“Was that why Deirdre was down at the docks that day? Following you around? Because she thought you were cheating on her…and she was right.”
I was well aware that it made me a dick, but I shrugged. “She shouldn’t have been there.”
Ma frowned at me, her hands pleating a handkerchief on her lap.
The weirdest thing about my family?
We all looked like the Kennedys. I didn’t mean we shared facial features. I meant that we looked like a political dynasty. Here I was, in the middle of a makeshift ER/ICU unit in a warehouse probably in Queens, but Ma looked like Jackie O with her pearls and neatly coiffed hair. She even wore a pencil skirt and had a blouse tucked into her trim waist. She wore makeup, perfectly applied, and could have graced any magazine with ease.
As for Da, his suits were expensive, and it showed. The pair of them looked after themselves, and though they were nearly seventy, they didn’t really look it. Da had let his hair go gray, but Ma hadn’t. She was still a redhead, just with more silver sparkles shining through.
So as I looked at them, seeing how picture perfect they both were, I had to shake my head because here I was, talking about a girlfriend who’d been murdered.
A girlfriend who I was glad had died.
A woman who my entire family thought I loved and had mourned for over a decade.
I pursed my lips, wondering what I could even say to explain all this because there wasn’t much to say anymore. I’d thought that part of my life was over and done with, and I’d been mostly happy about that.
Except for one thing.
One not so small thing.
Aela O’Neill.
Was it fate that brought her back into my life?
Fate or just God laughing at me?
Maybe a bit of both considering what I did for a living.
My jaw worked as I said, “Aela was a good girl.”
I’d admit that whatever I thought I was going to say? It definitely wasn’t that.
I knew they hadn’t expected it either, because their shoulders straightened and they jerked back like I’d slapped them.
Couldn’t blame them.
Aela had denied us access to my kid and to their grandson for, what? Fourteen years? Was that how old the kid would be? Maybe fifteen? I blew out a breath.
I had a fourteen-year-old son.
What the actual fuck?
As much as it surprised me, the fact was that in my entire lifetime, there’d only been one woman I could ever see carrying my baby.
Aela O’Neill.
So maybe fate really was with me, because I’d never, ever, have allowed my father to trap me into marriage like he’d done with Eoghan. I didn’t give a fuck that Inessa was good people, that I thought she’d make my brother really happy. No one could make the decision over who’d be my bride because I’d already gone through that years ago. Not that they knew that, but Deirdre had been my fiancée because I’d had no choice but to tie myself to her. I hadn’t wanted her. I sure as fuck hadn’t needed her in my life. I’d put up with her and dealt with her because I had no alternative. I’d made the best of a bad situation, and I’d done it well.
Until I’d met Aela.
I sucked in a breath and I murmured, “When you meet her, I don’t want you giving her any shit.”
Da scowled at me, his shoulders hitching up by his ears as his temper started to soar. “You watch your feckin’ mouth, boy.”
I gritted my teeth at the Irish in his voice. The fucker had never even set foot on a plane, never mind visited the homeland, so where the Irish came from was beyond me.
Still, I glared at him. “I won’t. I’m in a hospital bed, and I’ve just learned that I have a son, a son with the only woman I ever loved, and somehow, she’s come into my life again. You won’t make her life miserable, either of you, because if you do—” I swallowed, suddenly feeling like I had a chasm edging at my feet, one that was either going to swallow me whole or throw me out the other side like it was a black hole.
“If you do, what, son?” Ma asked softly, her head tipped to the side, her shock clear, but her voice was modulated because she was good at hiding her emotions, at tempering them.
“You’ll never get to know your grandchild.”
Silence fell at my words, at my declaration.
The aftermath was like I’d just unpacked the notch from a hand grenade. Time was ticking away, just waiting on the grenade to explode, and I felt my heartbeat starting to pound, my pulse starting to soar—something that made itself known on the monitors.
I was pretty sure I’d never been so stressed in all my life, then Da scoffed, “You can’t be serious?”
Shooting him a look, I dipped my chin. “I am. Deadly.”
“I’m confused,” Ma whispered. “I thought you loved Deirdre—”
“I hated her,” I snapped, but before I could say another word, the doctors came rushing in, and they started to shoo my folks out of the ward.
Neither of them wanted to go, but when my chest started to scream blue bloody murder, and sweat dripped from my pores, drenching me?
I knew something wasn’t right with my body.
Maybe before, I’d have just gone with the flow. I’d have just let shit lie, because if it was my time to go, it was my time to go.
But things were different now.
I had a son.
And there was Aela.
With or without me, she was coming into the life again. No way would my da let her get away with not bringing Seamus into the fold. She needed me.
More than she could ever know.
So when the doctors started slapping a ton of crap on me, talking in loud, rushed voices as they started prepping gear I didn’t understand and squirting meds across the room as they prepped shots, I grabbed the guy I thought was the head honcho by the wrist.
He squealed in surprise at my firm hold, but it took more than a cardiac arrest to take me down. So when I drew him to me, my eyes were fixed on his as I ordered, “You fix me. You fix me or my father will make your entire family pay for it.”
It wasn’t a fair command, but I’d gone past the point of fairness.
Fairness had left the building.
Aela and my son needed me, and now was not my time to die.
Four
Aela
“Seamus?” I called out, as I hauled a bag from my room and dumped it in the hall.
The trouble with packing up all my stuff was that there was a lot of it.
I mean, I knew that. I had to pack everything sporadically anyway when we moved, because we moved a lot.
Intentionally.
I never liked to stay in one place longer than necessary. Sometimes, I’d stay only long enough to do a course or to teach one. Sometimes, it was for as long as it took to craft a particular project. But Rhode Island? I’d gotten soft.
I’d been stupid.
Instead of changing scenery a few years ago, I’d stayed here because Seamus had said he was sick of moving, so I’d gotten a job teaching at one of the best art schools in the world. I’d loved my role there, loved my position and the way I could create and help propagate more creations in the seeds I helped sow in students.
So I’d stuck around, let us get some roots, and I’d seen how Seamus had flourished. It figured he’d be like his da in that. His father who’d never lived anywhere other than Hell’s Kitchen. His father who practically thought New York was an island all of its own.