My therapist assures me this is normal, but nothing is normal about wanting your half-brother the way I want Punky. Something is very wrong with me.
Ashamed, my walls are erected, and I go on the defensive. “What are you doing here?”
Even I flinch at the harshness of my tone, but he can’t be here. I can’t do this. I can’t pretend Rory is the man I want to marry because Punky is the only person who can see through my lies. He will see how disgusting I am.
Rory makes me happy, and I do love him so much. But with him, I settled. I learned to love him. But he doesn’t give me the butterflies I get with Punky. Even now, just being in his presence robs me of air.
Falling in love with Punky was innate, and I don’t think I’ll ever feel that again.
“He’s my plus-one,” Darcy says smugly.
Punky is deadly quiet. I wonder what he’s thinking.
“Ach, I’m glad I could celebrate this happy occasion with youse,” he says, his gaze never wavering from mine.
He feels betrayed, I’m sure of it.
Before him stand the people he once called his family. But family don’t exclude one another, which is what we did to him.
“Can I speak with ye?” Rory asks, clearing his throat.
He’s avoided Punky, saying he needs time, but I know the real reason is that he wanted to avoid this confrontation. There’s no easy way to approach this. Even though Punky and I can never be, that doesn’t lessen the guilt we feel.
We bonded over our love for Punky, and that bond grew into something more.
Rory makes me happy, and I’m so glad he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. However, there’s always a but lingering, and I don’t know why.
Cian and Punky exchange a strange look. It’s gone a second later.
“Sure,” Punky says.
I step aside to let him pass, unable to face him as he leaves the room with Cian and my fiancé. Once he’s gone, I exhale softly, needing a minute to compose myself.
“I better see to our guests.” I try to conceal my thoughts, but the girls know it’s just an excuse.
As I turn on my heel and leave the room, I hear Hannah call after me. I want to keep walking, but I don’t.
“Are ya all right?” she asks, gently touching my arm.
“I’m fine,” I lie, and she sees straight through me.
“Don’t be pretendin’ that wasn’t weird.”
I shrug in response. “We all knew this wasn’t going to be easy. But I didn’t want him finding out this way,” I confess with a quiver. “I wanted to tell him when the time was right.”
“Was there ever a right time to tell him?” Hannah questions. She’s not having a go at me, but she did suggest we tell Punky before something like this happened.
“I suppose not. Fuck, this is a mess.” I refuse to cry and mess up the hours Amber spent on my makeup. “He won’t forgive me for this.”
Hannah rubs my arm. “Don’t be quick to judge him. He understands ten years is a long time. Ye were right to move on.”
“But with his best friend?”
“Aye, that will come as a shock, but ya can’t help how ye feel.”
If only she knew how I really felt.
“Thanks, Hannah. I should be the one giving you advice, seeing as I’m supposed to be the adult.”
She laughs. “I just want everyone to be happy. And I know Punky is happy if you are. It’ll take some gettin’ used to, but he’ll want the best for youse, and if that’s together, then he will accept it.
“Besides, it looks like Darcy is still keen on him. He could do worse.”
Just the mere mention of her name has me clenching my jaw. “Yes, you’re right. She has been a great support to him.”
I don’t elaborate because Hannah won’t like what I have to say.
“I better get downstairs before people start to talk.”
She reads the blow-off for what it is but doesn’t press.
I conceal my emotions, as I’ve become a master of hiding how I really feel, and put on a smile as I descend the staircase. All the faces are friends I’ve made via Rory because my friends and family are back home.
They promised to attend the wedding, but I don’t expect them to come. Besides, Rory and I haven’t discussed that far ahead. When he proposed six months ago, it came as a huge surprise. We have been seeing one another for about three years—on and off.
Our relationship has been strained because I’ve been coming and going between Belfast and America for ten years. The moment I ran out of money, I’d go back home and work eighteen-plus hours a day at any job that paid so I could save enough money to come back to Belfast.
But when I came back to Northern Ireland this last visit to see my friends and to hopefully see Punky, Rory said he wanted to marry me. I accepted, tired of being alone. Even though my feelings of loneliness never dissipate, they lessen with Rory.
But I had no idea things would happen so fast.
A few days later, Hannah told me she had seen Punky. I couldn’t believe he agreed to see her. I also couldn’t believe it when Hannah said Darcy believed she could help free him. I instantly felt guilty for accepting Rory’s proposal. I felt like I had let Punky down.
I knew I couldn’t be with Punky, but that didn’t lessen the guilt.
It still doesn’t.
Looking down at the beautiful diamond ring on my finger, it doesn’t change the fact that I wish I was wearing Punky’s ring.
Swallowing down my disgust, I paint my face with a broad smile, playing the part of the happy fiancée because Rory deserves that. He has been nothing but wonderful and supportive, understanding why I need space, and he still wants to marry me regardless.
One of Rory’s colleagues and his wife make small talk while I attempt to look interested, but I can’t stop thinking about Punky and how seeing him with Darcy angered me more than it should. I should never have come back here. Northern Ireland is filled with nothing but ghosts that continue to haunt me every single day.
My mom and my sister, Eva, are back home in Chicago. It’s hard to believe Eva is almost the same age as me when I first came here. How naïve I was ten years ago. I never thought I’d not only fall in love but that I’d meet my soulmate—in every sense of the word.
When Punky was sent to prison, I received a life sentence too. Of course, our imprisonment was different, but with each day, week, month, and year that he refused to speak to me, the walls of my cell caged me in further. I lost myself because Punky was my true north.
Even knowing what I did with us being related didn’t make a difference. I still loved him. And even though he refused to see me, I never gave up on him. We tried everything to help him, but after exhausting every possible avenue, we accepted that we had failed.
I went to visit him every week. I wrote to him every day for ten years. Some letters I sent. Others were my form of therapy. But not a day went by that I didn’t try. However, he made it clear he wasn’t interested in seeing me when my constant visits were denied.
I don’t know if he got the letters I sent as he never replied.
After months of trying, I had to go back to America to check on my mom and Eva. Brody stuck to his word, and the money he sent saved my mom’s life. The experimental drugs worked. With the extra money, I was able to send Eva to a good school where she got the education she deserved.