Catch and Release

by Laura Drewry

  Liam and Finn looked up, then at each other, but neither left the guest he was talking to.

  “I…” Hope shoved her mic into Chuck’s hand. “Here…just…”

  She didn’t even finish, just left him there as she turned and started for the kitchen. Her heart was about to beat out of her chest, and if it didn’t, she was pretty sure she was going to throw up, but she kept moving. Cameras or not, she needed to talk to Ronan.

  And the only thing standing in her way was Jessie.

  “Leave him alone.” Jessie’s smile never faltered, not while there were guests nearby, but her voice stayed low, eerily calm, and lethal.

  “I didn’t know it was her, Jessie.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, clearly not believing a word Hope said. “Okay. Well, we can all discuss that later, can’t we?”

  “No,” Hope said. “I want to discuss it with him now.”

  Finn came in behind her and positioned himself between the door and both of them. In all the time she’d spent around him, she’d seen a lot of different sides to Finn, from the funny to the annoyed, but she’d never seen this Finn before.

  He didn’t smile, like Jessie did, and he didn’t pretend everything was okay. He just fixed his cold hard glare on Hope and repeated what Jessie had already said.

  “Leave Ro alone. You’ve done enough.”

  “I haven’t done anything,” she said, trying desperately to keep her pleading voice down. “I didn’t know Maggie was the one coming; all I knew was that Peggy Flynn was some kind of relative who—”

  “You knew she was a relative.” Finn’s expression seemed to get colder by the second. “You have a show to film, and we’ll be damned if we’re going to let you send it into the shitter on the last episode, so go do your job, Hope. We’ll look after Ronan.”

  It felt as though everything inside her was being ripped out. Nothing made sense. Why wouldn’t they listen to her?

  “Hope.”

  Great, Liam was there, too. Now she was sandwiched between them.

  “Look, Liam.” Choking on each word, she turned to face him. “I didn’t—”

  “I don’t care.” He cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the guests eating their dinners. “All I care about right now is my brother, and I’m telling you he’s not ready to deal with you, so leave him alone. Let him deal with what he can deal with, and that’s feeding a lodge full of guests. When that’s done and they’re settled, then maybe we can sit down and figure this out, but right now you’re not going anywhere near him, d’you understand me?”

  “No, I don’t. I—”

  “Hope.” Liam’s voice was rock-hard. “Ronan’s hurting like you can’t even imagine right now, and no matter what you say to him, seeing you is only going to make that worse. So you’ll understand that we don’t give a shit how desperate you are to explain anything to him; our priority is Ronan, not you.”

  “But—”

  “Go do your job, Hope, and let us do ours.”

  What the hell is happening?

  Hope had come to love the way Ronan and his brothers always had one another’s backs, but that was before they thought she was the one they needed protection from. She couldn’t even begin to grasp what any of this meant.

  Ten hours ago she’d woken up with Ronan’s body wrapped around hers, his warmth seeping into her skin, his lips tickling her neck with feather-light kisses, and now…now she was being frozen out.

  Someone’s hand wrapped around her wrist, not hard, not jerky, just lightly enough to tug her out of the pub and back into the lobby.

  “Kate?” Stumbling, Hope had to shake her head clear. “What are you…Where are we going?”

  Kate stopped, took both of Hope’s hands in her own, and squeezed.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “You need to give him time.”

  “But—”

  “No! You’re an outsider still, Hope, like I was, and the only way to get through to him is to let him sort through the muck in his mind first.” Shaking her head, Kate spoke quickly, as if they were running out of time or something. “It doesn’t matter if it was you or Luka or the pope himself who brought Maggie here. In Ro’s mind, you’re guilty for two reasons. First, it’s your show, so how could you not know who was coming? And second, you’re a woman, you’re his woman, and by default, that’s who he blames when he’s hurt. Liam and Finn were like that, too.”

