by Sienna Blake
I gritted my teeth. “I didn’t replace you.”
She snorted. “Whatever.”
I cleared my throat and flipped open her file, straining to focus on the written words. I could see her creamy slender leg flicking in my periphery. Shit on a brick, what was she wearing? A pair of denim cut-off shorts and a cropped top, revealing a line of toned creamy stomach.
I fought the urge to go and grab a police blanket and cover her up. It was already the beginning of September, didn’t she know? Didn’t she understand that she’d attract all the wrong sort of attention wearing that? She didn’t look a day younger than twenty now.
She was seventeen. That might not mean something to other men, but it meant something to me.
File. Work. Right.
I scanned her file, looking for the important bits of information, hungry for every single piece of info about her. Where was she living exactly? She’d given an address as a house in Dooradoyle. Hmm…that wasn’t the best location. Why was she arrested?
Driving without a licence and drug possession. Fuck. Drugs again. Tell me she wasn’t using. I wiped my face before looking back up to her, my eyes scanning the whites of her eyes, her skin, the creases of her elbows. Her whites were white. Her skin wasn’t sallow. No track marks. She looked healthy. Thank fuck.
“You were picked up driving on a provisional licence without another driver in the car,” I said, my tone asking for an explanation.
She rolled her eyes. “I can drive.”
“You can only legally drive with another driver in the car.”
“Please. Everyone my age drives by themselves.”
I stamped down my frustration. “And this drug possession charge…”
“The pot wasn’t mine,” her eyes flashed, her voice growing hard.
The Garda who’d written the arrest report had stated that they’d spied a small baggie of weed on the floor of the unregistered car after they’d pulled her over.
I stared at Saoirse. This was beginning to sound too much like déjà vu. “And let me guess, you won’t say who it belonged to either. Or whose car that was.”
She glared at me, defiance clear on her face. “I wasn’t a rat then, I’m not a rat now.”
I placed the file aside. “Saoirse, off the record—”
The door banged open, cutting me off.
In walked a heavy-set man, looking like a boxer, with reddish-brown hair and piercing green eyes the same colour as Saoirse’s. This must be her father.
Liam Byrne.
He’d never married Saoirse’s mother, which is why she’d been given her ma’s surname and not his. Saoirse had no idea how much of a small mercy that was. Byrne was not a well-regarded name around here. Or anywhere in Ireland.
“Da.” Saoirse leapt to her feet and ran to Liam’s side. He enveloped her in a one-armed hug at his side.
A stab of jealousy went through me. I used to be the one who she ran to. I used to be the one who she clung to.
I stood, my hands fisting at my sides, and tried not to scowl. Every single cell in my body was on high alert.
Liam Byrne was as bad as they came. He ran one of the largest drug operations in Ireland, a string of suspected murders in his wake.
Did Saoirse know? I doubted it, otherwise she wouldn’t be looking at him that way.
Liam kissed the top of her head. “Are you alright, love?”
She smiled up at him as if he’d hung the stars for her. Another stab went through me. That smile belonged to me.
“So good of you to join us, Mr Byrne,” I said.
Liam’s eyes darted to me. “Who are you?”
I stood up to my full height, making full use of my six-foot-five frame. “Diarmuid Brennan. I’m the Juvenile Liaison Officer assigned to your daughter.”
Liam eyed me up and down and then shot me a searing look. “She doesn’t need no JLO.” He turned to leave, pulling Saoirse with him.
“In that case we will charge her and she can go to court.”
Liam stopped and turned back to me, studying me.
I kept going. “Saoirse was charged with driving without a licence and drug possession. Drug possession is a crime that could land her jail time if it goes to court, especially as it’s not her first offence. You can risk your daughter going to jail. Or you agree to letting her into the Young Offenders Program for minors who have offended. You can let me be her JLO.”
His eyes narrowed and he shrugged, but I knew I had his attention. “What does this program mean exactly?”
“We’d have to have weekly contact.” My eyes flicked to Saoirse. She was avoiding my eyes, looking like she just wanted to get the hell out of there. I thought I saw a flicker of anger underneath her apathy.
Once upon a time I could have read all her emotions on her face as if they were words on a page. But now…
“I’ll be supervising her until she turns eighteen,” I continued. “Making sure she knows what she’s done and keeping her from reoffending.”
Liam watched me for a pause, then nodded. “Fine.”
He turned and this time he dragged Saoirse away with him, his arm slung around her shoulders.
Before the door shut on them, Saoirse glanced back. Our eyes met. My stomach tightened.
It was six months before her birthday.
I had six months during which she was forced to spend time with me. Six months to positively influence her.
I was already running out of time.
14
____________
Saoirse
It had been a stupid infringement. Stupid. Jase had lent me a car to use so I could drive to my new job at a café and the tail light was busted. I hadn’t noticed. But the two Garda in the cop car did. They pulled me over.
I should have known that the car was dodgy because, well, Jase was dodgy, and then one of them spotted the baggie of weed that had slipped on the floor. I doubted that Jase would have left it there on purpose.
