My Life in Shambles: A Novel

by Halle, Karina

  “Sorry,” I whisper, quietly closing the door and plunging us back into darkness. “I couldn’t sleep. Can I sleep with you?”

  “Oh, darlin’, like ye even have to ask,” he says, and I hear him shuffling in bed. “Come here.”

  I carefully make my way across the dark room and slip under the covers, curling up beside him.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he whispers to me as I lay my head in the crook of his arm. “I could use ye like this every night.”

  I smile into him and put my hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat hammering beneath my fingers. I slowly take my hand and trail it down over the ripples of his abs, over his flat stomach, and down, down, until I’m skimming over his cock.

  He’s already hard. How about that.

  He lets out a low moan, his back arching as I make a fist around his shaft, feeling the heat press into my skin. “I could definitely use ye like this every night.”

  I grin, biting my lip, and start taking off my nightgown and underwear. It’s not fair he’s the only one naked.

  He brings his body on top of mine, pressing his cock against my hip until I open my legs in anticipation. His fingers then slip between my thighs and start rubbing my clit in circles while his mouth dips down to my nipple to do the same.

  “Yes,” I hiss, digging my nails into the muscles of his strong shoulders, wanting more of everything.

  He takes his cock and starts rubbing it along my clit, up and down, making me drenched and open and wild for him.

  Padraig is the king of blissful torture.

  “I want you inside me,” I say through a groan as he flicks my nipple with his tongue. He keeps on licking, sucking it in between his lips, sending sparks of electricity through my body, out into every limb, while his cock continues to tease me.

  “Padraig,” I pant. “Come inside me.”

  He ignores that and continues to rub at me but the pressure gets less and less.

  He lets out a grunt of frustration, like he’s getting annoyed, which takes me by surprise. I reach down for his cock to guide him in but he keeps it away from me.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, wishing I could see his face.

  “Nothing, nothing, just …” he says, his voice breaking. “Leave me alone.”

  Leave me alone?

  I blink. “Okay.”

  “Just give me a minute.”

  Oh.

  Oh.

  I see.

  “Sure,” I say lightly.

  He leans back off me and I hear him start jacking himself off, the soft sound of his skin against skin. Another frustrated grunt escapes his lips.

  “Fuck!” he cries out and the sound fills the room.

  I’m momentarily frozen.

  “Padraig,” I hiss at him. “You’re going to wake everyone.”

  “Fuck, just FUCK,” he says again, not hearing me or not caring. “Fuck this!”

  He gets off of me completely and sits on the edge of the bed.

  I know I should probably ignore this, it would be easier on his ego, but we need to address it.

  I lean over and turn on his bedside light to see him sitting there hunched over, making fists in his hair, eyes closed, forehead deeply lined.

  “It’s okay,” I say softly. “We’ll try again later.”

  That seems to make him crumble. “No, Val, I want ye, ye don’t understand.”

  I reach over and grab his hand, pulling it off of his head, his fingers uncurling from the strands of hair. “I know you want me and I want you too. But it’s late and I just woke you up. I should have let you sleep. That was selfish of me.”

  He shakes his head, anguish on his brow. “This isn’t supposed to happen.”

  I give him a sympathetic smile, feeling for him on every level. “It is supposed to happen. You know what the doctor said.”

  “Fuck the doctor,” he grumbles. “This isn’t me, okay? This isn’t …I can’t …”

  “Padraig, I love you. This is something that happens. To, like, everyone. It’s not a big deal. It will probably happen again too, but more times than not, it’s going to be fine. Better than fine.”

  He’s breathing hard as he looks at me with frozen eyes, refusing to believe the reality. And honestly, it really isn’t a big deal. I mean, it’s happened to me with an ex before and I’ll admit I felt totally insulted. But Padraig is dealing with MS. This is just part of the deal. I know how much that man wants me and I know how damn good he is at fucking. I’m not worried about any of that. There is more to us than that anyway.

