“Ah, she’s just excited,” she smiled, placing a kiss on Quinn’s forehead. “She’s four quarters short of a dollar, but she’s excited.”
Chuckling, his arm brushed against hers and for the first time she became painfully aware of how closely they were sitting. Chewing her lip she focused on the view in front of her. Why did her heart feel lodged inside her throat whenever he was close? Yes, he was gorgeous. Yes, he was capable and charming and overwhelming, but he was also confusing. And frustrating.
“You still believe in all that happily ever after bullshit?” he asked, picking up a stick before throwing it over the cliff.
Raising her brow she looked at him again.
“Sorry,” he smirked. “Stuff.”
“I do,” she nodded, taking the bottle out of Quinn’s mouth and placing it on the rock beside her. “My favorite part of the entire wedding is when the bride and groom stop at the end of the aisle after their ceremony and kiss. Just that one simple kiss. The calm before the rush of the rest of the wedding. It’s where you can tell who will make it a lifetime and who won’t.”
“Really?” he asked, looking over at her. “You can guess all that by one kiss?”
“Oh yes,” she shook her head, biting a piece of her muffin. “We have a large cork board at work and we vote who will ultimately make it to at least ten years and who will be divorced within twelve months,” she giggled. “Reigning champ right here. But don’t tell anybody that,” she grinned. “I have a reputation to keep after all.”
Laughing, he shook his head. “My lips are sealed.”
Oh, those lips. Thin, perfect lips that she imagined were smooth. Or maybe hard? Yes, hard would be a safer bet. Although with Shay, nothing was a safe bet.
“So what’s the story with Adam?” he asked and she froze, her muffin inside her mouth. Arching back in her arms, Quinn squirmed restlessly and Shay placed his large hand on her small round belly jiggling her. Squealing loudly, a gummy smile widened her large cheeks. The effect this man had on her little girl was incredible. And mind-bending. Raising a brow, he waited for her to answer the question. But she didn’t want to talk about Adam. He was her past. A sordid reminder of where her poor choices had gotten her. Swallowing her muffin she looked down into Quinn’s brown eyes. Why did he want to know about Adam?
“He went back to Louisiana,” she said carefully, her voice spiking. “I think.” Hoping that would be enough to satisfy him, she looked out and over to the landscape, the sun almost fully risen.
“Has he contacted you?”
“No.”
“Has he seen Quinn?”
“No.”
“Has he seen you?”
“Why?” she snapped and he was already staring at her. His face still, her chest felt tight. Why did he care if Adam saw Quinn? Why did he care that she hadn’t had a place to go for Thanksgiving? Why did he care about Siobhan overwhelming her with wedding plans? “I’m,” she swallowed back feeling bad, “I’m sorry.”
They were quiet again, the rushing water from the falls below and the birds squealing above the only sounds between them. “Adam only ever cared about one thing,” she sighed, sweeping a piece of hair out of Quinn’s eyes. “And that was Adam.”
She had convinced herself that she could make it work with Adam. That there was too much at stake not to. She had told herself that it would get better after Quinn had been born. That she would make it work. Force it and even fake it if she had to. For Quinn. Looking at her now, she knew it would only have hurt her. Maybe not today, but in the future. No fear of raising a child alone and giving up her dreams of a perfect little family of her own was greater than the misery of staying. Everyone looked at Adam as the bad guy, but truth was that he had just done what she had been too scared to do. End it. He’d done the hard part for her and she resented herself for that. Looking across his shoulder, Shay shook his head and she had to resist the urge to run her thumb against his jaw. The small black and blue bruise less noticeable underneath the light blonde hair dusting across his face.
“Have things with Rory always been like this?” she asked, desperate for a topic change. Anxious to keep any and all conversation about her and Adam far away. Where she hoped he stayed. Far away from both her and Quinn. He was silent before picking up a rock and thumbing it. She didn’t think he was going to answer. Maybe she shouldn’t have brought up. It was a tense situation, she could see that, the nice size cut on his lip to prove it. She hadn’t seen anything rattle Shay the way being in the same room with Rory did. Throwing the rock, they both watched it disappear over the cliff.
