by Zoey Parker
Niall interrupted my thoughts. “I just want you to know that I’m fine with whatever you choose.”
I nodded.
“There will obviously be some challenges,” he said, gesturing to me, which I understood to be him silently mentioning my crazy over-protective father. “But I can handle them if you can. Plus, my family will support us no matter what.”
I nodded again.
We stood in silence for a few minutes, Niall staring at his feet, glancing up at me occasionally to reveal small flecks of yellow visible in his caramel brown eyes even in the dimness of the closet.
After a few minutes, he spoke again. “Do you want to add anything?” he asked. “I’m not really sure what to say, but I really want to know what you’re thinking.”
I sighed.
None of this was supposed to happen to me. I was supposed to meet a man, get married, and then have babies. I had never been particularly traditional, but growing up in a compound full of mafia members had made me crave normalcy, stability. Normalcy, however, didn’t seem to be in the cards for me.
So, I took a deep breath and said, “I want to keep the baby.”
Niall paused but then smiled. “Great. Okay. Now we just need a plan.”
We never got to make those plans. Three days later, Niall was dead.
Caleb was the one who told me. I had been lying on my bed, the pregnancy tests spread out before me all in a row. I would look at them and then touch my stomach, though I knew it would be months before I felt even a small flutter of movement inside of me. There was a knock at the door, and I had just enough time to pull the comforter over the tests before Caleb walked in.
“Did you hear?” he asked, a curious look on his typically stoic face. Caleb was the classic James Dean brooding type. He didn’t smoke, but I always imagined him with a cigarette in his mouth, leaning against a wall.
“Hear what?” I asked, my heart pounding, knowing my deepest secret was currently buried under a thin comforter.
“Niall O’Donnell is dead.” He delivered the news like he’d deliver the weather. It’s raining out. Did you know?
“No,” I said, shock seeping into every nerve of my body. I felt like I was being liquified from the inside. “How?”
“He was shot. A guy owed some money he apparently didn’t want to pay.”
I nodded, feeling incapable of saying anything more.
“Did you know him well?” Caleb asked, his eyebrows lowering as if he were staring at a pile of puzzle pieces, trying to decide which to pick up first.
Did I? That was a good question. In the Biblical sense, yes. But being bent over in front of someone while your legs quivered and you tried not to scream didn’t exactly seem like the kind of quality time getting to know someone required.
I shook my head. “Not really. Only in passing.”
Caleb bobbed his head, but he didn’t seem convinced. “Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know first. I’m supposed to go talk to the O’Donnell’s now. Dad is already there talking to Liam. I’m sure finding out your son has been gunned down isn’t a fun experience, so I better go try to help.”
He left before I could respond, which was good because I didn’t have any words. They’d all been sucked out of me, stolen away until I was nothing but skin and shock and pain. I lifted the comforter slowly, hoping by some God-ordained miracle that the pregnancy tests would be gone. It would all have been a bad dream. Yet, as the comforter slid back, the pink crosses peeked out at me. I dropped the comforter, laid back on the bed, and stared at the ceiling.
I barely left my bed for seventy-two hours. I memorized the cracks in my ceiling, tried to reorganize them into a recognizable shape or map, perhaps a message that would explain what I was supposed to do. Niall and I weren’t particularly close, but he knew my secret, and he wanted to help. Now, I had no one.
He’d mentioned his brother being supportive, but rumors had already begun to spread that he’d been thrown out of the compound for being instrumental in Niall’s death. I didn’t want to believe it could be true, but the only thing I knew about Killian before all of this was that he was trouble. Everyone said so. He was constantly getting himself into dangerous scrapes, starting fights he could barely finish, and botching jobs and losing money.
So, when Dad said Killian told him the exchange that night was canceled, everyone felt certain it had been a setup. Killian orchestrated it so he and Niall would be alone and without protection. No one was straight on whether Killian did the shooting or not, but they knew it was intentional. Either he arranged for Niall to be shot so he could take the money for himself, or the exchange really had been canceled, and he took his brother there anyway to kill him.
Jealousy was Caleb’s theory. Liam liked Niall more and that killed Killian. As he was the oldest of the two, Killian was meant to inherit the compound, but rumors had also spread that Liam was considering handing it down to Niall instead.
Either way, Niall was dead, and Killian was gone. I had a human being growing inside of me and no one to turn to. Telling my dad definitely wasn’t an option. Not yet, anyway. Of course, in a few short months, I wouldn’t have an option. My secret would be on full display for the world to see.
But, until then, I at least had time to figure out a plan. Maybe if I went to my dad with a plan for my life and my future, for the baby’s future, he’d understand. If I could line up a job, maybe my own apartment, perhaps he’d be proud of me for taking the initiative, for being responsible. Or maybe he wouldn’t.
