words filled my body with warmth. Danny, who trusted almost no one, trusted me. I clung onto him harder and he squeezed me back in kind.
“I’m glad you told me,” I whispered.
“Me, too.”
We lay there wrapped in each other. My hand over his heart, holding it together. I understood a little more this broken, fragile man, trapped in such a beautifully brutal body. I understood him and maybe I fell just a little more in love with him.
As I drifted off I thought I felt his nose against my hair, then his lips against my forehead.
64
____________
Ailis
The next few days flew by so fast. Danny agreed to be tested as a potential donor. He barely had time for me, though, because he was spending his time at the hospital and with his father. The important thing was that his father was trying to be a better dad. They were starting to talk. Trying to make up for lost time.
Danny must have told the college that he was taking time off because come the next lecture, we had a substitute teacher. The rumour mill was riff in class.
“I heard that Taylor Moore broke his dick,” someone sitting near Ethan and me said in a voice that was too loud to be a whisper.
Ethan was talking to me again and sitting next to me. He probably felt sorry for me because he thought I’d been thrown over for the pop princess.
“I heard he had a threesome with Taytay and Rita Ora and got syphilis.”
“No way. He was busted climbing out of a married woman’s window, fell and broke his leg.”
Everyone laughed and the speculation continued.
I told myself not to say a damn thing, but after the fiftieth ridiculous speculation, I snapped.
“Shut up, all of you. You don’t know the first thing about what’s going on with Danny.”
There was a pause and all eyes turned towards me. Stupid, Ailis. I sank back into my seat, praying the teacher would start the damn lecture already.
“With Danny, huh?” one of the guys said, a teasing note to his voice. “Not Professor O’Donaghue? Like you know what’s going on? Like you’re besties with him or something?”
I clamped my mouth shut. Ethan stiffened beside me.
Thankfully the substitute finally called the class to order and I was saved any more questioning, although I felt the glances from everyone around me, including Ethan, who kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. I sighed internally. I hadn’t decided what I was going to say to Ethan. Whether I should say anything.
It’s over between Danny and me. We’re just friends now. We haven’t slept together since New Year’s.
I guessed that Danny was done fucking me. Part of me was thankful that I didn’t have to keep putting my heart in this blender. The other part of me missed Danny’s body, his touch, his taste.
I brushed aside the pang of sadness. I thought Danny and I were destined to end with a bang. I didn’t think it would fizzle out with a whimper.
I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. I discreetly took it out and read the message as the teacher in front droned on.
Danny: I’m a match.
Oh. Shit. Danny had told me he was hoping he wasn’t a match, then he wouldn’t have to make the decision. Unfortunately, fate had other plans.
Me: What are you going to do?
Danny: I don’t know. Come to mine?
Me: I’ll come straight after class.
Danny: K. TY.
“What do I do, Dearg?” Danny asked as soon as I slipped into his apartment.
He’d left the door unlocked for me, as usual. The gesture made my heart squeeze just a little.
I walked over to where he was sitting on the couch, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. I sat next to him and slid a hand onto his back. Just letting him know I was there.
I was starting to learn with Danny that if I stayed silent, if I didn’t push, let him take his time, if I just gave him the space, he’d open up.
“I don’t want to do this for him,” he admitted. “I mean, the asshole drank, took drugs and abused his body and now he wants me to just go and fix it for him. Me. The son he never wanted. Who he never fucking bothered with until now. Why the fuck should I?”
I leaned into him and wrapped both arms around his waist, resting my head on his arm.
“But…he’s my father, ye know? He’s the only family I’ve got. What if this is his wake-up call? What if he’s really changed? What if this is a chance for us to be…an actual family? I mean, he’s not perfect. Lord fucking knows, I’m not perfect,” Danny said with a humourless laugh.
I squeezed him gently. He wasn’t perfect. Far from it. But he was still worth it.
“I keep thinking, what if it were me who was dying? Or…you?” He glanced over to me.
Me?
“What if it were you and someone else had the chance to save you?”
My mouth went all dry at the intensity of his stare.
“It’s only a matter of time before the media gets hold of this news,” he continued. “I’ll look like the worst son if I say no and sentence him to death. I should say yes. I should say yes. But…what if he’s just being nice to me because he wants this from me?”
