“I cheated on him,” she blurted out, and I turned back to her. I saw her hands tightened around the wheel, her knuckles white and her bottom lip wiggling like she hated to speak the words out loud.
“Oh?”
“It wasn’t … it wasn’t physical, and it was such a stupid, fleeting thing that really meant nothing. I developed a ridiculous crush on this guy at Starbucks, and I’d go there during the day to work on my blog, just to sit there and shamelessly flirt with him. He never made me feel stupid, and by that point, Jared and I rarely made love unless one of us was drunk or desperate,” she admitted with a shuddering sigh, pushing a hand into her hair.
“Some people don’t see anything wrong with a little innocent flirtin’,” I offered.
“Well, I do see something wrong with it. I would lie to this guy about my marital status and the condition of my life. I would spend my days roleplaying, to give myself the life I wanted in the eyes of this freakin’ guy, and then I’d go home to my family and feel the shame of it all weighing me down.” She was utilizing the car as her confessional, pouring her heart out to me as she drove down the road to River Canyon.
“Ya were unhappy,” I said in some attempt to make her feel better.
“Yes, well … I realized that when Kevin—that was his name—finally asked for my number, and I knew I couldn’t give it to him, but … I was so disappointed. I told him the truth, that I was married, and I ran out of there and never went back.” She composed herself, straightening her back and tossing her hair over her shoulders. “After, I realized the depth of my unhappiness. When I sat in my car and cried, realizing that I was sad because I was married. I thought about everything I’d gone through with Jared, and I went home and told him I cheated on him.”
“I’m sure he took that well,” I grunted, picturing the scowling man and his bellowing, demeaning tone.
“No.” She didn’t even try to play me with her sarcasm. “He was even less happy when I told him I wanted a divorce.”
I looked at her, and saw her desperation to remain perfect and pristine, still struggling to keep her exterior tough as stone. But I saw her strength, for leaving and persevering and I saw the most gorgeous creature I’d ever seen. I wanted to tell her I admired her, for going after what she wanted, but her voice stopped me.
“The girls blamed me for a long time,” she continued, holding her head high. “I took it, because Jared was a terrible husband, but he was never a terrible father.”
“And now? Do they still blame ya?”
“I don’t think so. They’re older now, and I think they see things a little clearer. They know their dad and I are better apart. I mean, you saw.” She turned to grin at me. “Kind of hard to miss.”
“Ya shouldn’t fight in front of them, ya know,” I said. “Ya wouldn’t want them to turn out like me.”
“I know you’re right, and I do wish Jared and I had a better relationship,” Emma admitted as her fingers barely touched my arm. “But really, you’re not so bad.”
❧
“They have a nice house,” she commented, looking out the window at the two-story house with the white shutters. “It’s perfect. It would look great in a blog post.”
I turned to her as a smile tugged at my lips. “That’s the first thing ya think of?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “It’s the nature of the job.”
I looked up to the porch just as Sean emerged, with Lindsey following on his heels. She was laughing at something, and he was blushing and shaking his head. She wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed him at the exact moment his eyes fell on the strange SUV parked in front of the house. The next thing I knew, he was stuffing his hands into his pockets and walking down the porch steps, heading right toward the car, and my heart hammered in my chest.
“Who’s that?” Emma asked.
“Sean,” I grumbled, “and his fiancée Lindsey.”
“God, they’re a gorgeous couple,” she mused, nodding as she peered out the window as they approached. “He has such a nerdy thing about him; I love it.”
I grunted my response as I opened the window. “Hey,” I greeted them, and Padraig stuck his nose between the back of my seat and the window frame. He huffed his own greeting as he tried to sniff them.
“Hey, Mal,” Sean said happily, leaning over to fold his arms on the window ledge. “I didn’t know ya had friends here.”
“We met on the plane,” I informed him, sheepishly glancing over at Emma.
“Hi, I’m Emma,” she introduced herself, reaching her arm over me and extending her fingers to shake his hand. “Malachy told me you’re Sean. You’re the one who found him, right?”
