Always Conall (Bitterroot #2)

by Sibylla Matilde

  “All on your own,” I murmured with the pride of her accomplishments making my voice strange and hoarse.

  “The school helped, and the ladies at New Beginnings were amazing.” As she always had, Sage downplayed her own role in her success. “I wasn’t totally alone.”

  “You just didn’t have any of the people you thought you could count on, which sucks,” I regretfully noted, and she shrugged at the notion as though it wasn’t a big deal. Again, typical Sage. Never one to fuss about attention.

  For a moment, my mind flashed back to a time when Sage was about eight. She’d fallen and cut herself on some sharp rocks. Their mom had been furious with Matt and I for not bringing her straight home, but Sage hadn’t even let us know. Turned out, the cut was so deep that she almost fainted and had to have fourteen stitches. But she hadn’t said a word because she was afraid we would take her home and go off again, having fun without her. She was always a tough little shit.

  And the nagging pain from Mattie’s flurry of kicks earlier in the day had me thinking that Sage had passed some of that spunk and metal on to our kid.

  Our kid.

  Fuck, that sounded crazy.

  Pushing that thought back, I again focused on the conversation. “So… your mom,” I finally asked, “how’s she doing now?”

  Sage pursed her lips thoughtfully before responding. “Well, she has good days and bad days. She’s doing better for the most part as long as she’s on her meds. She talks to me again, recognizes it’s me. She just adores Mattie. About two years ago, she was well enough to move from the psych unit to an assisted living place. Fortunately, this has all been covered by my dad’s veteran benefits, so she’s been able to get a lot of the help she needed. In this place she’s at now, she has a lot of independence, but they check on her a couple times a day and make sure she’s taking her medication like she’s supposed to. Every once in a while, she still has a bad day where she kind of shuts down, and I do my best to keep Mattie away from her then. As much as I think it helps Mom, it sorta freaks Mattie out, and she’s got to be my first priority.”

  “You know, I’m a little… awed by you,” I couldn’t help but murmur. “You’re so strong. You’ve done really well.”

  “I didn’t have a choice, Conall,” she looked me dead in the eye, a flicker of spirit, possibly even a little anger, flashed in her eyes. “I wanted to just fall apart. Everything around me was complete train wreck. It would have been so easy to just throw my hands in the air and bail on it all like you did.”

  The vehemence in her voice caught me off guard, and, as much as I fought it, my tone became hard, laced with defensiveness. “I thought I was doing the right thing, honey.”

  “No, you thought about yourself.”

  “You’re pissed at me for leaving, aren’t you?”

  “Of course not.” But her voice trembled. Her chin quivered, and she looked away, blinking rapidly as though she were fighting off tears.

  “Are you sure about that? Because, I’ve gotta say, you sound pissed.”

  Her eyes shot back to mine, and I could see the moisture collecting, threatening to spill down her cheeks. The deep blue became luminous, and a strange tightness caught my throat as I watched her fight to stay in control, as I listened to her voice subtly crack with emotion. “Do you have any idea how it felt for me to watch you walk away?”

  “Do you have any idea how things would have ended up if I stayed?” I turned towards her, leaning into her. Fuck, I wanted to touch her, to pull her close. To comfort her and take away the wretched feelings that my very presence was inflicting. She just had to understand why I left. “My God, Sage, I was fucking destroyed when Matt died. I was toxic to everyone around me, going nowhere. All the guilt and anger over Matt. My own family had been crap for so long, and yours was all I had. But I obliterated it all that night.”

  “That’s a bunch of shit, Conall,” she muttered back. “It’s a sorry excuse for you being a coward.”

  “And then,” I ground out, “as if I hadn’t done enough already, I fucked my dead best friend’s kid sister.”

  “I wasn’t a kid when you left,” she coldly uttered.

  “I was old enough to get pinned with statutory rape for nailing you. Fuck, Sage, I was supposed to protect you from assholes like me.”

