I didn’t think it could even be classed as a relationship anymore. Ryder and I, we both changed. Somewhere along the line, we stopped being nice to one another. We stopped loving one another. It started out as normal bickering that grew into full blown screaming contests. We weren’t even at that angry stage anymore; we were at the silent one.
We ignored one another, and when we did interact, it wasn’t pleasant.
I didn’t know where we went wrong, but Ryder and I, we fell out of love. It pained me to admit that, but it was the truth. I loved him dearly, but I wasn’t in love with him anymore, and that broke my heart because I had no idea how we got to the point we were at. I had no idea what I did wrong.
It was sorrowful.
I glanced to my left to where he was sat on Aideen’s sofa. He was, as usual, tapping away on the screen of his phone and paying me no mind. I almost snickered when I remembered, many months ago, I used to feel hurt when he gave his phone more attention than me, but now I relished that the stupid device held his gaze, because I never wanted him to look at me and really see me like he used to, because he would see how weak I had become.
I didn’t want him to see that I was broken.
I looked forward and then to my right. I picked up the bottle of water I got from Aideen’s fridge when I came over. I uncapped the bottle, took a swig and swallowed down the cool liquid.
I widened my eyes when some of the water went down the wrong way and entered my lungs. I lowered my bottle and instantly began coughing as I lifted my hand and pressed it against my chest.
I jumped with fright when I felt a hand pressed against my back, and lightly tap away, helping me get the water up and regain my composure. I looked back to my left as Ryder retracted his hand away from me, without looking away from the screen of his phone.
I stared at him blankly, blindly.
I wasn’t sure what to make of his kind gesture, which was terribly sad. He was my fiancé and I was beyond surprised that he touched me. He never touched me anymore. Not if he could help it anyway.
“Thank you,” I said lowly to him.
He didn’t look at me as he said, “Don’t mention it.”
Silence settled over us again, and my sadness returned.
I hated feeling so down.
I looked away from him and glanced around the room, my eyes landing on Aideen as Bronagh and Keela moved away from her, smirks in place on both of their pretty faces.
What were they up to now?
I lightly smiled to myself, and shook my head.
I looked down to my leg when it vibrated. I reached into my pocket and took out my phone, smiling when my co-workers name flashed across the screen.
Ash Wade.
He joined our crew at the hospital about ten weeks ago. He was a twenty-eight year old English man who moved over from London when he was twenty years old and loved it so much that he never went back home.
Ash was a hoot. He made me laugh on days that I thought I could do nothing but cry. He talked to me, and he listened to me talk. A lot. He became quite a good friend of mine, and I was very thankful to have met him at a point in my life when I need a pick-me-up.
Ash was pure light; he would brighten up anyone’s day.
I slid my finger across the green blob on the screen, then brought the phone to my ear.
“What do you want?” I asked, grinning.
Ash snorted through the receiver. “It’s a good thing I didn’t misdial a hotline number and ask for phone sex when you fired that loaded question my way.”
I joyfully laughed, the sound surprising me and others around me. I looked forward when I felt many sets of eyes on me, but only one set that caused me to tense up.
His eyes.
We had grown apart, but I could never seem to shake the sensation that came over me when he looked at me. The moment his eyes locked onto my body, I became hyper aware of every movement I made.
“Branna?” Ash’s voice called out. “You there, Angel?”
I couldn’t help but playfully roll my eyes.
Ash decided to label me with the nickname Angel when the grandfather of one of our patients a few weeks back kept calling me it when he addressed me. I asked him to drop it, but he hasn’t, and it had seemed to stick.
“I’m here,” I replied. “Sorry, just zoned out for a second.”
“No worries,” Ash chirped then lowered his voice. “You won’t believe what happened on the ward today after you went home.”
Ash worked the delivery suite with me, and bar a few extra hours here and there, we had an identical roster.
“If you tell me the patient in suite four that screamed bloody murder all day randomly stopped when I walked off the ward, then I’m goin’ to curse her.”
Ash’s deep laughter filled my ear, and it warmed my hurt heart.
“No, she was still screaming when I left … even though she got her epidural and was numb from the waist down.”
I giggled. “There’s always one who goes overboard.”
Ash grunted. “You’re telling me.”
I chortled. “What happened?”
“The lady in suite one, you know, the hot redhead with massive tits?”
Ash was brilliant, but he was still such a man.
I good-naturedly shook my head. “Yeah, what about her?”
“She shit herself as she pushed. Her husband freaked out not knowing what was happening and fainted, knocked into the bed and caused shit to literally fly everywhere.”
I fell onto the arm of the sofa as laughter erupted out of me.
“I swear,” Ash laughed with me. “It’s both hilarious and disgusting.”
I wiped under my eyes with my free hand when tears of laughter fell.
“Did she deliver fine?” I asked, automatically switching to midwife mode. “And the husband, is he okay?”
“Both are fine. She had a boy, but I doubt the husband will step foot inside the delivery ward ever again. He made his wife swear to bring her mother in with her in the future.”
