Chapter Seventeen
Sam
I wake to darkness. The kind I’m beginning to get used to.
The time on my watch says it’s after two a.m., and the bed I’m on is actually a couch.
A comfortable couch, but a couch all the same.
One not above Delaney’s but in Ciara’s living room.
And as soon as that little piece of information slots into my brain, I sit up so fast my head spins.
I thought after you drank like that you were supposed to forget everything that came afterward. But, unfortunately, the night clicks back with crystalline clarity. The beer. The whiskey. More beer.
At least I integrated with the locals.
Someone—Ciara, most likely—left a glass of water on the coffee table, and I drain the whole thing as I stand. When I’m done, I use the bathroom before following the trail of lit rooms to the kitchen, where I find the woman of the house sitting at the table, fully dressed and eating a slice of cake.
“You really do sleep when you want, don’t you?” I pull out a chair and take a seat, only for my stomach to roil dangerously.
Ciara gives me a knowing look. “How are you feeling?”
“I think I’m in that space where I’m sobering up but not yet hungover, and I’m going to try to cling to that for as long as possible.”
“You hungry?”
“Oh no. I can never eat anything ever again.”
Her smile is forced. “Ronan said it was your birthday.”
Right. That. “Yeah.” I sit up straighter, clearing my throat. “Look, I wasn’t planning on making a big deal of it. That’s why I didn’t tell you. It wasn’t because—”
“I’m not mad you didn’t tell me, Sam.”
“No, I know.” I pause. “It’s just that you seem mad.”
Her lips purse. “Okay, I’m a bit mad. But I’m madder that you’re thinking about sleeping in your car,” she says pointedly. “What’s wrong with your room?”
“Mary says it’s booked out,” I explain. “There’s nowhere else nearby.”
She looks exasperated. “Why didn’t you ask if you could stay here? There’s a ton of space.”
The same reason I didn’t tell her it was my birthday.
Because her skin is soft and her hair smells like strawberries and sometimes when I’m with her, I only speak so she’ll look at me.
But it’s not like I’m going to tell her any of that.
“Casey used to stay here whenever he visited Dad,” she continues. “So you can too. You can stay as long as you need to.”
“I’ll ask him.”
She huffs, her jaw clenching before she abruptly plants her hands on the table and stands. “Come with me.”
“But…Yeah, all right.” My chair almost topples over as I get up, and I follow her as she leaves the kitchen and heads up the stairs. She takes them two at a time, as usual. But when she strides down the hallway she doesn’t stop at her office. She goes one door past it and turns to face me.
“Dad always made a big deal about birthdays,” she says.
“I don’t know if you do, but it’s a thing in this house.
And you’re away from home and your family and your friends, and that’s hard.
My first birthday when I left Ireland was embarrassingly sad, and I don’t want this to be a bad memory for you. ”
“It’s not,” I assure her, but she just shakes her head and twists the knob, swinging the door wide.
The smell hits me first. Paper. Leather. Woody with a hint of vanilla. I peer into the darkness, willing my eyes to adjust. And then she turns on the light.
“This,” she says, “was my dad’s office.”
It’s as though someone’s stolen the breath from my lungs. I don’t move for a second, and when I do, it’s as if my limbs are not my own. They’re stiff and foreign and glued to the floor.
“Sam?”
I don’t answer as I join her inside, stepping over the threshold the way one would into a treasure trove. Because that’s what it feels like. At first glance the room seems small, but the more I look, the more I realize that it’s just filled with so much stuff.
Books, of course. Hundreds of them, crammed into shelves and piled high on the floor.
Some have familiar paper slips sticking out of them, copies of novels sent to him in the hopes of receiving a glowing review back.
I used to get such a thrill mailing them to him when I started working for Casey, but, before I can even wonder if any of the notes I wrote are there, I’m distracted by the next thing.
A Lego set of Ravian’s keep. An illustrated map protected by a dusty glass frame.
A large corkboard hangs on the wall opposite, and every inch of it is filled with handwritten pages.
Some have so much writing you can barely see the paper underneath, and some have only a few lines.
A word or two written in large capital letters that would make sense to no one but him and his mind.
There are drawings as well. A lot sent by fans, but others look shabbier and more exploratory. The ones done by him. By someone figuring out a world step-by-step.
There is no desk in the room, but there is the purple armchair with a flat white cushion and a small table where a tea tray rests.
This is where he worked. This is where he wrote.