  “Well, you sure as hell taught me a good lesson about what fuckheads guys can be.” Rising to her feet, she started to walk away. I stood and took a step after her.

  “Hmm, but you’re not pissed at all, right?”

  “Fine,” she whirled around and glared at me. “Yes. I’m really fucking pissed at you. I’ve been holding it in for five fucking years. Because you ran away. I needed you and you ran away.”

  “I didn’t know you needed me.”

  “No, you didn’t know about Mattie, but you knew I needed you. Me, Sage… I needed you.” I took a step closer to her, and she retreated, backing away as her voice became hoarse and quiet with a ragged breath. “Conall, I begged you not to go. I begged you to take me with you.” I took another step towards her, reaching out to grab her by the shoulder. Her eyes lifted to mine and a single tear slipped down her cheek.

  “I couldn’t take you with me, Sage.”

  “And now,” she continued, “what the fuck do I do now? My God, I was finally starting to get this single-parent shit figured out.” She dropped her forehead, looking down at her feet as she shook her head dejectedly. “But now,” she whispered, “I don’t know what you want—” Her voice broke and her eyes rose to mine again. I couldn’t help but reach up to brush the tremulous tears from her cheeks with my thumbs. “I don’t know if you want her or not. And if you do, I don’t know if you’ll stay. You’re the one part of her life that she’s missing. She knows she’s missing that, and I want to tell her about you, but I can’t. I can’t give her that because I don’t even know who you are anymore. I don’t know if you’re good for her, or if you could fuck it all up even more.”

  Sage wrenched away from me. The sting of her words left a stark hole in my chest, and I suddenly lost the will to fight her. I lost any will at all. The will to breathe. The will for my heart to beat.

  “Part of me just wants you to leave. I want you to just… stay away from her. Part of me wishes,” she whispered again with a ragged sob, “that you had just stayed gone.”

  And a part of me wished that I had stayed gone, too. That I had never known about Mattie, or about how Sage had suffered… because of me.

  “Maybe I should have, honey.”

  Sage

  Honey…

  Oh God, how I loved and hated to hear that word from his lips again. It took me back to this very bank, five years ago, and his tortured whispers in the rain.

  “Please don’t call me that,” I whispered as I angrily swiped the tears from my cheeks.

  He looked at me and frowned. “Why?”

  “You may call everyone that now, but I remember when you called me that once before. And, fuck, I loved it. But things are different. I’m different. And now… it hurts.”

  With a gruff expression tightening his features, he looked back over the water. The pink cast to the sunset had changed to a deep red, close to the horizon and fading wide across the sky. The tones reflected in the water. It would have been awe-inspiring if this moment wasn’t so excruciating.

  “I never wanted to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you now. Or Mattie.”

  “Then let me know what to expect. What are you gonna do?”

  “Honestly,” Conall began as he took a deep breath, “I hadn’t really planned on staying after I saw you.”

  His words drained all the hope right out of me. There were no coherent thoughts in my mind, only an empty cold buzz. After all this time, knowing he left me when I had loved him so fucking much still twisted my soul. Even more so now to know he hadn’t wanted to come back at all. That it obviously pained him to do so and that he didn’t plan to stay. I released a shaky breath and bit my lip to reign in t
he useless sorrow. Because it wasn’t about me anymore, it was about Mattie. I had to know how Conall being back was going to affect Mattie.

  “Well, don’t feel like you have to be here for our sake. Mattie and I were doing fine before you came back. We’ll be fine when you’re gone.”

  I was lying my ass off. I felt like nothing would ever be fine again. But I also didn’t want him to know how much he affected me. Not anymore.

  Conall stepped back over towards the lakeshore and stared out over the water for a moment before he spoke again.

  “This afternoon, I ran into old Jacob Anderson, that rancher that Matt and I used to work for during the summers in high school. He’s got a cabin out at his place that’s just sitting empty, away from the main house, back in the gulch. He needs some help around there since none of his kids chose to come back after college. He was thinking about putting his place up for sale, although he really doesn’t want to. So, I offered to help him out. Gives him more time in his home, gives me a job and place to land.”

