“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Emma insisted. “I can take care of it later.”
But Sean shook his head. “I’m happy to do it.”
“Thank you so much,” she said, pressing a hand over her heart.
I sent her inside and the four of us set out to clean up. Sean worked on her car and smaller projects around the yard, while Paddy and I cut away at the tree, passing the pieces to Ryan to toss into a pile on the lawn. When we were finally finished, an hour and a half later, there was nothing but the stump and roots laying to the side of the drive.
Emma came out with bottles of water for us and apologized that they weren’t cold. “The power’s been out since last night.”
“I think we’ll live with room temperature water,” Ryan chuckled raising the bottle to her and knocking it back in two gulps.
“I really appreciate you guys doing this,” she said, smiling and hugging her arms around herself. “You really didn’t have to. I could’ve hired someone, or—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Paddy said, shaking his head. “We’re happy to help.”
Emma smiled, nodding at the sentiment. “I’ll get you guys more water,” and she turned on her heel, running back into the house and leaving us alone on the lawn.
“So, ehm … thanks for abandonin’ your families to come over here.” I muttered, stuffing my hands into my pockets.
Sean narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “Ya don’t have to thank us, Mal.”
“Yes, I do. Ya didn’t have to come out for me, and—”
Paddy stepped forward and pressed a hand to my shoulder. “Knock it off with that shite. Family helps family, and that’s what ya are.” Our matching eyes met each other, his gaze holding mine. “You’re our brother, Mal. Nothin’ can change that now.”
My heart was swarming and lifting with the warmth of something beautiful and real. At that word, brother. At knowing I was accepted and wanted into their family, feeling that not even the difference in surname mattered.
I bowed my head and pinched the bridge of my nose between my forefinger and thumb as Ryan chuckled. “Ah, you’re gonna make him cry, Paddy. Maybe we should leave and let him and Seanie weep together.”
Sean swatted against the back of Ryan’s head. “Shut the feck up, arsehole.”
“Not sayin’ there’s anythin’ wrong with bein’ emotional,” Ryan groused, rubbing his skull.
I lifted my head at the mention of emotions, the word triggering a thought in my mind. Something from the night before, something that’d struck my heart and ached within me for hours.
“Hey,” I said, “I actually have a question.”
“What’s up?” Sean asked.
I glanced toward the house and stepped closer to them. “Have any of ya ever dealt with a woman cryin’ durin’—”
“Oh, Jesus,” Ryan groaned, shaking his head and laughing. “Welcome to America—you’re here for good now.”
I snorted. “I’m serious. That’s never happened before, and—”
“Lindsey’s cried,” Sean told me, saying it reluctantly, glancing over at Ryan with the expectation that he was going to say something.
And, of course, he did. “Well, Seanie, what do ya expect? Your emotions seep into them and they really can’t handle that shite.”
Choosing to ignore him, I turned back to Sean. “Why? Why did she cry?”
He cleared his throat and crossed his arms over his chest. “It was after, ehm … our first time, and it was because she was happy, she said. And because at the time, she thought she was leavin’.”
Because she was happy.
Because I was leaving.
I looked back to the house and deflated with my sigh.
“Like I said, bro,” Ryan clapped his hand to my shoulder, “welcome to America.”
❧
The funny thing was, another two weeks then went by without any thoughts of leaving crossing my mind. And not once had it settled into my mind that maybe it was because Ireland stopped feeling like home.
During the times when Emma had the girls, the four of us did things together, as something a lot like a family. Watching movies, having meals, playing with Pad and taking him for walks. Those nights, I stayed at Collin and Helen’s house, still keeping the depth of the relationship a loosely-kept secret from Sarah. But when she and Hailey were with their father, I was at Emma’s place. Making love and plummeting into it with a tremendous force.
Nobody mentioned me leaving. Nobody mentioned me going home. Not when we’d all settled into a routine, a new semblance of normal that came naturally to all of us.
I felt happy. I felt good.