Danny dropped his head in his hand again, his other hand going to clasp my knee. His touch seared through me. He didn’t speak for the longest time and I knew from the pause he was waiting for me to talk now.
“Forget what everyone else thinks you should do,” I said. “What do you want to do? You.”
There was a pause, a long, weighted pause.
“I want to believe in second chances,” he said so quietly I almost missed it. “I want to believe people can change.”
“Then do it. Don’t do it for him. Do it for you.”
Danny nodded and rubbed his face, his shoulders relaxing now that this decision was made. He turned to me.
“Will you come with me?” he asked.” When they admit me?”
He wanted me to be there?
“Of course.”
“Will you…wait till I come out?”
I nodded, my throat squeezing. Of course I’d be there. There was nowhere else I’d rather be.
“Thank
you.”
He wrapped his arms around me, tugging me across him so I was straddled across his lap, his face in my hair, my face in his neck, our arms wound around each other so we looked like one creature.
There we stayed for the longest time.
The surgery was booked for two weeks’ time. Usually there was a waiting list but I guess this was the VIP treatment you got when you were Ireland’s most famous rock music family.
In the surgery pre-op room, I stood next to Danny as he lay in the hospital bed.
He smiled but it looked forced. “Give your new teacher a hard time for me, ’kay?”
Danny had officially been replaced, as he’d need several weeks to recover after the surgery.
“I will. He’s not as good a teacher as you.”
Danny gave me a smile. “Liar. But thanks for making me feel better.”
“We’re almost ready to go, Mr O’Donaghue,” one of the nurses said from the doorway.
Shit. This was it.
I’d stupidly spent last night researching all the things that could go wrong with his surgery. Now my stomach was tied up in knots. I looked at Danny, trying to memorise his features. Trying to capture them in my mind.
What if this beautiful man never came back to me? What if this was the last time I got to see him?
“I love you,” I blurted out, the secret spilling from my heart like a broken dam. The secret I’d been keeping, even from myself.
Shit.
I hadn’t meant to say that. But there it was, thrown out for him, and the nurse fussing at his side, bless her, who was trying to pretend like she hadn’t heard my confession.
Danny’s eyes locked onto mine, surprise clear in them.
I felt like I was standing on the edge of an abyss holding onto one wing. I thought that he was standing here with me, holding onto the other. I thought we were about to fly…
A darkness cast over his eyes like thick storm clouds. “You shouldn’t.”
Blood drained from my head, leaving me ice cold, and yet it felt like someone was holding blowtorches to my cheeks. I felt the piteous stare of the nurse at his side.
Danny tore his eyes off me and slumped back into his bed as he was wheeled away.
Leaving me standing there.
On this edge.
Falling.
Alone.
I love you.
You shouldn’t.
65
____________
Danny
“I love you.”
Ailis’s words echoed in my head even as I counted backwards from ten, the mask on my face, lights blurring my vision, shadows of the nurses and surgeons’ heads moving around me like aliens.
“Nine…”
“You shouldn’t.”
I’d watched her heart crack open. I did that. I broke it.
“Eight…”
I dragged her into my life again because I was selfish. I could not leave her alone. And now I’d hurt her.
You shouldn’t love me. Because I don’t deserve you.
“Seven…”
You warned her, a voice in me defended. You told her that you could never love her back. You told her you couldn’t give her that. She had to go and fall in love with you like an idiot.
But my excuses were as thin as paper, torn apart as easily.
“Six…”
Ailis’s face shimmered up in front of me even as the edges of my vision began to blur.
I wish I could love you back. But I can’t.
“Five…”
My heart was as cold and black as the deepest parts of the sea. No light. No oxygen. No chance for life down there. Don’t dive down to reach for it, Ailis. You can’t save me. I’ll only end up drowning you.
“Four…”
A realisation struck me. Ailis was the only person who’d ever loved me without expecting anything back.
“Three…”
What if I never opened my eyes again? What if that had been my last chance to be with her? My last chance to kiss her.
“Two…”
I didn’t say goodbye. I never told her how much she meant to me even though I couldn’t love her. I never told her how much it meant to me that she loved me anyway even though I couldn’t love her back.
Before I could beg for the doctors to halt this operation so I could find her, it all went black.