“You notice the limp that Rory has?” he asked looking ahead, the morning sun nearly blinding them as it bounced off his hair.
Nodding, she was quiet. Fearful that if she spoke, he would stop talking.
“That’s my fault.”
Shay had needed to escape to his spot. This spot. And he needed to straighten his head out and get clear about a few things as well. One of them being the woman beside him. He had tried to convince himself that he was doing her a favor and giving her some distance to catch her breath with his family, but the nagging truth was that he wanted a few hours where he didn’t need to share her with anybody. Before he even had a chance to question that, he had been knocking on her door. Looking at Whitney, the sun shined behind her picking up extreme red strands inside her hair as a thick piece of hair fell across her face. She looked too damn beautiful for her own good and yet, he knew that she had no idea. He wasn’t well acquainted with the type of women that didn’t have a vast knowledge of how gorgeous she was. Walking around knowing exactly what they had to offer a man. But Whitney, she was stunning. Effortlessly beautiful and so damn sweet. Too sweet.
“It was the night after high school graduation and we went to a party for a buddy of ours.” He grinded his teeth at the memory. The usual sickness that curled inside his stomach stirred and he had no idea why the hell he was telling her this. He never told anybody this story. Well, except his parents and the police. And their college scout too. “We both had a few, like usual. I went a lot easier than Rory had. It was late and I had to drag him out of the party after he ran his mouth and started a fight with another classmate. He was so angry.”
“Come on mate, he’s not worth it.”
Grabbing the collar of Rory’s shirt, Shay used his weight to push him away from jackass Steve Caldan before Rory threw him into the damn fire pit.
“Full ride out of this town baby,” Rory yelled, flipping Steve off. The argument had ensued the usual way. Jealous classmates and even friends drinking too much and running their mouths. Yeah. Full ride. That’s what they both had accepted to Notre Dame along with a one-way ticket out of this town. But for as amped as they both were, jerkoffs like Caldan liked to minimize their offers. Something that never sat well with Rory. “Don’t forget to put me in your fantasy lineup in about six years, princess.”
“Alright, alright,” Shay groaned, pushing him further towards the car. Bumping into the headlight of the Toyota Cruiser, Rory laughed before kicking the bumper. The junkyard car that Cian had bought years ago had gotten beaten up by Finn and then handed down to them. Luckily they were finishing the piece of crap off with lots of conquests in the backseat. Him more than Rory, but who was keeping score?
“Give me the keys.” Rory spit in the grass holding out his hand. The dude could barely stand up straight, and he already knew he was going to have to sneak him through the window, avoiding his pops. Not an easy feat for over two hundred pounds of unbreakable muscle.
Shit.
Finn was home from school. He was double screwed.
“No way,” Shay scoffed taking out the keys, using the dim light to find the right key.
“Come on, baby boy,” Rory slurred, holding out his hand again.
“No, you’re trashed.”
“Ah,” Rory waved him off leaning against the car for support.
“Plus, I’m not having you wreck our only car and me
ss up all of this sexiness,” Shay joked, motioning around the car. Laughing loudly, Rory opened the passenger door and collapsed into the front seat. Sliding into the driver’s side, Shay was grateful he wasn’t going to fight him anymore.
“Last time I checked,” Rory said, rolling down the window and grasping onto the window frame. “I was nearly doubling your number inside this piece of crap.”
Referring to the steady count of girls they were determined to appreciate before they went off to see what Northern Indiana had to offer, Shay scoffed. “Right, because you’re so damn smooth?”
“And better looking, too.”
Revving the car alive, the tailpipe sparked as the light beams shined on Steve and a few others throwing beer cans into the bonfire. Peeling out of the field, Rory leaned out the window. “I’ll be home at Christmas so you can pump my gas for me over at The Pit,” he yelled, flipping Steve off again. Shaking his head, Shay laughed. Such the smack talker. Which only ever added to Rory’s charm. Yeah, in exactly three weeks they would be packing up their few drawers of clothing and belongings and heading out to play college ball for Dame.
Life was good.
Real good.