I can’t remember how many times I’d heard him say that a pregnant woman needed a husband. To him, unwed mothers were a plague on the Earth. No matter that most of them were single mothers because the men bailed on them. That fact didn’t matter to Dad. The only thing that mattered to him was that those children would grow up without a male role model in their lives, which he believed was crucially important.
“Children without fathers end up in prison or worse. Nothing can replace a man’s influence on a child,” he’d say. Then he would warn me, always with a laugh, “Find yourself pregnant, Heather, and you’ll find yourself married.”
I didn’t know if he could actually force me into an arranged marriage, but I didn’t want to take the chance. I closed my eyes, tired of staring at the ceiling with my thoughts going in circles. I needed to figure shit out before I ended up some old Irishman’s wife.
Chapter Two
Killian
By late afternoon, the apartment felt too quiet. I walked to the small grocery store on the corner and bought a jug of milk, a loaf of bread, and some lunch meat. I also bought a bag of blueberry bagels with the hope that I’d have a woman to give them to in the morning.
When I got back home, I texted Tessa.
K: You busy?
T: Terribly. Why?
K: You know why.
T: See you at 6?
I sent her my new address and waited. I considered cleaning up the place, maybe running back to the grocery store to buy a candle or something, but decided it wasn’t necessary. Tessa knew the drill. We’d been meeting up for sex for six months, and she was one of the only girls who never tried to hang around afterward. I was pretty certain she was married, or at least in a serious relationship. We always met during the day or early evening, and she wouldn’t let me kiss her neck. I told her I knew how to avoid leaving a hickey, but she shook her head. “Just in case.”
At 5:59 pm, there was a knock at the door. I answered it, and she walked past me without saying hello, her face scrunched up in disgust.
“This place sucks,” she said. “Why in the hell are you living in this dump?”
“Long story.”
“Always so mysterious,” she said, turning around to shoot me a half-smile.
Just as fast, though, she was unbuttoning her blouse. “I don’t have a ton of time today, but I figured I should come over because this is the first time you’ve invited me over unprompted. Have you noticed that? Our relationship is
very one-sided. I’m always the one asking if you’re available. So, what gives? Were you missing me?” she asked, pouting and licking her upper lip slowly.
“Always,” I said, closing the front door and turning the flimsy lock.
I made a mental note to install a bolt. A hard wind would be enough to knock the door in.
By the time I turned around, she was slipping out of her pencil skirt. I wondered if she had an office job somewhere, but didn’t ask.
We’d agreed at the start not to learn too much about one another. I’d met her at a bar. It was late, we were both drinking alone, and she was sucking me off in a bathroom stall within the first ten minutes of knowing one another. At closing time, we went to the parking lot and had sex in the back seat of my car.
Normally it was an awkward encounter, sleeping with a stranger in such a confined space, but Tessa knew how to move. She clung to the handles in the ceiling and rode me until I thought my eyes would be permanently crossed, her fit body coiling and twisting like a snake on top of me.
“How exciting,” she’d said as I finished, groans still forcing their way out of my mouth. She’d already come twice, screaming so loud each time I was certain someone would hear and call the cops.
As we redressed in the tight space, she handed me a post-it note with her phone number written on the back in sparkly green ink, a wild look in her eyes. “We should definitely do this again.”
So, we did. Again. And again. And again.
She slipped off her shirt, pulling it over her head with both hands. She had on lacy black panties and a matching bra that barely covered her nipples. Her breasts weren’t big by any measure, but they were perky and perfectly round. And she knew how to display them well.
“Are you going to undress or do I have to do it for you?” she asked, slowly moving towards me, her toned yoga legs crossing one in front of the other like a cat.
I pulled my shirt over my head, and Tessa whistled. I could never tell whether she was being genuine or making fun of me, but I tried not to think about it too hard.
I moved to unbutton my pants, but Tessa was already there. She lowered to her knees, her large eyes looking up at me through fake lashes as she unzipped my pants and reached inside my boxers.
She hesitated, shot a confused glance up at me, and then shook her head. “That’s fine. We can work with this,” she said.
Her mouth was warm and wet, and her lips were smooth, gliding up and down like they were doused in Vaseline. She added a hand, working each end, and I stared at the top of her head. She had white powder build-up along her scalp. Flakes of dead skin and oil and whatever else speckled her dark brown hair. I wondered whether she dyed her hair or not.
“Are you okay?”
Her words pulled me out of my thoughts, and I was startled. “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Great.”
She shot me an unconvinced look, but wrapped her mouth around me and continued, her head bobbing back and forth like a chicken pecking the ground for seed.