  “Okay,” he says after a moment, when he seems to visibly calm. “Okay.” He gets up and slips on his pajama pants, heading around the bed to the door.

  “Hey,” I cry out, leaning across the bed and grabbing him by the pant leg, holding him in place. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?” he asks cagily, avoiding my eyes.

  “This. Leave. You’re avoiding me, you’re avoiding this. We need to talk about this. I need you to be able to look at me and not feel ashamed. Communication is the only way we’re going to be able to get through it all together. Right?”

  He stares at the wall and nods.

  “No, Padraig, please look at me.”

  He looks down and meets my eyes.

  I give him a small smile. “I don’t want you for a second to think this changes anything between us. I don’t think anything less of you, I don’t think you’re weaker or any sicker and I certainly don’t think you’re less of a man because I know what that beautiful cock can do to me and I know you’ll continue to do it well. You need to be easy on yourself, okay? This is just life. Right now, it’s life. Let’s just move on from it but let’s move on together. Okay?”

  He nods sheepishly. “Okay.”

  “I love you,” I tell him emphatically.

  “I love you, too.”

  “Then come back to bed and let’s go to sleep.”

  He rubs his lips together for a moment and then climbs back under the covers beside me.

  I turn out the light.

  19

  Valerie

  “Valerie, do ye mind going into the kitchen and telling Gail that Colin will be joining us for supper,” Agnes says as I head to the dining room table where Padraig and Major are already seated. She’s standing by the back door, talking to Margaret, Colin’s nurse.

  “Sure,” I say and head into the kitchen.

  Gail has her head in the pantry, searching for something, while food is bubbling over on the stove.

  I quickly go and turn down one of the burners just as she pulls back and sees me.

  “What are ye doing?” she snaps.

  “Sorry, it was boiling over,” I tell her.

  “That’s my problem to worry about, not yours,” she says and god, it’s crazy how much this bitch hates me. The other day, Padraig and I were at the pub and Alistair let it slip that he thinks Gail is a “hoor” and ever since then that’s all I can say in my head.

  “Why are ye here?” she adds, hand on her hip.

  “Agnes says Colin is joining us for dinner. I guess he feels well enough. You don’t need to make him anything separate.” … you hoor, I finish in my head, giving her a polite smile.

  I turn to leave and am almost out the door when she says, “I know you’re faking it.”

  My blood runs cold.

  I stop.

  I don’t turn around.

  Keep walking, don’t engage, this hoor doesn’t know shit.

  “I know you’re not his fiancé, I don’t even think you’re his girlfriend,” she says confidently.

  No. No.

  How can she know?

  What do I do?

  Play dumb.

  I slowly turn around to look at her and put on my smug face. “You know, Gail, I had a feeling you didn’t like me from the start. I couldn’t figure out why. Now I know. You’re his ex. He broke your heart. And now I have his heart. You’re just jealous of me. Well, you need to get over yourse
lf, it’s not becoming.”

  What the hell was that? That was not playing dumb!

  She laughs sharply. “I am not jealous of ye, you wagon.”

  Wagon?

  I have a feeling it doesn’t mean something good.

  She pulls out her phone and keeps talking. “Believe me, what Padraig and I had was a long time ago and anyway, even if I did harbor something for him, it’s nothing more than resentment. He was a little shite back then, ye know that? But it doesn’t matter anyway because I know the truth. You’re both fecking liars.”

  She holds out her phone and it’s a link to all my articles at Upward.

  “You were a journalist based in New York City, writing for this online news magazine,” she says.

  “I wrote those remotely.”

  “Uh huh,” she says and flips the screen to something else. This time it’s a Google search. “I knew there was something off about ye both. I knew that it was timed a little too well for Padraig to bring home a fiancé that no one had heard of, just in time to say goodbye to his dad. I grew up with him. I know their relationship. I know that Padraig would do what he could to seem like he had his life together, to win him over.”