Helen invited Emma to Thanksgiving, and although she’d already told her parents she’d be at their house, she came by the Kinney residence afterward for dessert. It didn’t surprise me when she brought over a pie. A homemade apple pie, made with caramel and a lattice-crust, and the taste reminded me of our drunken hurricane night.
After dessert with my new family, we went back to her place. Aside from the missing trees, as we pulled into the driveway, you’d never know a hurricane had passed through a few weeks earlier.
“Home, sweet, home,” she sighed, yawning. “God, I’m exhausted. I need to sleep for three days straight.”
“Good thing ya don’t have the girls this weekend,” I said, reaching over to take her hand. “We actually can sleep for three days, unless ya wanna go Black Friday shoppin’ with Kinsey and Lindsey.”
“I do all of my Black Friday shopping online, thank you very much,” she laughed, pulling my hand to her lips. “I don’t need to risk my life for a big-screen TV.”
I grinned. “Good. I don’t want ya riskin’ your life for anythin’.”
Her laugh settled into a smile. One that might’ve been interpreted as morose. She looked at me, her eyes filling with tears, and I squeezed her hand. “What is it, m’darlin’?”
She shook her head. “I’m just really thankful that I met you.”
With another squeeze of my fingers around her palm, I nodded. “Me too.”
“Malachy,” she said, exhaling and looking away to stare at the dark house, “is there anything I could say that would make you stay?”
For the first time in weeks, I thought about Ireland. My vacant pub, my empty little house. “Ah, Emma …” I touched my forehead with the palm of one hand, squeezing hers in the other.
“You haven’t mentioned it in weeks, and I thought maybe you’d forgotten that you actually live somewhere else. I didn’t want to say anything and make you remember, but your visa is going to expire eventually, and I didn’t want to hold off anymore. I can’t.” She turned back to me, the tears working their way over her cheeks, and she continued, “So, please, if there’s anything I can do to make you stay, tell me. Please, tell me. I can’t let you go back. I’m not sure I could survive that.”
I huffed a breath that left a silvery cloud in the air. “Emma, ya knew goin’ into this that—”
“I love you, Malachy,” she confessed, now holding my hand in both of hers. “I told myself that I wouldn’t love you, that I wouldn’t do this again—not after I’ve seen how bad things can get. But I couldn’t help it. It just happened.”
I nodded. “I know.”
“Don’t you love me?” she cried, and I nodded again. “Then, say it!”
Within a matter of seconds, my heart was crumbling and my world was falling apart. Again. “I love ya, Emma,” and didn’t those words feel so foreign in my mouth? I’d hardly said them to my own mother, let alone another woman, but there they were. The truth.
“Then stay with me,” she pleaded. “Please. Don’t leave.”
“I have to,” I persisted, shaking my head. “I have a house, I have a business, and—”
“Those are just things, Malachy, and you’ve forgotten about them both! You have everything here. You have everything you’ve ever wanted, right here. You have a family. You have brothers and nieces and a nephew
. You have me. We could get married, we could—”
Her voice was traveling a mile a minute. Frantically begging me with her hands and voice and eyes and tears, and I just kept shaking my head. Shaking my head and trying to prove a point that wasn’t getting across to her until I shouted, “Emma, stop! I’m tellin’ ya, ya don’t want that shite with me.”
“And I’m telling you that I do!”
“Emma, this is never what I wanted, and if that makes me a feckin’ prick, I can take that. But some people, they’re meant to be alone. I’m one of those people. I wasn’t raised to be in a committed relationship. I wasn’t—”
“I’m pregnant.”
I turned abruptly to look at her, unsure I’d heard correctly. “What?”
She nodded, the tears spilling faster now. “I am.”
Two words, so tiny. Yet they had this disturbing ability to speed my heart to a startling rate and I was scared nearly to death that I was going to die in her car. One trembling hand covered my mouth as I turned my head to look out the window, to plan my next move, to think over my next words. But all that seemed to pass through my head was the simple thought that I never should’ve gotten on that plane. I never should’ve engaged her in conversation. I never should’ve fallen in love with the Kinneys, or her.