  Silently, I nodded. Exhilaration and apprehension warred through my heart to know he was staying… for the time being, at least.

  “So you are staying?”

  Conall nodded slightly. “I really hadn’t planned to, but… seeing you today. Seeing Mattie. It changed all that. For now, at least.”

  “And what about Mattie?” I finally asked in the barest of whispers. “Do you…?” I couldn’t finish the question. As much as I needed to know, I didn’t really want to.

  “She’s a cute kid. You did good,” he smiled sadly, thoughtfully. “I feel like I don’t even have the right to be her dad, like it should be earned or something.” His features softened for a minute as he gazed over the lake, the sunset-kissed ripples lighting his face warmly as he gave a grim, dry chuckle. “She’s a little firecracker, isn’t she? She had no qualms taking me on when she saw you were upset.” The warm pride in his voice felt like salve on a jagged wound.

  “She’s protective of those she cares about,” I reflected. “Plus, she’s been taking some martial arts classes from Kian, and, um… she’s sorta getting a little big for her britches. In her mind, she’s a pretty bad ass four-year-old.”

  Conall was quiet for a moment. Then his voice became low and melancholy. “I’m trying to think of what might be best for her. And I’m not sure that’s me.”

  Rejection squeezed my lungs tight. I knew what he was saying made sense, but it killed me that he might not want her. And in my agony, my voice became biting and cold.

  “You might be right,” I said callously, feeling like a massive bitch as the words left my mouth. I had to get out of here before I completely lost it on him. I could feel the nagging abandonment swirling, the old bitterness coming to the surface… the protectiveness for my little girl. I tried to sound strong. I tried to push the anger back to the surface. But my voice seemed frail and fragile to my ears. “She needs stability. Not a father who’s going to flit in and out of her life. So, until you’ve figured out whether you want her or not, you should probably just stay away and not fuck with her head.”

  I glanced over at him with an icy glare and could almost see every syllable hit home. It was sickly almost gratifying that he even flinched once or twice.

  “Sage, it’s not that I don’t want her,” Conall started.

  I had to get away. My eyes burned with the need to cry, but I cleared my throat to project a strength I didn’t really feel.

  “I’ve gotta go. It’s getting late. Just, um…” I murmured as I began to turn away, “just let me know what to expect, okay?”

  “Sage,” he called as I started back down the path towards my car, “I’m really sorry… for everything.”

  A blast from the past. The same thing he uttered five years before. I didn’t look back. The tears that had begun to gather in my eyes again began to overflow and trail down my cheeks. I was so tired of crying over this man.

  “Some things never change, I guess,” I said lifelessly as I walked away.

  Chapter 4 ~ Unsettled

  Sage

  The blazing sun beat down on my shoulders as I watched Mattie skipping through giant, metal spraying flowers and dumping buckets at the water park. I loved her squeals of delight when the sun made rainbows in the mist and reflected in the sparkly stars on her little purple swimsuit. The smoke was almost nonexistent in the air, revealing the wide blue skies with only a few scant clouds. I leaned back in my lounger, soaking up a few rays and doing my best to relax.

  Unfortunately, I was not succeeding.

  My life had been simply exhausting for what seemed like forever. Long hours and hard work to finish high school. Long hours and hard work to finish nursing school, and working the whole time. Two jobs towards the end. In addition to bartending at Hyper, I got an intern position with St. Thomas Hospital after my first round of clinicals. It was a great opportunity to get my foot in the door, but it meant making my chaotic schedule even worse.