“Turn this shit up,” Rory growled, reaching for the volume dial but missing it completely. Smacking his drunk hand away, Shay turned up the radio peeling onto the only street that headed home. The black, curving road he had taken a few thousand times since learning to drive. While Rory belted out “Livin’ on a Prayer,” Shay focused his eyes on the road. Damn, he was tired. He had worked all day with his pops hauling steel at the rail tracks to make some extra cash to take to school. The stock boy gig at the market inside town wasn’t cutting it and wouldn’t go far at Dame. He figured he had nearly four weeks to collect as much cash as he could before managing to secure some kind of job at school in between football.
“We’re half way there,” Rory screamed along with the song and he couldn’t help but laugh. Dude was a mess. But a fun mess. Both his brothers had gone to Dame on a full-ride, a pact they all made in order to make it easier on their parents. But he was sure damn glad he had Rory coming with him. “Livin’ on a prayer,” Rory screamed pushing his shoulder. “Dude, sing it.”
Belting out Bon Jovi the two of them yelled as Shay pressed the gas to get up the difficult hill. Screaming the lyrics, his vision locked in on a set of powerful lights ahead of him. The tires of the cruiser screaming murderously, he braced the wheel as the car turned and everything stopped.
Life stopped.
At least that’s how it had felt.
“The next memory I had was inside the hospital room with a sprained ankle, dislocated hip and a neck brace.” Remembering his pops standing at the foot of the hospital bed, his face had told him everything he needed to know. Fear. Anger. More fear. “My first thought was Rory.” Unable to move left or right, he had looked up at his pops and he almost hadn’t had the courage to ask. But he had needed to know if Rory was alive. Had needed to know his brother was still with him. “He told me that we had been in a wreck, which I hardly remembered. Our car had been pushed over the guard rail and flipped down the hill towards the woods before a tree stopped it from rolling any further.” Sucking in a quick breath, Whitney’s hand rested on his arm and he looked down at it a moment. He couldn’t even look at her. He didn’t deserve her sympathy. Not that he wanted sympathy. He knew what he had done and it was a responsibility he carried around with him every second of every day. “Rory had taken the brunt of the crash, nearly putting half of his lower body into a cast. He had been in a coma up until I had been cleared to see him.”
He’d looked awful. His face both slashed and swollen, his leg was in a cast that ran from his foot to his waist. That vision of him had permanently ingrained itself into his head. The one that still haunted him and the one he still saw every time he looked at his brother. “I didn’t leave his side. It took days for him to wake up and communicate and even then he was limited.” He had heard from nearly every doctor in that hospital that they were both lucky to be alive and looking at the police reports and the gruesome pictures of their family car nearly wrapped around a tree trunk, the roof caved in and the bumper pushed into the front seat, he knew they had been.
“I had never seen a wreck like that where both people walked away,” he continued, the warmth of Whitney’s palm burning through his jacket. Again, he had no idea why he was sharing this with her, but he felt safe. Almost as if he wasn’t going to be judged. Almost like she would understand him. Understand his side of the story. That he didn’t mean for it to happen. That he’d do anything to change those few seconds. She did that to him. Made him feel like he counted. She had done that the day before when she insisted that he wasn’t selfish. And he hadn’t expected that. But she was wrong. He was selfish. The adjective used to not only describe him, but the word he knew his entire family felt of him since the night of their accident. “The next few weeks were spent in physical therapy working on my hip while my ankle healed. I was told to finish my recovery at Dame, working with their trainers while learning my playbook. But it became clear that Rory wasn’t going to make it to camp. The coaches hadn’t wasted a second pulling his scholarship and filling his position with a hungry kid from North Dakota.”
The weeks had been intense. Being in Indiana without Rory had been awful, as the post-traumatic stress descended and the nightmares ensued. Throwing himself into football, he got updates from his parents on Rory’s progress while he relearned how to walk each day. “That night,” he said roughly, Whitney’s fingers tightened around his arm encouraging him. “That night my brother survived, but I lost my best friend.”