“Malachy, say something.” I swallowed against the Thanksgiving dinner rising in my throat and shook my head. Afraid that if I spoke, I’d puke. After I’d say something I couldn’t take back. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she cried.
And that’s when I said, “Yes, ya did.”
The words sucked the air from her lungs. “What?”
I shook my head, bile rising in my throat. “Ya said everythin’ was fine. Ya said ya had it taken care of, a-and … feckin’ hell. I am never this stupid. I have never been this bloody feckin’ stupid.”
“I-I was taking my pills,” she defended herself. “B-but things were so crazy, and I was distracted, and—”
“Tell me ya forgot to take them. Go ahead and tell me that.”
“I didn’t forget. I just wasn’t taking them as strictly as I—”
“God-feckin’-dammit!” I shouted and covered my eyes with my shaking hand. “Jesus bloody Christ.”
She swallowed and ran her fingers over my hand, still held between hers and sitting in her lap. “I didn’t think it—”
“No, ya didn’t think.”
“I understand why you’re angry,” she reasoned, struggling to keep her voice even and calm. “I don’t blame you. I never planned to have any more kids either, but I was just hoping that you’d—”
My head whipped to stare at her as I dropped my one hand from my mouth. “What were ya hopin’? That’d I hear this and wanna stay? That ya’d change me mind because you’re pregnant? Ya haven’t even told me what you’re gonna—”
Then she looked angry, lowering her brows, shadowing her green eyes. “I’m keeping the baby, Malachy.”
I nodded, and needing to look away from her, I turned back to the windshield. “I can respect that.”
“Well, good, that makes me feel so much better that you respect me for keeping our child.”
Our child. My breath came whistling through my teeth at the sting of those words. “Ya can do whatever ya want.”
“So, I guess that’s it, then? You’re done? Just like that?”
“Yep,” I replied tersely, and I don’t think I’ve ever hated myself more than I did in that second as she dropped my hand from hers and fell apart in slow motion.
First, her body, folding over the steering wheel. Next, her face, contorting with more pain than I thought I was capable of inflicting on another person with a few harsh words. Then, her voice, incomprehensible and wailing as her tears soaked the plastic.
I couldn’t listen to her. I couldn’t sit there and watch her drown in her grief, because I was first and foremost an arsehole, without a clue on how to be in a relationship.
“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head, and grabbing my mobile from my coat pocket. “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t look at me as I got out of the car, or as I called Paddy. She still hadn’t gotten out in the time it took for him to pick me up, and when I got into the car, I had no idea it could hurt so much just to drive away.
Why hadn’t it hurt that bad when I left Ireland?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR |
SONS & FECKERS
MALACHY
“What happened?” Paddy kept asking me, and I could only respond with shakes of my head and silence. I was still struggling to process, still trying to understand how I could be so cruel and heartless toward the woman I loved.
Then again, I also couldn’t understand how I’d managed to fall in love, period.
We got to Collin and Helen’s house, just as Helen retired to her bedroom with Padraig following behind her. Collin was surprised to see me back, after I’d only just left, and asked what was wrong.
“He won’t tell me,” Paddy replied, crossing his arms over his chest.
I looked at my biological father and demanded, “I wanna talk to ya.”
He nodded. “Okay,” and he beckoned me into the kitchen. Paddy heard the serious tone in my voice, and said, “I guess I’ll head home, then,” and I shook my head.
“No, I want ya here too,” and although he looked surprised by that, he complied by following Collin and me into the kitchen.
We sat around the table, and I took a deep breath, shaking my head and clearing my throat before saying, “Emma’s pregnant.”
A stunned silence fell over the table as I listened to the words pass through my lips. Paddy’s mouth fell open and Collin pressed his into a tight line. I waited for someone to say something, someone who wasn’t me because the bile was rising in my throat again.