“Should we sit down?” she asked a few minutes later, her breathing stilted as she sat back on her heels and gestured towards the couch. “Maybe if you were more comfortable…?”
“I’m fine,” I said, annoyed, but I moved to the couch anyway. This was an unusual occurrence for me, but I was trying to play it cool.
Ten minutes later she fell back onto the floor, her bare legs tangled in front of her like a doll’s. “I give up. What’s your deal today?”
I tucked myself back in my pants and tried to look only half as mortified as I felt.
I wanted to tell Tessa about Niall and what was going on, but it would only complicate things. The beauty of Tessa was that she was a distraction. As soon as she knew the ins and outs of my life, she’d just be more of the same.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit,” she said, standing up and slipping back into her skirt. “I’m not sure why, but you’re bummed, and I’m not here to be your therapist. Call me when you can get it up.”
With that, she left.
Part of me wanted to chase after her and ask her to stay, to give me another chance. But a larger part of me was relieved to see her go. I thought having her over would make me feel better, make me forget everything for a few minutes, but instead, it left me feeling even more disconnected than before.
Niall was gone, I’d been kicked out of my house, and the closest thing I had to a girlfriend was a possibly married potential secretary whose name may or may not actually be Tessa. I was alone.
Being alone had never bothered me before. In fact, I’d spent most of my life wishing I was alone.
The compound was a constant flurry of activity, people in and out all day, knocking on my door, needing me for any number of random questions, tasks, or jobs. Most days I would have paid cold hard cash for twenty minutes to myself. Now, I craved the sounds of living in close proximity to other people—footsteps on the floor, a toilet flushing, rustling through cupboards.
I picked up my phone and called Declan O’Riley. He answered on the third ring.
“Man, I didn’t know if I’d be hearing from you again. How are you? Where are you? What’s going on?” Declan asked, his voice quieter than usual.
I could hear talking and laughter in the background, and I wondered what was going on at the compound. Had anything big happened since I was away?
He was about to ask another string of questions, but I cut him off.
“What are they saying about me?” I asked.
He hesitated, which was uncharacteristic for Declan. If he was breathing, his mouth was moving. “It’s not good, man. They think you killed Niall.”
“Great.”
“Did you?”
I didn’t answer right away, and Declan seemed to panic. “I know it’s stupid to ask. You wouldn’t do something like that… didn’t do anything like that, but it’s hard to ignore all the talk around here. You know how it—”
“No, I didn’t kill my brother. I didn’t kill him, and I had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with his death.”
Declan sighed, and I couldn’t help but notice he sounded relieved. “Yeah, I know, I know.”
“How’s Heather?”
“Heather?” he asked. “Heather Rourke? I have no idea. Why?”
I’d always trusted Declan. We’d been friends since we were teenagers, and Dad loved him enough to hire him and make him an honorary part of the family. Still, I didn’t think this was my secret to tell.
“Could you get a message to her for me?”
###
Heather
Words were scribbled on a piece of paper, smudged in one corner from Declan’s sweaty hands. When he’d handed me the note, unballing it from his fist, it was already damp.
We should talk. Please call me. – Killian
His number was printed on the other side.
“What did he tell you?” I asked.
Declan looked nervous, his eyes shifting from side to side as he stood in the doorway. “Nothing. Just what’s on the note and to bring it to you.”
“He didn’t say what this was about?”
If Killian knew about the pregnancy, then he had to be smart enough to realize he couldn’t say anything. Right? Surely, he wouldn’t run around spouting his mouth. I felt my chest tighten at the thought of my dad or Caleb finding out about the pregnancy from one of the idiots in the compound.
Declan shook his floppy hair. “Nope, I asked, but he wouldn’t say. Do you know what it’s about?”
Relief. My body unclenched, and I felt like I could breathe again. I smiled at Declan, ignoring his question. “Don’t tell anyone about this.”
He nodded, and I shut the door.
Did Killian know about the pregnancy? Or was him reaching out to me, for the first time ever, a total coincidence? Maybe he knew about Niall and me hooking up, but didn’t know about the pregnancy yet? Niall had only found out three days before his death, so there’s no guarantee he’d had time to tell hi
s brother. I couldn’t be sure which option I preferred.
On the one hand, Killian was the last tie I had to Niall, and Niall had sworn his brother would help take care of the baby and me. Then again, Killian was also being blamed for his brother’s death. Maybe Niall was wrong about Killian. Maybe he’d misjudged him, and it cost him his life, and now I was the next target.
Me, a target? The idea seemed too impossible. Plus, Killian had no reason to want me dead. Or did he? I didn’t know anymore. Nothing made sense.
Whether or not I should call him was the real question.