Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 103141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
I’m thankful Cillian and Ollie don’t leave with my niece, Aislin, Tiernan, and his partner, Dean. Cillian often chooses to stay at Fia’s house when they’re visiting Boston from Ashford, where they go to college.
He also doesn’t linger around waiting to talk to me, instead going upstairs with Ollie and leaving me downstairs alone.
I don’t bother with the mess and make my way into my office, the house feeling emptier than it usually does, even though Cillian is right upstairs.
I avoid my room because I know I won’t be able to sleep.
I try to distract myself by going over business transactions—what money is funneled where to be cleaned and how to continue to make everything look like it’s on the up-and-up. Our drug and gun business is lucrative, but I’m a businessman too.
I don’t know how much time passes when I hear the creak of the fourth stair from the bottom and know someone is coming down.
I slip from my office and see Cillian go into the living room. He’s at the bar, pouring himself a drink when I step into the room, leaning against the wall to watch him.
Though his hair is dark like mine, so much of him is like his mother. He has her blue eyes, her nose, the same shape of her face. He loves big like she had, and is fiercely loyal the way she had been too.
Moira had been a caretaker at heart, and Cillian is the same—whether it be the way he would do anything for Tiernan and Aislin, the cousins that are more like siblings to him, or the love he has for Rory. From the moment I brought the wild redhead to our house, after the death of his mom, Cillian had accepted him—hell, taken responsibility for him—and he loves him in a way I don’t think many people would understand. I know I don’t.
I’d honestly expected the two of them to end up together one day. Moira had thought the same—that the two boys were secretly in love—but now there’s Ollie, so clearly we had been wrong.
Cillian swallows down the drink he poured, and then, as if he realizes he’s not alone, he turns, giving me the cold stare I deserve, but one that slices through my heart all the same.
As soon as his mother had breathed her last breath, I’d walked away from him. I’d taken off to our house in New Hampshire, nearly drank myself to death, and honestly, hadn’t thought I would ever leave those four walls.
I’d missed her wake, her funeral, and had basically abandoned my son. And I’ve never found my way back to him.
“You’re in love with him,” I say.
“No shit,” Cillian snaps.
I’m so used to the hostility he shows me that I don’t even flinch from it anymore. “I needed to see it for myself.”
“So that’s what all this shit is about?” he asks. “Why I’m here. You pretended to want to what? Be a real family, but it was just to see how I feel about Ollie?”
You’re here so I can give you an out…so you can give Ollie what I never gave your mother.
Moira had never asked me to leave this lifestyle, but I think that’s because she knew I couldn’t—that I didn’t have it in me, and that if I tried, I would only be killed anyway. “Yes and no.”
“Because that makes sense. I’m so glad you cleared that up for me,” Cillian snarks. He definitely has his mom’s attitude.
Cillian pours himself another drink as I open my mouth to speak, unsure of what will actually come out. “I watched you with him tonight. Tiernan told me what he is to you, warned me that Ollie is involved with us now and he would need to be protected, but again, I needed to see it with my own eyes.” I take a breath, trying to work up the courage to continue. “He makes you happy…makes you smile. Sometimes, I forget what that looks like.”
Because I was never able to do it. Because I didn’t let myself close enough to you after she died.
My voice is lower, but I still try to keep the emotion from it when I say, “You look at him the way I looked at her.”
And I want that for him. I want Cillian to have every happiness in the world, and there’s nothing I won’t do to make that happen.
I hear the sharp intake of breath, the surprise at me bringing up the woman we both loved so much…because I don’t. I don’t talk to my son about his mom. What has happened to me? Why can’t I be the man I was with her? How do I find my way back to him?
“I miss her, Cillian. So fucking much. Even after all this time.”
She would hate what we have become, and it’s all my fault.