The minute the cops ran my name they realised I already had a mark on my name for drugs and they took me in.
It was a bullshit charge.
This was what was on my lips when I’d heard the door of the interrogation room open behind me as I waited in room seven.
I turned.
And froze.
Caught in the net of his chocolate eyes, the ones that seemed to cut right through me. The ones that used to look at me as if I were the most important creature in the world.
A pair of eyes I didn’t think I’d ever see again. That I looked for every time I went anywhere.
Diarmuid Brennan.
It couldn’t be him.
I was dreaming. Or hallucinating. I must be.
I blinked. Diarmuid was still there, staring back at me from the doorway. Same shoulder-length hair tied back, trimmed beard darkening his strong jaw. Same wide frame, thick muscular arms that used to contain my whole world. Looking just as I had dreamed of him every night for three years.
Old feelings flooded back, slamming into my chest and winding around my body. I remembered feeling like the only one that mattered. Like he was my fortress, my shield, my castle. I was safe as long as I was with him.
I wanted to run to him, fling my arms around his neck and nuzzle my nose into his leather jacket, which no doubt smelled like his woodsy cologne and leather.
He had been my world. My hope. My guiding light. He had been safety. Security. Unconditional love.
Unconditional…until it wasn’t.
Until he left, taking it all away.
That old wound tore open again, never having healed. The love I felt for him drowned in anger.
But I refused to let it out. I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he still affected me. I was no longer a stupid fourteen-year-old girl.
I was a different Saoirse. An older Saoirse. I would not make the mistake of throwing myself at him again.
“You alright, pet?”
I shook myself out of my thoughts.
My da kept glancing over to me from the driver’s seat of the car.
“Fine,” I lied.
I hadn’t told my da that I’d known Diarmuid from before. I doubted somehow that Diarmuid would tell him either.
“You didn’t say anything to them about who owned the car, did you?” my da asked.
I shook my head. “Of course not. You taught me never to trust the Garda.”
My heart squeezed. Once upon a time I had trusted Diarmuid with my life, with my heart. Then he had broken it. Dashed it into a thousand tiny pieces.
My da smiled and patted my knee. “That’s my girl.”
I was right to keep silent at the station. I was Daddy’s girl.
Not Diarmuid’s.
15
____________
Diarmuid
I did not like Liam Byrne.
After Saoirse had left with him I’d looked him up on our criminal database.
Imprisoned twice, both times on drug charges. He’d been caught running a small cannabis plantation in rural Limerick. Rumour was that his operations had continued on via his partner even while he was still in prison. Now that he was out, it was only a matter of time…
And Saoirse was living with him, dear God.
Six months. I had to keep her clean for six months. Then she’d be eighteen and free to go live on her own. To choose her own path.
How the fuck was I supposed to keep her on the straight and narrow when her father was one of Limerick’s most notorious drug pushers?
How the fuck was I supposed to do that when I shouldn’t even be going anywhere near her?
Saoirse Quinn.
Jesus Christ. How the hell was I going to deal with her?
I wound a set of wraps over my hands as I stood before a bag in O’Malley’s gym. My two friends, Declan and Danny, and I had started boxing together when we were teens. We started training together in this very gym.
I used it as a form of meditation. As a form of stress relief. As therapy. As penance.
Danny did it to keep fit. To distract himself while his subconscious worked on a song or melody that was giving him grief.
But Declan…he took to it like a duck to water. There was a darkness in Declan that was deeper than any in Danny and me. Now he’d gone on to become a pro MMA fighter, Mr World Title himself.
Fuck, I missed those guys.
Danny was based in Dublin now and Declan in the US.
I made a mental note to call them both when I got a chance. It’d been a long time since I’d spoken to either of them. Too long. And I needed a non-judgemental ear right about now.
I began to rhythmically hit my fists against the bag, remembering the shock that had gripped my body when I’d realised it was Saoirse in that room, the girl who had coaxed out all the gentle pieces of my heart all those years ago. Shock had given way to the foreign rush of heat in my veins at the sight of her all grown up.
Shit.
I would not think of her that way. I would not, I repeated to myself with each smack of my fists. She had been like a little sister to me then. But now…
“Mr B,” a familiar male voice called.
I dropped my guard and spun, grinning at the sight of the lad walking up to me. “Tadhg, how are ya?”
Tadhg, pronounced Tiger but without the r at the end, was an up-and-coming Gaelic football player who did boxing training at the gym to keep fit during off-season. He’d just come back from a week away with his mates. His dirty blonde hair was streaked with the sun and his skin a golden colour; he was one of the lucky ones whose skin actually tanned.
“Grand, yeah,” he replied.
“I hear the Dubs team manager was wining and dining you last night?” Nothing—and I mean nothing—was kept secret here.
His cheeks reddened. “It was just dinner.”
I nodded. “Oh, yeah, I see. You bloody turncoat.”
He grinned, ducking under my arm when I tried to hug him.
I let out a snort. “Throw on a set of wraps and let me hold a couple of pads up for you. We’ll see how unfit you got sunning your lazy arse in Las Palmas.”