66
____________
Ailis
I sat at Danny’s side. Waiting. Watching his silent features. The only noise in this private hospital room was the beeping of the machines at his side. The surgery had gone without complications, thank God.
He was still the same Danny. My Danny. Just with one less organ.
I love you.
You shouldn’t.
I almost left after he went into surgery. I could have left. Lord knows, I couldn’t have been blamed for leaving him after he’d been so cruel.
But I realised that’s what everyone had done. Leave.
He needed to know that I would stay. That I kept my promise to him to be here, even after he tried to push me away.
I brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. He looked so peaceful asleep. The scowl that usually marred his forehead was gone, his skin smooth, his eyebrows relaxed. He looked younger. Almost like the Danny I met when we were teenagers. Before life had hardened him up.
Had I loved him still for all these years but had just buried it? Or was this love new? Did I love two people—the Danny that was and the Danny that is?
Come on, Danny. Wake up.
I wanted to see the blues of his irises so badly.
“I’m sorry, miss,” a nurse at the doorway said. “Visiting hours are almost over.”
“But…” I looked down at Danny’s sleeping form. He won’t know I was here. He won’t know that I stayed.
“You can come back tomorrow during visiting hours.” The nurse’s shoes clacked on the laminate flooring coming up behind me. “Miss? You have to leave now.”
I grabbed Danny’s hand and squeezed it. I’ll be back tomorrow, I promised him.
I picked up my bag and turned to the nurse. “Can you tell him Ailis was here? That I waited all day.”
The nurse was a middle-aged woman, grey barely touching her sandy locks, pulled back into a tight ponytail. She raised an eyebrow at me and gave me a look like she had better things to do than deliver love messages like an underpaid Cupid.
I gave her a pleading look. “Please?”
The nurse gave out a little sigh as she directed me towards the door. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The next day the crowd around the hospital was three metres deep. Someone must have leaked that Dillan and Danny O’Donaghue were currently in the hospital because there were girls screaming, holding signs and waving bras—and, Jesus Christ, were those panties?—in the air. Others held flowers and teddy bears, posters and pens.
It didn’t matter, though. Danny was in there. He needed me even if he didn’t want to see me. I couldn’t let him down.
I began to fight my way through the crowd. What felt like hours later I tumbled out the front, under the barrier that had been erected, and slammed into the hard chest of a security guard.
“Whoa, hang on there.” He grabbed my arm before I could push past him. The hospital front doors were there. Just there.
“I need to get through,” I said.
“Sorry, but nobody is getting through.”
“But I need to see Danny.”
The guard didn’t loosen his grip on my arm. “You and every other female fan in this country, hon.”
“But…I’m his…” Girlfriend. “I’m a friend of his. I brought him in yesterday.”
The security guard rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah, right. You and every other woman here knows him personally.”
I let out a growl of frustration. “Just ask him. Tell him Ailis is here. He’ll tell you to let me right in. In fact, he’d bite your fucking head off for making me wait.”
The guard gave out a snort. “Lady, I don’t have time for your shite.”
“But he’s…” I trailed off.
But he’s mine.
And I’m his.
He needs me. Even if he doesn’t want me.
67
____________
Danny
When I was released from hospital, Rickie came to pick me up. He drove me to his countryside home so I could recover in peace. I spent the first few days on so many painkillers I could barely think. Could barely function.
Ailis had left several messages on my phone. She told me she’d waited until after my surgery, that she’d tried to come back the next day and the day after and the day after but the security around the hospital had turned into epic levels and they weren’t letting anyone in.
She had been there. Even if I hadn’t seen her. Like a star in the daylight.
I spent days staring at Ailis’s name on my phone, my hand hovering over the call button.
I wanted her here. By my side, filling the empty space she had left. I wanted to let her know that I thought of her every moment of my surgical exile. I wondered how she was getting on at college. Whether she’d gone out with that guy again.
But something held me back.
I love you.
You shouldn’t.
I couldn’t give her what she wanted. The Danny of a few months ago wouldn’t have cared. The Danny of a few months ago would have just been selfish and taken everything she offered, sucking her dry, before breaking her.
But I cared too much for her.
And…I’d changed. She’d changed me.
Maybe it was for the best if I ended things now. I’d hurt her enough.
What could I promise her? There was no future with me. There was no Happily Ever Afters for people like me. Only more pain.