I was startled by her memory as he nodded. “He told ya that?”
“On the plane, yeah,” she said with a wide grin, “while I was trying to keep him from puking all over me.”
Lindsey laughed. “That was my job to and from Ireland this past summer. Sean is terrified of flying,” and she leaned over to peer through the window. “I’m Lindsey, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you,” Emma replied. “I was just dropping Malachy and Padraig off, so—”
“What? Ya should stay,” Sean insisted as though she were crazy to even think of leaving.
“Oh, um, I don’t know. I have a few things I really need to do for work, and I don’t—”
Lindsey pouted like a sad little girl. “Oh, you have to stay. Just for dinner? Helen is going to grab burritos from Bitty’s, and you haven’t had a burrito until you’ve had one from Bitty’s.”
Emma’s face fell with an expression that could’ve been read as condescending. “Have you ever been to Mexico?”
Sean shook his head. “No, can’t say either of us have. I don’t think?” He looked at Lindsey for confirmation and she nodded. “We haven’t been together very long,” he explained.
“The best burrito I’ve ever had was from this little place in Mexico City,” Emma reminisced with a wistful smile and faraway eyes. “God, it was delicious, and the ambience was absolutely perfect—you should check out my Mexico blog post.”
“How about ya tell us all about it over one of our Connecticut burritos?” Sean asked, grinning enthusiastically with his eyebrows jumping over the frames of his glasses.
Was this what it was like to have younger siblings, luring a potential girlfriend into the family trap? To investigate and interrogate subtly over dinner? I was caught somewhere between wanting to discourage this ridiculous scheme and desperately wanting them to continue, if only to feel included. Like one of them.
“Well, I guess I could,” Emma conceded with a deflating sigh, “but only for a little while. I really do need to get home and schedule my posts for the week.”
And with that, Sean and Lindsey stepped away from the car, allowing me out as they grinned at each other. I could only guess what thoughts swirled around their brains but judging from the hopeful glances shared between them, I assumed it had something to do with the recently discovered brother having a love interest. It was a look I hadn’t seen since I was in my fifth year at secondary school, when Mam caught a girl giving me googly eyes. She’d looked at Da, waggling her brows at him, and I’d groaned before getting into their car.
The furthest it’d gone with that girl was the one time we wore the face off each other behind the school, and that was likely to be the case with Emma, if it even went that far. Because kissing and sex were in a separate league from dating, and dating was something I didn’t do.
But as Emma got out of the car and hurried around to let Pad out, scrubbing his face with both of her hands and kissing his nose, the pull against my heart wasn’t unlike the one I felt toward the Kinney family.
And I think it was in that moment when I realized just how hard it would be to leave.
CHAPTER TWELVE |
PANIC & PLANS
EMMA
I had always had a great relationship with Jared’s family. Even when my bond with him was fraying, th
e love I shared with his parents and sister was strong—until he told them that I’d been unfaithful.
In his rage, he’d told them I had slept with someone else. He lied to them to make it all that much worse, as though it weren’t bad enough already, and the three of them collectively left nasty voicemails and text messages on my cellphone until I changed my number.
At the time, I told myself I deserved the backlash. I wasn’t good enough for them, that was for damn sure, and sitting at the kitchen table with the Kinney family reminded me of that.
God, they were amazing. Accepting, welcoming and all beautiful in their own way. Malachy blended into them so well, even if he didn’t quite see it. I felt this itch to snap a picture of them all, to capture the perfection and beauty of such a close-knit unit of people.
“So, tell us about this blog of yours, Emma,” Collin said, and I turned to face Malachy’s older doppelganger. I wondered if I’d get to see what his mother had looked like, if he’d ever show me a picture of her. I really questioned if he could look like her at all, because, oh my God, he and Collin could’ve been twins separated by twenty years.
“Um, well,” I began awkwardly, “it’s a food-slash-lifestyle blog I’ve been working on for the past eleven years called Emma’s Eats and Treats.”