  Eventually, this grueling pattern and lack of sleep started to show up in my grades, which horrified me. Since scholarships and grants covered my tuition and fees, I had to have excellent academic standing, so I couldn’t let my grades slide. And, while that funding covered my tuition and fees, I still needed money for food, rent, and bills. I needed money to take care of Mattie. So, in my last semester, I finally caved and took out student loans for living expenses, quitting my job at Hyper. I scrimped and scavenged to avoid a huge loan debt, and things were far from easy, but it allowed me to focus more on school.

  Now, a few months after finishing nursing school, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. The hospital had brought me on full-time right after graduation, still an intern, but with better benefits. And a major bonus was the hospital daycare (or night care, as my shifts were all over the map) for employees, catering to all the weird hours we worked. Knowing she was close by took a huge load off my shoulders. That I could drop her off and go to work and she was right there, safe and sound.

  So, really, things should be a lot easier right now. For the first time in two and a half years, I didn’t have to study. I’d taken my NCLEX and my preliminary results indicated I’d passed. I should have the official letter in a few weeks, and then I could officially call myself a registered nurse. With that credential, my job would change and I would start making a living wage.

  After years of doing what I had to do to survive, I could start doing what I wanted to. I could finally start… living.

  So, I lay in the sun telling myself over and over that I should be relaxing.

  Yet, I just couldn’t.

  I couldn’t escape the nervousness that pervaded my senses. My pulse was consistently accelerated, and a skittish sensation constantly swirled in my abdomen. Everywhere I went, I felt like I was under a microscope. This neurotic dread followed me around, invading my mind.

  Because, after all this time, I knew he was finally home.

  After I’d left the lake a few nights before, I’d been able to think of nothing but Conall. The different expressions that had shown in his eyes – wonder, sorrow, guilt, remembrance. Their rich, chocolaty brown depths framed with thick, black lashes revealed the depth of his remorse in the way things had turned out.

  There had been a huge shift from the physical image I’d carried around for so long, that of a lanky teenager, a boy on the verge of becoming a man. He was hardly ever serious when we were growing up, always quite the joker. Both he and Matt had delighted in doing what they could to rile me up. Even as I pretended to be annoyed and frustrated, I had secretly loved it. I played the perfect victim to their bully roles, reveling in the mordant arch to Conall’s brow when he was teasing me. The flash of his cocky smile and the wink of his eye.

  A squeal from Mattie as she ran through another misty rainbow brought me out of my revelry. I glanced at my phone to check the time. The sun had begun to cast long shadows across the valley, and my tummy was starting to grumble for sustenance. Which meant Mattie
was probably about half-starved. Throwing on my mesh swimsuit cover-up, I collected my daughter to head home.

  As we lazily strolled to my car, Mattie jabbered on about rainbows and ponies and that she wanted spaghetti for dinner.

  “We’ll have to stop at the store then, monkey.”

  “And get ice cream, too?” she asked hopefully, smiling up at me out of the corner of her eye.

  I gave her a sidelong glance, trying to look serious and stern like I had every intention of saying no, but ultimately grinning back. “Yeah, I’d kinda like some ice cream too.”

  “Yippee!” she squealed as she skipped towards the car ahead of me.

  At the store, Mattie pushed the tyke-sized shopping cart through the aisles, loaded with Italian sausage, garlic and onion, tomato sauce, French bread, and spaghetti noodles as we made our way to the frozen food section. My spaghetti sauce was fairly simple. No Italian masterpiece, by all means, but it wasn’t a nasty jar sauce either. It was also one sure-fire food that Mattie would eat, as long as I chopped up the garlic and onion super tiny so she didn’t notice it.

  “What flavor of ice cream are we looking for? Banana for my little monkey?”

  She spat out an adorable little cackle, and studiously looked up through the glass doors at the plethora of ice cream flavors before us.

  “Ooooh, Oreo,” she exclaimed when she saw her favorite.

  How I wished that everything excited me as much as Oreo ice cream thrilled my daughter. Or Oreo pie. Or Oreo Blizzards. Oreo anything, really. I grabbed a carton, placing it in her little cart, and turned to head toward the check stand.