About a month after I’d started my classes, I was on my way home when Nix started to scream in the back seat. I sighed, and pushed my hair away from my face. I would never again plan my classes so I arrived at the school’s daycare right before Nix’s afternoon feeding. If I stayed at the daycare to nurse him, we’d get home almost an hour later than normal, but it never failed that if I tried to race home before I fed him he’d start screaming within a mile of our house.
“It’s okay, son,” I crooned loudly over his wailing. “Almost there, bud!”
I rolled onto our short, gravel driveway, and was out of the car as soon as I’d placed it in park.
“You’re okay,” I said, pulling him out of his seat, “Good grief, it’s like I haven’t fed you in days!” He looked at me for a second, all noise paused, then screamed again while I laughed at his frantic fingers gripping and pulling at my shirt.
“Okay, let’s get inside.”
I turned to the front door and stopped short.
Patrick.
I watched his face as his eyes landed on my son, screaming and squirming against me, and I could barely breathe.
He looked good. More muscular than he’d ever been before, his beard reaching the top of his collarbone, and tattoos peppering his defined forearms. God, I’d missed him. Missed him and hated him for so long.
“Your mum’s at work,” I finally choked out, bouncing Nix, who didn’t give a shit that I was freaking out.
“I—” Patrick ran his fingers over the top of his hair that was pulled into a stubby ponytail at the back of his neck. “Can we talk? It looks like ye need to get her inside.”
I startled, looking down at my son’s cream one-piece outfit, and smiled fondly. I guess it was a little hard to tell…
“He’s a boy,” I replied, finally continuing toward the house.
“Shite, I’m sorry,” Patrick replied, his face turning red.
I laughed a little at his discomfort. Leave it to a baby to break the ice.
“Well, he’s not in blue and he’s kind of pretty,” I said with a small smile. “How would you know?”
I let us into the house and moved right toward the couch in the living room, grabbing a thin receiving blanket on my way. Nix wasn’t going to wait any longer, and after five months, I’d lost most of my anxiety about breastfeeding him in mixed company. Patrick would just have to deal.
We sat at opposite sides of the couch, and I ignored Patrick as I threw the blanket over my shoulder and Nix’s head, quickly pulling up my shirt and unclasping the front of my bra. The house was so quiet that we both heard as Nix latched on hungrily, and I felt my face heat as the slurping noises ensued. Christ on a cracker.
“He was hungry,” Patrick said quietly, chuckling a little.
“He gets pissed when he has to wait for a feeding,” I replied, looking up to finally meet Patrick’s eyes for the first time in over a year.
My breath caught in my throat and I quickly looked down again. He was looking at us so tenderly that I had a hard time holding back my tears. Shit.
“Why didn’t ye tell me?” Patrick asked hoarsely. “Why wouldn’t ye say anyt’in’?”
My head snapped up, and I looked closely at his face.
“Who told you?”
“Doc—” he cleared his throat, rubbing at his eyes. “Doc said ye were raped?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But why? Why didn’t ye tell me? I came for ye. I love ye.” His hand reached out as if to touch me, then dropped to the upholstery between us. “Doc told me, and I wanted to come back for ye, but Brenna was just born, and fuck Amy, after how I’d behaved, I didn’t think ye’d want to see me.”
I swallowed hard, months of therapy forcing me to tell him the truth as I tried to ignore the tears in his eyes. “I blamed you. I hated you.”
“What?” He seemed so confused that I’d blurted it out that way. Not that he’d necessarily disagreed… but he hadn’t been expecting my answer. He obviously had no idea what I was talking about, and that’s how I knew that Doc hadn’t told him everything.
“I don’t blame you anymore,” I answered, shaking my head. “It wasn’t fair. I know that now—but at the time, well, things were messed up for a while.”
“Is it because I left ye?” he asked desperately. “I didn’t want to leave ye! Ye know dat. I begged ye to leave first! God, I would have done anyt’in’ for ye, ye have to know dat. Ye have to know dat I’d—”
“Shhh,” I whispered to Nix as he startled at Patrick’s loud voice.
Patrick ran the palms of his hands over his eyes, and I noticed the wedding band covering his anchor tattoo.
Nothing in that moment could have hurt worse.
“None of that matters anymore, does it?” I asked gently, gesturing with my chin toward his hand. “I guess things turned out the way they were supposed to.”
Nix popped off my breast then, but I was frozen, watching as Patrick’s eyes dropped to the ring on his finger. He ran his thumb over it and swallowed, then looked at me sadly.
“It’s not legal. Moira just wanted—” his words cut off as Nix lost patience with me and tugged the blanket down over his face.
Half of my breast was bare, and I scrambled to pull my shirt down over it to hide the blue-veined skin.
Patrick made a low noise in his throat that I ignored as I turned Nix and situated him at my other breast with the blanket once again covering both him and my chest. My bra was still hanging on my shoulders, and I knew my nipple was hard under the t-shirt, but I didn’t let myself think about it or bring more attention to it as I tried to hide it.