“Get out!” Kinsey’s hands dropped her foil-wrapped burrito as her lips fell open. “You’re Emma Bryan?”
Startled, I smiled and nodded. “Guilty.”
Patrick, Malachy’s blonde counterpart, turned to his wife with a raised brow of skepticism. “Wait. You know who she is?”
“Babe,” Kinsey replied breathlessly, “she’s the one that inspired me to buy those throw pillows for the living room.”
“What pillows?” he asked, furrowing his brows before taking a bite of his burrito.
She sighed. “The embroidered ones?”
“Not ringin’ a bell.”
Groaning, she looked back at me and shook her head. “Whatever. Ignore him. I could shave my head and he wouldn’t notice.”
He shot a look at her. “Oh, believe me, babe; I’d notice that. Ya just buy so much shite—”
“Patrick!” Helen scolded from one end of the table. Even in this harsher tone, she still sounded like a songbird. “Do ya want your children bringin’ that language to school?”
“Mam, the two at the table aren’t even talkin’ yet and the only one that is talkin’ takes that type of shite to school already.”
“Don’t tell me that,” she reprimanded with a forlorn sigh, shaking her head. “My dear Meghan doesn’t need to be talkin’ like that. She gets it from you and her uncles. I always tell ya, boys—”
“She gets it more from her mother,” Patrick disputed, lowering his brows. “Ya should hear the mouth on that woman.”
It didn’t take long to put the pieces together myself; the eldest of Malachy’s younger brothers must’ve been married before, or at the very least had a child with another woman. The inquisitive journalistic side of me was practically screaming to know more, but I kept my lips shut as the mother and son duo dropped their conversation with hard glares and unspoken words.
“Anyway,” Kinsey drawled exhaustedly, “I absolutely love your blog. You make parenting look so easy.”
I caught Malachy’s sideways glare through the corner of his eye as I swallowed and forced a smile. “Oh, it’s far from easy, but—”
“Oh, come on, you’re being modest,” she said, tipping her chin and staring at me through long, black lashes. They were gorgeous lashes. With another coat of mascara, they’d really pop, and I imagined the Instagram posts I could center around her eyes. “Your entire life is perfect.”
It was the image I had set out to make for myself, wasn’t it? Eleven years in the making and I had finally achieved the deception of perfection. But then, sitting there with her admiration illuminating her eyes, all I felt was awkward and uncomfortable. I was deep in envy of every single one of them and the sturdy foundations of their relationships, wondering why I couldn’t find that for myself.
“So! I went to that coffee shop in town today,” Malachy spoke up, creating a diversion and reading me as though he already knew me.
“Ah, Black & Brewed,” Collin said with a nod. “Great little place.”
The edgy and tattooed Ryan nodded, pushing his longer black hair from out of his eyes. “Devin O’Leary plays there on Wednesdays,” he said. “Ya should go down there then.”
“He mentioned it,” Malachy nodded.
Sean’s eyes snapped open with the onset of an idea. “We should all go.”
Ryan’s wife Snow winced regretfully. “I don’t know if we can. I mean, with Axel—”
Helen shook her head. “Oh, please. I’ll babysit the kids—and Padraig,” she added, reaching out to touch Malachy’s wrist. “It would be lovely for the bunch of ya to go out and spend some time together.”
It occurred to me that she might’ve been including me when referring to “the bunch,” and I rudely excluded myself from the topic by reaching for my bag. I grabbed my camera and turned it on to capture a picture of my unwrapped burrito, focusing on its cheese-and-bean stuffing. It was then that I realized there were several pairs of eyes looking at me.
“Oh, uh, sorry,” I apologized halfheartedly. “Work stuff.”
“Would you want to go?” Lindsey asked as hope stretched her lips into a smile. “I bet you could take lots of pictures there, and you could meet Devin—”
“Wait. Is he actually someone?” Malachy asked with his mouth full.
“Kinsey loves him,” Ryan teased with a nudge of an elbow against Patrick’s ribs. “She thinks he’s feckin’—”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Helen sighed, touching her fingertips to her forehead.