  Hope had spent her entire adult life making sure she was prepared for any situation that came up, but there was nothing in her bag of tricks to prepare her for this, for having the man she loved blame her for something she wasn’t at fault for. Not entirely anyway.

  How was she supposed to deal with that? She had no idea, but the only person making any sense at all was Kate. She’d been on the outside, too, she had experience with how the O’Donnells thought and reacted, so she was Hope’s only chance of getting through this.

  “Let us talk to Ro,” Kate said. “If anyone can get through to him, it’s Liam and Finn. But for now the best thing you can do is to make sure this last episode is the best it can be. Show him that your priority is this, the Buoys, and maybe that’ll help him see past everything else.”

  No. Hope wanted him to see past everything right now, not a couple of hours from now or, worse, a couple of days or weeks. Or months.

  “Trust me,” Kate said. “This is what he needs right now.”

  Hope didn’t know how she managed it, because every muscle in her body had gone numb, but she somehow forced her head to nod, then stumbled back to Chuck in the great room, who was already flagging her with the mic.

  Like she gave a single shit about what anyone in that room had to say.

  —

  “It’s been three days, Ro. You need to talk to her.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Liam was wrong. It hadn’t been three days. It had been three days, seven hours, and fifteen minutes, and each one of those minutes had been more painful than the last, but he’d pushed through because he knew each passing minute was one minute closer to Hope leaving.

  Eight hours, that’s all he had left to get through, and then she’d be gone and he’d be able to think clearly again. Eight hours.

  So many nights she’d come into the kitchen after everyone else had gone to bed and they’d talked about everything, from how to make the perfect grilled cheese to how she’d beaten out eight other people to get the Hooked job, her first as the field producer, and she was going to do whatever it took to prove herself.

  Well, she’d proved herself, all right. She’d proved that she’d do whatever it took to get the ratings, because everyone knew that viewers loved watching shit like this. One man’s sorrow was another man’s joy, that’s what Da used to say, and Hope and Luka had proved that with this stunt.

  And that was why instead of her sitting at the table talking to him into the early hours of the morning, it was Liam and Finn.

  “She says—”

  “For fuck sake, Liam, I know what she said—you’ve told me a thousand fuckin’ times. Just leave it alone, okay?”

  He shoved the muffin tins into the oven and slammed the door.

  “Okay,” Finn said, drawing the word out. “So what are we gonna do about Ma?”

  “Wasn’t planning on doing anything,” Ro said with a grunt. “Just because she’s cleared her conscience doesn’t mean we have to forget the last twenty-odd years.”

  “Jesus, Ronan,” Finn muttered. “You can be a real asshole when you want to be, you know that?”

  Of course he knew it. He also knew it was the only defense he had to help himself deal with everything.

  “Tell me how it’s any different than Da.” Liam leaned back in his chair so the front legs lifted off the floor and the back of the chair touched the wall. “She was sick, too, Ro, only in a different way, and Da was either too ignorant or too stupid to notice. We can’t hold her illness against her.”

  In a perfect world, no, they shouldn’t, but if R
o didn’t have that to use as a blocker, he was going to have to find another way to explain everything to the kid inside him who’d never understand. Besides, he’d spent far too many years shielding that part of himself to simply let it go now.

  “Do you remember the night Da sat us down and—”

  “ ’Course I fuckin’ remember it,” Ro barked. “This is different.”

  “No, it’s not. It took us a while, but we all forgave him for what he did to us, because we got the help we needed to understand that it was his disease that turned him into that. We’ll never forget what he did, but we still forgave him. It was Ma’s disease that made her do what she did, so why can’t you try to forgive her, too?”

  “Because.” There was too much bubbling up inside Ro; he wasn’t going to be able to stop it.

