“De night is young,” I said back cheerily. “A toast—”
I stopped speaking when a large body stood up next to me abruptly.
“If I hear one more word come out of your mouth, I’ll lay ya out,” Doc said quietly, his body tight with anger.
He was staring at me, really staring, and the menace rolling of his body was unbelievable.
“De fuck?” I asked stupidly before snapping my mouth shut.
I remembered the day in North Carolina when Charlie had warned me about Doc, and since then I’d seen his expertise in handling the human body on more than one occasion. He was a fucking walking textbook on anatomy, and I knew even in my clouded brain that if I didn’t take his warning, there was a very likely chance he’d make good on his threat.
“You have no idea—”
“Doc,” Ham growled warningly.
“No,” Doc snapped back, not even bothering to glance in the President’s direction. “You have no fuckin’ idea what you’re talking about, boy. None. Your head is so far up your ass it’s a wonder you know night from day.”
“What are ye goin’ on about?” I asked, taking an unsteady step backward. His tone and the sureness of his words were making me nervous, and I felt my palms begin to sweat. What the fuck was he talking about?
“You left your wife in Ireland to take off with the woman you had on the side,” he hissed. “You want to talk about loyalty?” The veins in his neck were throbbing.
“Come on, brother,” Charlie said, coming up on my side and wrapping his arm over my shoulder. “You look ready to pass out and I’m not dragging your ass to bed later.”
He turned me away from the table and started walking me toward the back hallway, and though I didn’t protest, my head turned so I could watch Doc as we left the room. He stared me down until I could no longer see him.
The whole encounter had been odd as fuck and I tried to focus on remembering his words as Charlie tipped me into bed and left the room. The club didn’t get in the middle of brothers and their women. Not ever. That wasn’t what they were about. So to have a member speak up like that was completely fucking strange.
***
I woke up the next morning with my heart racing, and as soon as I’d showered and remembered the night before, I knew I needed to speak with Doc. I was angry and embarrassed that he’d threatened me in front of the entire club, and I wanted to know why the fuck he would do it. My life outside the club wasn’t his business. There was a clear line that wasn’t meant to be crossed, and he’d jumped the bloody thing.
“Doc!” I called out as I saw him walking out of the garage. “Got a minute?”
I didn’t think he was going to acknowledge me as he walked into the sunshine, but as he hit the grass outside, he paused and turned to look at me.
“What de hell was dat about last night?” I asked, stopping a couple feet from him. “Ye have a problem wit’ me?”
“Forget it,” he answered, dismissing me as he pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket.
“Ye had somet’in’ to say, now say it,” I argued, annoyed that my accent was thickening with my frustration. It was a tell that I hadn’t been able to get a handle on yet.
“What you do is your business,” he said calmly. “Just don’t like hearin’ you bad-mouthin’ a good woman.”
“A good woman?” I asked incredulously, my eyebrows rising. “Amy?”
“You got no fuckin’ idea what you’re doin’,” he said shaking his head. “Playin’ house with your side piece, then comin’ to the club and fuckin’ drinkin’ yourself into a stupor so you don’t have to remember where you should be and what you should be doin’.”
“I’m not playin’ shite.”
“Do what you need to do, Patrick,” he said, my Christian name sounding odd coming from him. “But keep your mouth shut in my presence. Won’t give you another warnin’.”
“Ye have a hard on for me wife? Dat what dis is about?”
His hand was around my throat and his fingers digging into my windpipe before the last word was completely formed.
I hadn’t even seen it coming.
“You worthless piece of shit,” he hissed, spit from his mouth hitting my face as I tried to pry his fingers from my throat. “You fuckin’ left her there!”
I could hear men yelling as they caught sight of us, but all of my attention was focused on Doc’s mouth and the words flying out so fast I had a hard time keeping up.
“You left her to be fuckin’ tortured. You left her to be raped. Then you come back here and run your mouth about her? That poor girl that never done anything wrong but make the mistake of loving a worthless piece of trash like you?”
“Let him go, Doc,” Ham said quietly, his words no less than an order.
Doc relaxed his hand and I finally took a wheezing breath as I dropped to my knees. The world seemed to be moving in slow motion, all around me men were yelling, but I couldn’t hear anything above the roaring in my ears.
I closed my eyes and the memories came before I could stop them.
Amy kissing me goodbye like she couldn’t bear to let me go.
The trip to North Carolina.
Doc alone at the meet-up.
Mum’s letter.
“I’ve got a heartbroken girl here who refuses to speak.”
Riding to Texas.
Amy’s taped up fingers.
“She’s not said a word since we left Ireland.”
Amy’s shaved head.
“It’s not yours.”
Spitting on her.
“I’ve got a heartbroken girl that refuses to speak.”
“It’s not yours.”
“I’m afraid ye’d make it worse.”
Dear God, what had I done?
The noise that came out of me was like nothing I’d ever heard before, and I didn’t know how to stop it. I sounded pathetic, and I knew that the men were looking at me. I knew they thought I was a pussy.
I didn’t care.
I couldn’t stop the sound. It was the only thing that drowned out Mum’s voice.
“I’ve got a heartbroken girl that refuses to speak.”
I wished Doc had killed me.
Chapter 43
Amy
When Nix was four months old, I went back to school. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do yet, but I knew that a college education would be important when it was time for me to start a career. Peg had been more than willing to bring in all of our income, but I hated the fact that she worked so hard and I got to stay home. I hated taking advantage of her and I knew that if I went to school, I could eventually find a great job and support her for once. I couldn’t wait for that day.
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 hi
m. 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 fo
r 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.