I continued to laugh. “I bet you all had a right laugh about that.”
“We did,” Ash confirmed. “Sally almost wet herself from laughing after she got the baby cleaned up.”
Sally was the fifty-seven year old ‘mother’ of the delivery suite. I wasn’t on shift with her very often, but when I was, she cracked me up with tales from her younger days.
I shook my head, smiling joyfully. “I can’t say I’m sorry I missed it. I’ve fifty-three deliveries running with nothing other than regular bodily fluids and a baby poppin’ out. Thank God.”
“You know your first patient on shift tomorrow will shit just for that comment?”
“Bite me!” I quipped.
Ash gleefully laughed. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
He picked me up on our way to work since I sold my car last year and Ryder always needed his Rover.
“Yep, I’ll see you then.”
I pocketed my phone and yawned before looking to Ryder who was still busy with his phone.
“Do you plan on being here long?” I asked, not looking at his hands.
He glanced at me and shook his head. “You wanna leave now?”
I nodded. “I’m on shift at eight in the mornin’ and want to go to sleep early.”
Ryder nodded his head. “I’ll see if Damien wants a ride back.”
I absentmindedly smiled as I thought about my boy. He helped bring some life back into me when he came home and moved back into the house. He made it feel less empty.
I blinked when Ryder stood up from the chair. He offered me his hand and, for a moment, I was hesitant about putting my hand in his. I shook it off and slid my hand into his large calloused one.
I licked my lips when he pulled me to my feet, but frowned when he released my hand and move passed me, heading towards his brothers. I tried not to let it get me down, but I couldn’t help it. I missed him. I missed being close to him. I missed sex with him.
&
nbsp; I couldn’t remember the last time we were intimate, and I hated it.
I said goodbye to the girls, the brothers, and winked at Kane as he brought Jax into his room to put him to bed. I congratulated my sister and Dominic on finding out the gender of their baby once more, and followed Ryder out of Aideen’s apartment, down the hallway and into the elevator.
“Dame will be home later,” Ryder said as he hit the button for the ground floor.
The doors closed shut, encasing us together. I felt him look at me, so I kept my eyes dead ahead, making sure my body was tensed and non-moving, too.
“Who were you talking to on the phone?” he asked me, his voice so low I barely heard him.
I was a little annoyed that he asked me an invasive question when he never answered any of mine. I wanted to counter with multiple questions of my own, asking where he went every night when he thought I was asleep and why he was on his phone all the time, but I had no energy for a fight.
He wouldn’t answer me if I asked anyway; he never did.
“Just Ash who works the delivery suite with me.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ryder nod. He had never met Ash, so I had no idea what was going through his mind with my response.
“Are you okay?” he randomly asked.
I was so surprised at the question that I looked at him with raised eyebrows and said, “Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”
He shrugged, staring down at me, his eyes non-blinking. “You barely cracked a smile when Bronagh was announcing she was having a girl.”
Because I did my happy dance back at the hospital when she found out.
I looked forward. “I had a long day at work, I’m just tired.”
“Too tired to be happy for your sister?”
How dare he!
“I am happy for her. I don’t need to be all up in her face to be happy for her, Ryder.”
Silence.
“It seems to me like you’re a little bit …”
“A little bit what?” I pressed.
The door of the elevator opened just as Ryder said, “Jealous.”
I stepped out of the elevator, politely nodded to the security man that manned the lobby desk, and quickly walked in the direction of the main entrance.
“Branna?” Ryder groaned. “Look, wait a second.”
I didn’t. I picked up my pace and almost sprinted out of the apartment complex. When I got outside, I nodded to the security guards at the doors and headed straight for Ryder’s Land Rover that was parked in-between Dominic and Alec’s cars.
I rushed to the passenger door and stared at the handle until I heard Ryder sigh and press on the car key, unlocking the doors. I gripped the handle, pulled the door open and got up into the car, slamming the door shut behind me.
“Damn it, Branna,” Ryder complained when he got into the driver’s seat. “Don’t take your bad mood out on my car.”
Fuck you and your stupid car.
“I wouldn’t be in a bad mood had you not said somethin’ so …”
“So what?”
“Insensitive!” I finished.
“Insensitive,” Ryder repeated and turned his body to face me. “How is me saying you’re jealous of Bronagh having a girl insensitive?”
I couldn’t even look at him.
“You aren’t stupid. Think about it and I’m sure you’ll realise why.”
Ryder didn’t move a muscle as he continued to stare at me.
“You are jealous,” he murmured then gasped. “You want a baby?”
I looked out the window, not answering him.
“Branna,” he pressed. “You want a baby?”
Without looking at him I said, “I’ve wanted a baby for years, I just never said anythin’ to you to push the issue because so much bullshit has happened to our families, and being the oldest pair we had to push everythin’ aside and make sure everyone was okay. We’re the parental figures. We make sure everyone else is doin’ good before we even consider lookin’ at our own needs.”
Ryder was silent as I spoke so I pressed on.