Moments passed before Collin wiped a hand over his mouth, and turned to Paddy. “A bit of déjà vu, isn’t it?”
Paddy nodded solemnly. “Yeah, just a little.” He pressed his hands to his face, groaned, and pushed them up into his hair. “It was about sixteen years ago when I was sittin’ right over there,” he pointed into the living room, “tellin’ Mam and Da I’d gotten Christine pregnant.”
“I figured ya’d understand,” I said glumly, nodding.
To my surprise, his eyes darkened as he shook his head. “No. I don’t understand, Mal. I slept with that girl once. Once, and a month and a half later, she was tellin’ me she was pregnant. I didn’t love her, I never did, and I was with her for a feckin’ decade because the only woman I did love couldn’t stand to be near me.”
I shook my head, startled and guilty. “I didn’t know that.”
“I know ya didn’t, Mal,” he replied, softening his tone just a bit. “But that’s why I’m tellin’ ya; it’s not the same. You love that woman, whether ya wanna admit it or not—”
“I told her,” I said, cutting him off. “I told her tonight.”
Collin curled one finger over his upper lip. “And?”
“And she asked if I’d stay, and I said no. That’s when she told me she was pregnant, and I left.” I pressed my hands to my face, hardly believing what I was saying to these two men who were the very definition of devotion.
“You what?” Paddy asked, exasperated.
“I know,” I mumbled, my voice muffled by my hands. “I’m an arsehole for leavin’—”
“No,” he interrupted sharply. “You’re not an arsehole for reactin’. Ya had a bomb dropped on ya and ya need to process it, I understand that. She will too. But ya told her ya loved her, she loves ya back, and ya still said ya weren’t stayin’?”
I dropped my hands from my face and glowered at him. “I don’t belong here,” I said, shaking my head, all at once angry. “I was never gonna stay.”
“But … why not?” he asked, laying his hands flat on the table, looking utterly heartbroken. “Don’t ya wanna be with us?”
Of course, I did. “Goddammit, I have a life to get on with. I was here to m
eet ya, to get to know all of ya. Stayin’ was never part of the plan.”
“Ya haven’t mentioned that life of yours in weeks,” Collin finally chimed in, “and I’m thinkin’ it’s because it’s not much of one. Ya’ve seen what ya can have here, and it’s made ya forget.”
“Don’t ya start with me,” I found myself growling at him. “You, of all people, are not allowed to lecture me about leavin’.”
Paddy’s mouth fell open, looking between Collin and me.
“Malachy,” Collin said, his voice walking the line between stern and gentle, “I didn’t know about ya. I wouldn’t have—”
“I know that,” I barked at him. “I know that ya didn’t know, and I am gonna spend the rest of me feckin’ life angry at her for never tellin’ ya, for keepin’ me from havin’ this life for meself.”
Paddy emptied his lungs with his sigh. “Ah, Malachy …”
I ignored him and continued: “But I wasn’t raised by ya. I don’t know family or commitment. I spent me life never knowin’ if today was the day me father was gonna stay, or if me mother was gonna kick him out again. I never knew if we were gonna move the next month, or if I’d get to stay in me school. I haven’t known the same people since I was three years old. I didn’t know the same feckin’ house. I missed out on that life by missin’ out on ya, and I can’t pretend that it’s not too late for me to just have it now!”
Helen walked into the room wearing her robe, and hugging it around herself as she looked from one man to the next. “What’s goin’ on down here?” she asked, her eyes falling on my face.
“In a nutshell?” Paddy asked her, and she shrugged as she nodded. “Emma’s pregnant and Malachy’s still leavin’.”
“What?” she asked breathlessly, stepping closer to me. “Is that true?”
All I could do was nod, and she replied by saying, “No.”
I turned to her, startled and angry. “What?”
“I said, no,” she said, raising her voice a decibel.
“Helen,” Collin reprimanded gently, shaking his head, “we can’t tell him what to do. He’s a forty-year-old man, and—”
Hope to Fall (Kinney Brothers Book 4) Page 16