  “Because why?” Finn asked, pushing, the way he always did. “It’s not like she ever took a swing—”

  “Because…” The only thing Ro could do was grab the nearest thing to him—a glass mixing bowl—and hurl it across the room. It splintered against the wall behind Finn, who didn’t so much as flinch. “Because she fuckin’ left us, Finn! Instead of trying to get better, she walked away from us. She just left us here—with him! And Da might have been a fuckin’ prick, but at least he was here.”

  “Yup, you’re right.” That look, right there on Finn’s face, was the reason Ro was fighting this so hard. No kid deserved to have his heart broken like that. “I heard what she said, remember? She wanted to take you and Liam with her, but Da wouldn’t let her. And you should be fuckin’ thankful for that because, as bad as we had it with Da, imagine what it would have been like for you two living with her—in and out of the psych ward all the time, living on the streets…You and Liam would’ve ended up in foster care—probably separated—and who the hell knows what would have happened from there? It’s a safe bet Liam probably never would’ve picked up a baseball, and I doubt very much the three of us would be here right now.”

  “Right,” Liam said, snorting. “ ’Cause being here right now is so much fun.”

  Finn smirked, and after a few seconds Ro gave in and chuckled, too.

  “Look, you guys do what you want; it’s fine.” With a sigh, he pulled the broom and dustpan out of the mudroom and set to cleaning up his mess. “If you want to talk to her or go visit her, go ahead, fill your boots. I’m just not up for it yet.”

  “Yet?” Liam rocked forward on his chair again. “The word leaves room for possibility, which begs the next question: what to do about Hope.”

  Ro froze in mid-sweep, inhaled deeply, then pushed everything into the dustpan, but he didn’t say a word.

  “She says she didn’t know, Ro, and I gotta tell you, I believe her.”

  “How many more times are you going to say that?” Ro barked.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Liam scoffed. “How many more times is it gonna take for you to stop being a dick and believe it, too? You saw her, Finn; tell him.”

  Ro glanced over at Finn, who didn’t look happy about it, but he did eventually shrug.

  “She was pretty upset, Ro, and I don’t think she’s that good of an actress. Otherwise she’d be working in front of the camera instead of behind it.”

  “But?”

  Finn frowned. “But when Liam asked her about guests for the last two shows, she said they were working on a lead, remember?”

  Besides her saying she’d do anything to prove herself, this was the thing that Ro couldn’t get past.

  “We’ve got a lead on one for the finale.” That’s what Hope had said. We.

  Those few words had been playing on repeat in his head ever since he saw Maggie standing on the dock, and they continued to play—no, to blare—all through that last night and into the morning. The only thing that finally drowned them out was the sound of the Helijet lifting off the dock, taking Hope and her crew away from the Buoys for the last time.

  She didn’t return on Saturday, like she normally did, which meant they had to crowd around Jessie’s computer in the office to stream the latest episode after it had already aired.

  None of them said much, there was no pizza, and the only one drinking was Jessie.

  The whole next week was about as shitty as it could have been, starting with Ronan filling the salt shakers with sugar and then forgetting to order fresh strawberries to go with the shortcake he’d made. He broke three plates and two wineglasses and banged his head twice on open cupboard doors.

  By the time the guests all left on Saturday, Ro was in no mood to watch the final episode of Hooked, especially if it meant they’d all be crammed in around Jessie’s computer again.

  “So this is weird,” Kate said, walking into the kitchen with her hand open. There on her palm was a black flash drive. “The pilot brought this up with him. Shall we?”

  No, Ronan didn’t want to see it, but the harder he protested, the harder the rest of them insisted they all had to watch it together, so he poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and flopped down in the same chair he always sat in. Alone, except for JD sitting at his feet.

  The episode started the exact same way it always did, with shots of the Buoys and all of them, but then everything changed.

  Instead of the story editors focusing on something funny that Finn or Liam had said, they’d gone straight to the footage of Ro and Jessie stopping on the dock, and as they all watched in horror, the entire thing played out in front of them again. This time, though, the only voice was Maggie’s, narrating over the video.