“You know I love kids and I probably would have had a few before I met you, but havin’ a life was put on hold when me parents died. I had to focus on Bronagh, not me, her. Bein’ a midwife was me dream, it’s the one thing I allowed meself to want. It’s why I worked me arse off to become one in me late twenties whilst raisin’ a bratty teenager.”
I glanced at him as he continued to remain silent.
“Do you think we’re at a point where we should have a kid?” he asked, and I heard the doubt laced throughout his voice.
It killed me, but I agreed with him.
“No, we aren’t in the position to raise a dog, let alone a child.”
Ryder faced forward and jammed his key into the ignition and started up his car.
“Besides,” he quipped, “we’d actually have to fuck in order to get you pregnant.”
His anger was expected.
I flattened my hands out on my thighs and resisted the urge to ball them into fists.
“We probably would if you didn’t go off every single night to do God knows what.”
The silent ‘or who’ was implied, but the words never left my lips because I was terrified if it turned out to be a ‘who’ that was the reason for him leaving every night.
I didn’t think I would be able to handle that, and decided I was better off not knowing. My sister, and the other girls, would smack me around for resorting to this way of thinking, but they didn’t know what my home life or relationship with Ryder was like.
They thought they knew, but they didn’t.
“Don’t feed me that bullshit,” Ryder growled as he pulled out of the space. “I’m home a lot and you still never put out. You left our bed to sleep up in Dominic’s old room, the furthest away from me that you can be in our house.”
I felt disgusted.
“Me purpose on this Earth isn’t to fuck you whenever you see fit.”
“No,” Ryder agreed, “but it’d be nice if I could hit it at least once a fucking week. I haven’t touched you in months. I’d settle for fucking spooning at this point.”
He spoke of me like I was nothing more than a sexual object.
“And whose fault is that?” I bellowed, throwing my hands in the air. “You’ve pulled away from me. We don’t talk, we don’t laugh, we don’t do anythin’ but fight with one another and it’s your bloody fault. You have landed us in this rut, and the sad thing is I don’t even know why! I don’t know what you do when you leave the house every night, or why you’re always on your phone, and it’s pathetic that I’ve just accepted it, but I’m too tired. I fight with you all the time, I’m too exhausted to do anythin’ else.”
I turned my head and looked out the window of the car, willing the tears in my eyes not to fall. I didn’t want to cry, I was sick of crying.
“I’ve told you I’m takin’ care of some things. That’s all you need to know.”
I closed my eyes, gutted he still wouldn’t share his secrets with me.
“I don’t believe you, Ryder.”
“Then I don’t know what to tell you, Branna.”
“How about the truth for once?” I countered. “Just tell me where you go and what you do.”
His hands tightened around the steering wheel as we approached our street.
“I can’t tell you, you wouldn’t understand.”
I looked down to my thighs and swallowed.
“I can’t understand if you don’t help me to.”
Ryder grunted as he pulled into the car parking space in front of our house, putting the car in park. “This is on me, okay? It’s nothing for you to worry about, and you will worry if I tell you, and I don’t want that to happen. We’re all under a lot of pressure with Big Phil still out there; my business doesn’t need me added to that.”
He got out of the car, closed the door and walked up the pathway and into our house, leaving me on my own with my thoughts.
&
nbsp; “I can’t do this anymore,” I said aloud, forcing myself to hear the words.
We couldn’t continue on the path we were on. Something had to change, and in that moment I knew exactly what I had to do to start the healing process for the many wounds that had been cut open and exposed over the last few years.
I had to make a change. I had to separate myself from the very being that wounded me so … even if he didn’t mean to.
I squeezed my eyes shut as pain struck. The remaining fragments of my willowed heart shattered into a million pieces as I made a life changing decision. A decision that would affect not only me, but my family and friends, too.
I reached out and blindingly gripped onto the dashboard of the car to stop myself from collapsing as my mind whispered what I needed to do to be free.
I had to break up with Ryder.
Don’t cry.
I love reaching the acknowledgments section of a novel or novella; it means I’ve just added a new notch to my book belt.
Aideen is the sixth book in my Slater Brothers series, and that puts me at the halfway mark in this insane journey between the brothers and their ladies.
That. Is. Insane.
I say this after every book I write, but I honestly can’t wrap my head around how far I’ve come with this series, and it is still going strong. I’m so blessed, and so very thankful to all those who make it possible.
My daughter, I love you more than humanly possible. You are my life. All of what I do and continue to do, I do for you. I love you to Neptune and back.
My PA—Jill. You’re a superstar, woman, and I love you dearly.
Yessi, I don’t know where to start with you. You’re always there for me, and you continue to be one of the few people who I truly consider are pure light. Love you, bitch.
My Mary, I love everything about you. You have quickly become one of my favourite people. You. Are. Brilliant.
Jen—the main woman behind JaVa Editing. Thank you so much for revamping editing for me. You completely put me at ease during the editing process on Aideen. Your comments and random messages cracked me up, and your input was on point. I can’t wait to work with you again.