“Whatever,” Patrick grumbled. “Kylie’s been flirtin’ with me since she moved into town, so we’re even.”
Malachy looked from Patrick to Ryan. “But who is he?”
“He’s huge,” Kinsey chimed in, just as her youngest daughter Alannah began to cry from the portable cradle beside her. “Oh, come on,” she whined. “Can I just eat one dinner in peace?”
That was my opportunity to get away from the conversation, and to put a stop to the plan-making. “Let me get her,” I offered eagerly, jumping from the table. “It’s been a while since I held a baby. Please?”
“Are you sure?” Kinsey asked, flattening her hands over her chest. “You’d do that?”
“Of course!” I exclaimed, putting on my best smile. “Please, let me.”
Kinsey smiled, obviously touched by my eagerness. “Sure, I mean, if you don’t mind.” With that, I rounded the table and picked the baby up, shushing her gently as I walked hastily from the kitchen to the living room, and released a deep breath.
This sudden onset of anxiety was absurd, downright ridiculous, and I should’ve seen the potential for a set-up when Sean initially invited me to stay for dinner. But between the obvious push from these people to pair me up with Malachy, and the realization that I wasn’t anonymous anymore, I was feeling on the spot and pressured.
I don’t know what I’d been thinking, inviting Malachy back to my place earlier. I don’t know why I thought anything beyond that point could’ve led to anything good, and this experience was proving just that.
But God, I was so lonely, and this felt so much like everything I was missing.
My throat constricted, and I hugged the baby tighter to my chest.
“I told ya,” I heard the gravelly voice against my ear and I spun around on my heel, nearly smacking my elbow into Malachy’s arm. His eyes sparkled with laughter as he said, “Sorry to spook ya. I just wanted to make sure ya weren’t freakin’ out in here.”
“Freaking out?” I asked, sloppily trying to cover the panic that hadn’t quite deflated from my lungs. “Why would I be freaking out?”
“Oh, probably for the same reasons they make me wanna run back to my hovel in Dublin,” he whispered with a sm
all, sad smile. “They’re infectious. It’s hard to resist them, and they scare the shite out of me.”
“You weren’t kidding,” I whispered back, but it wasn’t only the addictive quality of his new-found family that scared me.
It was the way my body was reacting to his whispered voice. The goosebumps that sprouted at the back of my neck and the electric jolt to my nerves. The way his eyes sparkled in the light like aquamarine gemstones, and how badly I wanted to find jewels that looked just like them, to hang around my neck and carry with me always. The affection and desire was too similar to how I once felt for my ex-husband, when we first met, and I wasn’t sure I could handle feeling that way again.
“She likes ya,” he said, his brogue pulling me from thoughts of Jared and feelings.
“What?”
“Alannah.” He looked down at the now-sleeping bundle in my arms. I couldn’t believe it; she had fallen back to sleep. I had been too busy freaking out to notice, and I smiled at the beautiful baby. “I have the same effect on her, but I think she’s just scared of me and sleepin’ was the only way to shut me out.”
I laughed softly. “She’s such an easy baby; Hailey was also. Not like Sarah. God, she was horrible, and after that, I knew there was no way I was ever having any more kids.”
“Aye.” Malachy nodded, crossing his arms over his chest as a loud chorus of laughter came from the dining room. He looked over his shoulder. “They’re talkin’ about us now, I bet. Probably plannin’ the weddin’ of their dreams.”
I hugged Alannah to my chest. “You think?”
He turned back to me with a raised brow. “You’re tellin’ me you’re not pickin’ up on what they’re doin’? They live for fairytales, these people. They want us to live happily ever after. What a story that’d be.” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and uncrossed his arms to waggle his fingers in the air as he said mockingly, “Ooh, they met on the plane. She kept him from pukin’ all over himself, he told her his entire life story, and they just happened to bump into each other at the little coffee shop in town. It was fate, I tell ya, and he decided he could never go back to Ireland after meetin’ her, because how can ya leave behind the love of your life after ya find her?”
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