I worked him out hard until he collapsed to the bench with a moan.
I did not think of Saoirse once. I swear.
16
____________
Saoirse
Then—Dublin, Ireland
It was my birthday.
Usually I didn’t care about my birthday. It was just like every other day of the year. But this year… This year, I had Diarmuid.
I practically ran to the truck to meet Diarmuid that morning, a spring in my step. I knew he was watching me closely as he helped me into the truck.
“You look happy,” he commented as he pulled away from the sidewalk.
“Of course,” I said, and waited for the penny to drop for him. He had my file. He knew it was my birthday. I even kinda maybe dropped a hint about it, a week ago, so as not to be obvious.
He wouldn’t forget, would he?
It wasn’t like I was expecting anything big. I didn’t even expect a present. Or a card. Just a happy birthday from his beautiful lips.
But he said nothing about it.
Not even that afternoon when he came to pick me up from school and drop me off at home.
“Saoirse,” he called out at me through the open window of his truck.
My hopes soared into my cheeks, lifting them up. I spun on my heel to face him, grinning at me with that devastating grin.
He remembered. He remembered.
“Yes?” I asked, my heart beating like a hummingbird as I stood on the sidewalk outside my building.
“See ya tomorrow,” he called out before he drove off.
I watched the back of his truck disappear around the corner, the dust he was kicking up feeling like it was coating my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
He forgot.
He totally forgot.
No one ever remembered my birthday. Well, except for Moina. But I’d thought that Diarmuid might. I just wanted him to remember. Something to indicate that he cared.
I trudged up the grey concrete steps to my apartment, cursing myself for being so upset over this. I knew Diarmuid cared. He already took me to school and shouted me breakfast.
That’s his job. You’re just a job, Saoirse. Remembering your birthday is not part of his job.
“Hey, Saoirse,” Moina called out from the stairwell as I stuck my key into the apartment door. “You wanna drop your stuff, change and come down in about twenty minutes?”
I nodded, forcing a smile to my face. At least Moina remembered. She probably had a small cupcake there for me. Moina didn’t have much money either but she always had something small for me every year on my birthday since she moved in a few years ago.
See, someone did remember. Moina did. So why was I still sad?
’Cause I wanted Diarmuid to remember. I didn’t want to be just part of his job.
In the apartment, my ma was sitting on the couch in a vest and her underwear, ratty grey slippers on her feet. She was only in her mid-thirties but she looked ten years older, the skin on her thighs already sagging, crinkles all around her thin lips and yellowed eyes.
“Hey, ma.”
“I feel like fockin’ shite. Like a truck ran over me.”
Maybe if you stopped inviting assholes who beat you into your bed and stopped doing drugs you’d feel better. But I said nothing. I knew better. The times I’d actually said something I just ended up with her hand across my face.
I walked into my room and changed into my best pair of jeans. I only had two. This pair was denim washed, with diamanté on the hip. My ma had bought them for me from a secondhand store on a mother-daughter shopping day. It had been during one of the rare times my mother was sober. She’d just gotten paid her benefits so she was feeling flush and generous. Usually the jeans hung off me but lately, I’d been filling them out more.
I pulled on a shirt and cringed as I accidentally knocked my chest. My
breasts were tender. My chest had been flat but now my boobs had started growing and fast. I’d need a bra soon. Hopefully Moina would take me. I couldn’t rely on Ma to do it.
I left my room and walked past my ma, still moaning on the couch.
“Saoirse, honey.”
I turned around to look at her. Would it be too much to ask that she remembered that she gave birth to me fourteen years ago?
My ma looked at me with dead eyes and held out a hand, a folded twenty-euro bill between her fingers. My heart flipped. She actually remembered. Twenty euro! Was this my birthday present?
“Be a doll and grab me a pack of smokes, will ya?” She waved the note at me.
Not my birthday present, then. I snatched the money off her and backed up to the door.
“Smoking will kill ya. How ’bout I get some food with this money instead?”
She gave me a sour look. “You little shite, you have no idea what I’ve been through. That’s me last bit of money ’til next Tuesday.”
Of course she’d buy stupid cigarettes with her last slip of cash. I slipped out of the apartment before she could throw an ashtray or something at me.
“I’ll be back later,” I called.
“Ungrateful little shite,” she yelled as I locked the door on her, muting her yells. “You come back here.”
I ran down the stairs to the level below us. I listened out for her footsteps but heard nothing. She didn’t follow. I took a deep breath outside Moina’s door to calm myself, tucking the twenty into my back pocket. I’d buy her stupid smokes later. If there was any money left, I’d get some basic groceries.
I knocked on Moina’s door. Moina’s head appeared through the crack. I was about to unleash my frustration over my ma to her—she’d heard it all before but she always let me rant—when she flung open the door and stepped aside.
“Surprise!”
I blinked. Her tiny apartment was decorated with colourful streamers and balloons, bowls of chips, bottles of soda and boxes of pizza stacked on her dining table. And standing in her living room was Diarmuid, a huge grin on his face, holding a cake in his hands, fourteen candles circling the thick icing on top.