  She taps on a link and a picture of Cole comes up, an article he was featured in Entrepreneur Magazine just before we broke up.

  My heart sinks, past my knees and to the floor.

  I can’t even think.

  She goes on. “So I was suspicious. And then the other day at dinner, during your so-called engagement party, when he proposed, I heard what ye said. That ye couldn’t do this anymore. It didn’t seem right to me. So I did some more searching and I found this article with your name in it. Valerie Stephens. Says that you were engaged to Cole Masters as of December.” She pauses and gives me a triumphant smile. “Bit curious isn’t it, how you and Padraig apparently started dating in March, yet this article places you as living in New York.”

  “That article was written a long time ago,” I barely manage to say, though I can feel the lies shattering all around me.

  “And I thought that could be the case,” she says. “So I went to look at your Facebook and your Instagram. But they were both private.” Thank god for something. “Then I thought of looking of looking ye up on Twitter. That wasn’t private.”

  Fucking Twitter!

  “You hadn’t tweeted anything recently but the last tweet you made was in December and it had to do with ye being laid off at your company. It was geo-tagged to Philadelphia. And every other tweet you made before that also had you geo-tagged, usually to New York City. So tell me, Valerie Stephens, how is that possible that you can tweet from New York and say you’ve been living in Ireland with Padraig?”

  She has me.

  She’s caught us.

  I can’t argue my way out of that.

  I can’t do anything except shove my pride aside and plead my heart out.

  I swallow, putting my hands together for mercy. “Please, Gail. Look. I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot and I’m sorry for all the things I said and I’m sorry I called you a hoor.”

  “When did you call me a hoor?”

  “In my head, just now,” I admit quietly.

  She rolls her eyes. “You know they have the right know. This lie is only going to hurt them. You should be fecking ashamed of yourself for what you’ve done.”

  “I know,” I tell her. “And I am. But it’s also not a lie. Padraig and I are together and we really are in love. We just wanted to make his father happy, so he could have some peace about his son, that’s the only reason we lied about being engaged,” I gesture to the door. “You’ve seen how much happier he’s been?”

  “Oh, don’t kid yourself, he’s not happy about anything. He’s dying. And you don’t know anything at all. You can’t have even known Padraig for long. When did you really meet him?”

  “New Years Eve,” I admit, looking away.

  “New Years? That was only four weeks ago!” she cries out. “You see, everything ye say is a lie. How can ye even love someone that fast.”

  “Because it’s Padraig,” I tell her, pressing my hands into my chest. “Because how can I not love him?”

  Just then the door to the kitchen opens and Agnes is sticking her head in. “What the devil is going on in here? Where’s the food?”

  I turn back to look at Gail and plead with her silently.

  Please, please, don’t tell them. Don’t do this.

  “Come on Val, go sit down, I’ll help Gail,” Agnes says, pushing me out into the dining room.

  I stand there, staring at the table, wondering if this is the last time I’ll see everyone like this.

  There’s Colin at the front. He’s in a wheelchair now, pushed up to the table. He looks better than he has recently and though it seems to take effort, he’s drinking out of a wine glass, unaided. Beside him is his nurse, Margaret, a prim and proper young woman with immaculate posture, then the Major in his navy blue checkered 70’s suit, and of course Padraig.

  My big, beautiful man with a heart of Irish gold.

  He’s wearing a Henley, black, and it goes so well with the darkness of his hair and the depths of his eyes, while showing off his ropey forearms. He’s staring at me curiously, resting his chin on his knuckles, probably wondering what I was doing in there for so long.

  And then his face slowly falls as he sees what’s in my eyes.

  That something is wrong.

  Terribly wrong.

  “Valerie, sit for heaven’s sake,” Agnes says as she and Gail come out of the kitchen with the food.

  I slowly move and take my seat beside Padraig.

  He leans in and whispers, “Are you okay?”

  I shake my head, too afraid to look at him anymore, at anyone.

  But I do look.