“Yer bigger,” Patrick commented, his voice barely audible. “And ye’ve—”
“Stop,” I demanded, raising my hand up between us.
“Yer right,” he said with a nod. “I’d just imagined ye dis way so many times before. Our child at yer breast… dough ye did not bot’er coverin’ up in me daydreams. Christ, how did we get here?”
“Life,” I replied with a sad smile.
“I suppose so.”
“Phoenix Gallagher, yer nan is home!” Peg called cheerily as she came in the front door, slamming it behind her. “Where are ye two— Patrick!”
“Hey, Mum.” Patrick said, standing from the couch with a nervous smile on his face.
“My boy!” She stepped into him and wrapped her arms around his waist, and for a split second I was jealous that she got to do so, but I didn’t. “Don’t ye ever do that again!” She slapped him on the belly, then wrapped herself around him again, crying.
“I won’t, I promise,” he replied, meeting my eyes over her shoulder.
“Are ye hungry?” she asked, leaning back to look at him.
“I could eat,” he replied with a chuckle, “And I brought ye photos of yer granddaughter.”
The smile that lit up his face as he mentioned his daughter was so bright that I felt caught in it and unable to look away. It was joy and pride and contentment in physical form.
I’d never do anything to jeopardize that.
***
“So yer in school now?” Patrick asked as he sat on the other end of the sofa that night.
I’d just gotten Nix down for a few hours at least, and I’d pulled out my textbooks to try and get some schoolwork done. I couldn’t put my life on hold, even though there was a man in the house that I could have watched and listened to for hours. Homework didn’t get turned in if I didn’t actually do it, and I couldn’t afford to take any of my classes over again.
“Yeah, I started a couple of weeks ago.”
“I remember when ye couldn’t wait to be finished.”
“Priorities have a way of changing when you’re a single parent,” I replied with a polite smile.
I wished so badly that things could go back to the easy way they were before, but I knew it would never happen again.
Too much had changed since I’d seen him last. Too much had changed since I’d
left Ireland for good.
I’d changed.
I no longer knew how to banter back and forth with him.
“What are ye studyin’?”
“Business,” I answered with an exaggerated expression of disgust. “Boring—but it will get me a job when I’m finished.”
“Ye seem like yer doin’ really well,” he said, smiling back slightly. “I’m glad.”
“We’re doing alright,” I said with a shrug, looking back down at my book.
A part of me wanted to look back up, to catalogue every single one of his features so I could replay it in my mind after he’d left. But there was another part, a stronger part, that refused to give him any of my attention. I loved him, I didn’t think that would ever change, but I couldn’t get past the fact that he’d ruined my life and then started a family with someone else.
As if I was so easily tossed away.
“I’m so sorry—” he started quietly.
“Don’t. Don’t, Patrick,” I ordered cutting him off. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I love ye—”
“Go back to your family.” I looked at him then, the handsome boy that had turned into a man almost overnight. “We both have new lives, let’s just leave it at that, okay?”
He stared at me, waiting for me to say something else, but I was all tapped out. I knew that one day things wouldn’t hurt so bad. I knew that one day I’d be able to look at him with fondness, remembering what we had and how full of dreams we’d been.
But I couldn’t see any of that now. All I could see was every single thing I’d lost.
He left that night and I didn’t cry. I was stronger than that. It didn’t matter how much I still loved him. At the heart of me, I was still that girl who was used to people disappearing from my life. He was just one more face that I’d have to learn to live without.
And I did. I learned to live without him—until years later, when he came to me. I must have been a glutton for punishment, because the moment he needed me again, I opened my arms wide and let him back in.
It was as if I couldn’t help myself—his emotions still had a way of gaining a reaction from me, even after years apart.
Chapter 44
Patrick
I raced toward Texas like the devil was chasing me.
For the last two months, I’d sat with my eight-year-old daughter while she cried for her mother… and I felt as if I was coming apart at the seams.
I hadn’t started out loving Moira. How could I? I’d loved another so much, there hadn’t been room for the woman carrying my child. There hadn’t been room for anyone but Amy, and I’d so single-mindedly focused on getting her back that I’d had little to give Moira.
It had all changed, though, first when I’d thought Amy had fucked someone else and I’d gone straight home and into Moira’s bed. And then, the moment I’d seen that redheaded beauty placed on Moira’s chest, covered in nastiness, but still the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.
No, I hadn’t started out loving Moira, I’d never been in love with her, but I had loved her. Christ, I’d loved her as much as I was capable with the other half of me living in some small Texas town. My chest felt as if it would cave in at any moment as I got off the highway.
There was only one person I wanted. Even if I knew that it was the last place I should be, I found myself pulling into her driveway.
My bike wasn’t even shut off before she was standing on the porch, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun.
“Patrick?”
I knew why she was surprised to see me. Hell, I hadn’t seen her in six years. Mum had moved into a small apartment, and I’d had no connection to Amy except for the photos of her and her son that Mum had placed next to photos of Brenna and I all over her home. Amy and her son were always conspicuously absent during the times I’d brought Brenna to see Mum. She’d never even seen my daughter.