His brother. His best friend. Was left with nothing but a permanent disability and a disparaged outlook on life. And that was his fault. Looking at Whitney, a tear fell past her chin and she caught it. He should have known she wouldn’t have been able handle the gruesome details of his past. He knew enough about her to know that she lived in a world where she thought people were only moral and kind. Even being on the receiving end of that incredible smile that made a person believe the world was a perfect place, he knew she would see him for what he was. What everyone saw his as.
Selfish.
“He’s never going to forgive me.”
“Oh, Shay,” she whispered and he almost lost it right there. It had been a long ass time since he retold that story, but not a single day went by that he didn’t think about it. Didn’t relive it. Every day his appreciation for being alive and still able to live his dream was drowned out by the realization that because of him, Rory had missed his chance. Had lost his dream. “Shay, listen to me. I don’t believe your parents blame you. You were so young. It was an accident and you can’t blame yourself for this,” she pleaded and he kept himself from laughing. She was sweet, but she didn’t get it. Anybody with a passing interest in college football knew of him and Rory. Very often did professional ball players come from the same family. No, that was Peyton and Eli status. That was supposed to be him and Rory.
But it wasn’t.
Rory still blamed him and he had every right to. It could have just as easily been him in the passenger side, taking the brunt of the crash and watching his brother run off and dominate in college before getting drafted into the NFL. And if so, he didn’t know if he would ever have had it in him to forgive Rory. He got it. Understood it. He just had to deal with it. But it still didn’t make coming home any easier. Every visit home over the years had been harder and more tense than the last and so he had kept his distance. Focusing on his career and his life. Maybe his parents forgave him, but Rory never would. It was just time for him to come to terms with that.
“The partying, the women, the endorsements and the time spent working on being the best,” Shay admitted, letting out a deep breath, “it’s for Rory. I’m living out our dream for the both of us.”
Whitney’s heart had been slowly breaking all day. Listening to Shay recount the horrific details of him and Rory�
�s accident had been a lot to endure. She wanted to tell him to stop. To just give her the less painful specifics, but she had a feeling he needed to get the story out. Like he was atoning for something. His face had rotated at least ten different kinds of emotions, looking like a lost boy. She felt so guilty. Guilty for ever judging him and thinking that he was superficial. He was living out his dream for both him and his brother and yes, that may have included living life harder and more extreme with more partying and more women, the thought of other women yanking in her gut, but it was for Rory. And it was because of shame. He had brushed her off when she mentioned talking to Rory. That maybe the hard feelings could be smoothed over for some kind of peace. For Rory. For his parents. And for Shay.
He had carried Quinn the entire trip back a few hours afterwards and even pointed out all the sights she had missed on their way up. Leading her down the mountain, he had shown her his favorite lake that him and his brothers had swam in every day during the summer. Picturing a young Shay brought a smile to her face, Nicky immediately coming to mind. Picking a small flower bud off a tree branch as they passed, he had handed it to Quinn, her sweet angel sucking it right up. A wide smile she was beginning to notice as hers. But one that her sweet girl only reserved for Shay. Watching the timer sound off on the microwave she heard the echo of the adults arguing already yelling above one another and she laughed. Picking up the popcorn carefully she opened it shaking it into the third large bowl on the counter. Apparently, it was game night. And she had heard through the grapevine that things tended to get pretty intense on game night. What was it with this family and competition? Maneuvering the three large bowls in her arms she made her way to the great room. She only hoped that things stayed cleaner than they had during the football game. She couldn’t handle anymore fists connecting with heads.
“Alright listen, ye’ pack of cheaters,” Uncle Tommy roared over the crowd, his thick accent always taking her by surprise. Placing the bowls in the middle of the table, she sat next to Siobhan as Shay and Finn came up the steps with beers in their hands. Handing one to his papa, Shay handed the other to Tommy before playfully smacking Cian’s face, plopping down beside her. His leg resting against hers, she forced herself to concentrate on Uncle Tommy. Shay seemed easier around his family this afternoon, small pieces of the Shay she knew emerging throughout the day. Or maybe it was knowing so much more about him that had him seeming different. “No writing out the word in the drawing,” Tommy ordered as they all looked at Cian.
Hail Mary (The Mavericks Series) Page 13