  When she’s done serving, I look over at Gail and I don’t see any compassion in her face at all. She’s smug. She looks like the cat that ate the canary and is just holding that canary in her mouth, waiting for the right moment to take the first bite.

  The bite that kills.

  She’s going to tell.

  I lean into Padraig and whisper into ear as close I can. “Gail knows about us.” He stiffens. “I think she’s going to say something. She has proof and she wants to expose us to them.”

  He looks over at Gail and she’s frowning at us, probably not expecting me to say something to him already.

  But I had to say something.

  And the way that Padraig is reaching under the table to grab a hold of my hand and squeeze it tight, he thinks we have to say something too.

  Better us than her.

  Oh god.

  Padraig gets up and I get up with him, holding hands as we stand before the table.

  “What ye standing up for?” Agnes says, spearing her salad. “Sit down and eat.”

  “Everyone,” Padraig announces in his booming voice. “Valerie and I have something to share with ye. It’s going to be difficult to hear but it has to be said now. We’ve kept it a secret for far too long and it’s not fair to keep it that way.”

  “She’s pregnant!” the Major cries out triumphantly with a wave of his fist.

  I cringe and Padraig gives him a polite look. “No, Major. It’s not that.”

  “Well what is it then?” Colin says tiredly.

  Padraig looks at him and squeezes my hand even harder.

  I know we wanted to keep this from his dad.

  That this was all for him.

  But if it’s going to come out anyway, especially if it’s going to come out from someone who will paint it as maliciously as possible, the best thing to do is to tell him ourselves.

  God, this is going to suck.

  “First of all,” he says. “I love Valerie very much. More than I can say and in some ways, more than I can bear. And she loves me too. Only the good Lord knows why and we can all agree upon that. But the truth is, even though we love each other now, it wasn’t always that way. In fact …”
he trails off and takes in a deep breath, looking everyone in the eyes, including Gail who knows what’s coming, “we only met each other on New Year’s Eve.”

  Silence. So much silence.

  “What?” yells the Major.

  “New Year’s Eve last year?” Agnes asks, frowning. She’s put her fork down.

  “No.” He swallows thickly. “New Year’s Eve this year. Four weeks ago.”

  More silence, this time heavier, so heavy it’s almost unbearable.

  Colin exchanges a glance with Agnes, who isn’t blinking.

  “You said you got engaged over Christmas,” his father says roughly, his brows knitting together in confusion.

  “It was a lie,” Padraig says.

  And there the truth is, laid out on the table in all its ugliness.

  “A lie?” repeats his nan. She’s shaking her head. “I don’t understand.” She looks to his father. “Colin, what’s going on, what the devil are they talking about?”

  Colin is pressing his mouth together until it’s a thin white slash. He looks angry. I mean, really angry.

  Fuck. Maybe we shouldn’t have spoken up, maybe she wouldn’t have said anything at all.

  “It’s true,” Gail speaks up.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  “How do you know this?” Agnes says, shocked. If she was wearing her best pearls, she would be clutching them.

  “Because I didn’t believe them, didn’t for a minute believe they were engaged or had been together for a year. They sure didn’t act it. I thought there was something suspicious about it all and I was right. I did a Google search on Valerie, perhaps something ye all should have done, and found out she was engaged to another man in New York City, as of December last year.”

  Agnes lets out an audible gasp and stares at me with such betrayal that it makes me hate myself. “Valerie. Dear, tell me this isn’t true.”

  I try to smile but can’t. “It’s not like that,” I say.

  “You were engaged to Cole Masters, a start-up genius,” Gail says, and I flinch at the word genius because that’s being a little generous. “Then ye get fired from your job and ye come over to Ireland for who knows what or how long and ye meet Padraig and then what, he ropes you into this scheme of lying to his family? Or perhaps it was all your idea. You’re single and broke now and so ye thought ye could land yourself one of the most eligible bachelors in the country.” She pauses and lifts her chin. “Just another hoor in the end.”