“I’m so sorry, Patrick,” she said kindly as I moved toward her. “I’m so sorry about Moira.”
Her words wrapped around me, sinking into my skin like razor-sharp talons.
She meant it. She was actually sorry that I’d lost the woman who’d taken me away from her.
I lost it.
I reached her on the porch and pulled her to me, my fingers digging into her back as I pressed my watery eyes against her throat. I shuddered when her hands slipped under my cut to grip my waist.
This was the only place I wanted to be. I couldn’t bear to let go of her.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she whispered in my ear, her hands running lightly over my lower back. “Shhh.”
I gasped, my breath heaving in my chest as I tried to pull myself together. What was it about this woman that made me lose control of myself? It had been that way since the moment I’d met her, and almost ten years later, that still hadn’t changed.
“Why don’t you come in?” she asked, pulling away slightly to grab my hand. “Nix is at a friend’s house for a sleepover.”
She turned away, and I tried to wipe my face off with my free hand as she pulled me into the cool house. My fingers tapped my thigh as I took the time to look her over, from the thick ropes of gray hair that hit the top of her back to the slim waist and round ass covered by worn out jeans.
“You hungry?” she asked, never letting go of my hand as she turned to me with a small smile.
My mouth was on hers before either of us knew what I was doing. It was harsh, our lips pressed roughly against our teeth, but it only took a second before her hands were gently brushing through my hair. It calmed me in an instant, and I pulled away slightly to meet her eyes.
They were clear and wide—gentle and understanding—and my breath hitched as I leaned forward again, giving her plenty of time to pull away.
She didn’t.
She left her hands in my hair as I kissed her lips softly, learning the contours and texture again after so long.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into her mouth, not even sure what I was apologizing for. The years we’d spent apart? The way I’d kissed her so roughly? The fact that I’d just lost the woman who’d torn us apart and I was using her to console myself?
“It’s okay,” she said immediately. “You’re okay.”
I groaned and pushed her against the wall, crowding her with my body until one of my thighs was pressed between hers and she was the one who was groaning.
“I’ve missed ye,” I said harshly, kissing her neck as guilt filled my chest. “Christ.”
She pushed me away abruptly, and I was suddenly afraid as I met her eyes.
“We don’t take the Lord’s name in vain in this house,” she said, reaching up to flick my forehead.
My surprised laugh turned into a sob, and I hid it by grabbing her around the waist and pulling her into me so I could press my trembling mouth against her throat. I licked and sucked at her skin. It tasted different than it had all those years ago, and I wondered briefly if it was age or having a baby that had changed it.
I lifted her up, and she wrapped her legs around my waist as I carried her down the hallway, past the room covered in Power Ranger posters and through the door I knew instinctively was hers.
Her bed was covered in a quilt that I knew my mother had made, and before I set her down, I ripped it off the bed. I didn’t need any reminders that what I was doing was wrong.
I was using her, and for some reason I couldn’t understand, she was letting me.
We fumbled and bumped into each other as I tried to strip her jeans off and she went for my cut. Christ, our hands had no idea where to go and we were moving as if we’d get caught at any moment—frantic and desperate.
By the time we were both naked, Amy was completely silent, even her breath had ceased.
“So many tattoos,” she said softly, running her fingertips over my arm and down my hand until she’d reached my anchor and the silver ring that rested at the base of it “You didn’t cover it.”
She sounded su
rprised by that, and it baffled me.
“Of course not,” I replied.
There were tears in her eyes when they met mine, but they didn’t fall as I pushed her into the bed and crawled on top of her.
“Yer gorgeous,” I said reverently as I knelt above her, covering her breasts with my hands. My heart was racing and my breath was ragged as I weighed them in my palms. She was bigger there, more slender in her waist and more wide through her hips and thighs, giving her an hourglass figure that she hadn’t had when we were kids.
I immediately needed everything at once and I laid down on top of her so I could reach it all. I barely noticed when her chest stopped rising and falling beneath mine. When she still didn’t move, I leaned back from where my mouth had been on her nipple. God, I loved that new taste.
Her history came back to me in a rush, and I pushed my hands against the bed to get off of her.
“I’m so sorry!” I practically yelled as I tried to move.
“You’re okay!” she assured me. “I swear, you’re fine. I’m not scared, I was just… taking it all in, you know?”
“Aye. I feel dat way meself.”
I kissed the small smile off her face, and leaned down until I was on my side. I couldn’t stop my wandering hands as they moved over her curves, and she moaned low as I finally reached the place between her thighs.
“So wet,” I teased, as she gave an embarrassed smile.
“Lovely,” she whispered back.
My balls throbbed at the word, and I felt my skin flush in one hot wave. I rolled over on top of her and pulled one leg over my arm until it was resting in the crook of my elbow and she was wide open to me.
“Lovely,” I murmured into her mouth as I thrust hard inside her.
“Shit!” she gasped, her hips coming off the bed.