  “What the fuck?” Ronan shoved off his chair, but the rest of them shushed him.

  “Just sit down and watch,” Jessie said, her usual bossy tone even more commanding than usual.

  Without going into all of the details she’d shared with them in the kitchen, Maggie explained to the viewers why she’d left, how she’d found her way back to the Buoys, and why she’d finally come back after all those years. There were shots of them all in the kitchen, of Maggie sobbing, and of the three of them looking so…not angry.

  What? Ro distinctly remembered being furious. Why didn’t any of them look it? Why did they all look wrecked?

  Because that’s what they’d been, standing there listening to Maggie, and no matter how much Ronan wanted to deny it, it was the truth. Yeah, he was pissed off, and he’d tried to hide behind that, but the truth was staring back at him from the TV. Hearing what Maggie had been through had crushed the three of them all over again.

  To Hooked’s credit, they’d left in the audio clip where Maggie told Luka to shut her mouth, something that made them all laugh a little, and then the shot panned to Luka and Maggie climbing into the Helijet and leaving.

  There wasn’t much left of the episode after that, but a good deal of it was spent showing Ro, Liam, and Finn all walking by the table and staring down at the note Maggie had left. And as much as Ro hated that everyone knew he’d done it that many times, it was at least a bit comforting to know that the other two had done it that many times, as well.

  It was Jessie who’d finally picked the note up and pinned it to the corkboard in her office.

  The episode ended with a split screen showing Liam, Finn, and Ro all looking up as the sound of the Helijet lifting off played in the background, and then the screen split one more time to show Maggie’s face as she looked out the Helijet’s window.

  And each one of them wore the same heartbroken yet hopeful expression.

  As the credits rolled, a banner came up along the bottom of screen with a 1-800 number, a website, and a message:

  IF YOU OR A LOVED ONE IS SUFFERING FROM SIGNS OF DEPRESSION OR OTHER MENTAL ILLNESS, PLEASE CALL.

  There were too many things banging around inside Ronan’s head for him to make sense of any of it. He was still pissed that Hooked had used the video footage of what was clearly an intensely personal time, but at least Luka hadn’t included any of the audio and for that he was grateful.

  He didn’t say much when it was over, just
grabbed the bucket of cleaning supplies and headed down to the cabins to get them ready for the next batch of guests. In all the times he’d gone into the white cabin over the years, he’d usually made a point of not looking at the pictures, but tonight…tonight he couldn’t look away.

  He pulled the frame off the wall and sat down on the bed with it, staring down at that god-awful picture of Maggie. Jessie was right, it was the best one they had, and that should have told them everything they needed to know twenty-one years ago.

  Her frown, set so deep across her forehead, and the way her shoulders slumped made her look tired and worn down, and that was exactly how he remembered her. He could probably count on one hand the number of times he remembered her laughing—really laughing, not the fake one she did so often.

  The answer to everything was right there in that picture, and none of them had bothered to realize it. Ro rehung the picture, pressed his hand against it for a few seconds, then sighed and walked back to the lodge. There was no sign of the others, which didn’t surprise him, given the hour, and that was probably a good thing. He went into Jessie’s office, slid the door closed, and picked up the phone.

  It only rang twice before her sleepy muffled voice answered, her Irish accent both ripping him open and soothing him at the same time.

  “Aye? Hello?”

  Ro squeezed his eyes shut as tight as he could and swallowed hard. “Hi, Ma.”

  A second—that’s how long it took before she spoke again and his dam broke.

  “Oh, my Ronan. Hello, my boy.”

  —

  This was bullshit, that’s what it was. It had been two weeks since that awful day at the Buoys. Two weeks since Ronan had last said a word to Hope, and two weeks since she’d taken Kate’s stupid advice and backed off.

  It was also two weeks since she’d snuck into Jessie’s office in the middle of the night and called Luka. Hope had never been one to yell a lot, but that night…whew…even Ronan would’ve been proud of her.