This is…
“You said he didn’t have an office.”
“I just didn’t feel like showing it to you,” Ciara says, watching me take it in. “And if you’d known it was here, I’d have had to.”
“What made you change your mind?”
She shrugs, looking uncomfortable. I don’t push it.
“I’m glad you did.”
“Yeah, well…” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, looking unsure, before she steps forward, plucking something from the tray and hiding it behind her back.
“Happy birthday, Sam,” she says, and holds out her hand.
At first, I have no idea what she’s giving me. It looks like an old envelope, opened and worn, like a bill you dump in a drawer and forget about.
Only when I go to take it, when I look at the address on the front, do I realize what it is.
My body goes numb, and for a moment I can only stand there, shell-shocked.
“This is mine,” I manage to croak out. “This is…I sent this to him when I was a kid.”
“I didn’t open it,” she says, scratching her arm in a nervous gesture. “I just looked at the return address.”
I flip it over and there it is. My name and my parents’ street name, written in my teenage handwriting.
I read each word carefully to make sure it’s not an illusion before running my finger over the opening in the envelope.
It’s a neat slash, probably made by a proper letter opener.
The jagged edges are softened by time, and the folded page inside looks creased, as if it’s been taken out and…
“He read it?”
“Of course he did,” she says as I take it out.
Dear Mr. Sheridan…
“Frank Sheridan read my letter.”
And he kept it. Frank Sheridan kept my letter.
What the fuck?
“I found it a few days ago,” she admits as I turn it over in my hands. “I remembered what you said about writing to him, and I went looking for it when I couldn’t sleep. I was going to give it to you when you left.”
“I can’t believe he held on to it all these years.”
“There was no way he could have written back to everyone, but he made a point of reading everything he got.” She nods at the boxes lining the wall. “There are more in the attic.”
“There must be hundreds.” If not thousands. And she went through them all, looking for mine.
Something in my chest starts to hurt.
“They’re sorted by year,” she says, as if he didn’t get a hundred of them a month or something. “I’m sorry he didn’t reply,” she adds.
“Don’t be. I never expected him to. I mean, I hoped, but it was like hoping to win the lottery.” I look back down at it again, still in disbelief. “This is everything, Ciara, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She rubs her hands against her hips. “Feel free to look around. Sorry for the mess. No one’s been in here but me since he died.”
I pause, noticing the tension in her body for the first time. I can’t imagine how big a deal it is for her to let me in here. For her to be in here. “We don’t have to—”
“No,” she says quickly. “It’s okay. It’s nice seeing it appreciated.”
I take her at her word as I scan the bookshelves that line the opposite wall. My eyes land on one near the window. “Is that the secret passage?” I ask, remembering what I’ve read about this place.
“Only one way to find out.” She tries to sound grumpy and fails miserably. “I’ll give you three chances,” she continues. “But I promise I won’t revoke your fan club membership.”
“Don’t even joke about something like that.”
I try a dictionary first, pulling it out. Nothing happens. I pick a Tolkien novel. Same thing.
I stand back, considering before I make my final choice. Alice in Wonderland. I tilt it toward me and hear something click.
“This is so fucking cool,” I say, and Ciara laughs softly as I push on the shelves. The case swings open easily under my touch, revealing…“Your office.”
“I used to do my homework here,” she says as I wander inside. “There’s one in my bedroom as well.” She grins at the look on my face. “I know.”
I look down at the letter in my hand, marveling at it all over again.
“This is the best day of my life,” I say, and she snorts. “I’m serious. I can’t remember the last time anyone has done anything so nice for me.”
“All right, that’s enough,” she mutters, clearly embarrassed. But happy too. Pleased.
“Ciara…” But I don’t know what else I can say. Don’t know how to put into words just how much this means to me.
I join her in the doorway, and, when she gazes up at me, it’s as if my brain shuts down.
I don’t know what I’m thinking. It’s an instinct. An impulse. And as I dip down, I tell myself that this is what you do when you’re thanking someone. You offer a hug. A peck on the cheek.
Only this isn’t exactly a peck.
My lips linger against her skin, and she goes still beneath me, motionless except for the hitch in her breathing. A soft inhale of surprise.
I don’t move away when it’s done. My body doesn’t let me, making me stay right where I am, pulling away only enough to let a hairbreadth of space between us. She stares back at me, her cheeks pink and her pupils blown, and I don’t know what I’m doing.
No. That’s not right. I know exactly what I’m doing.
And that’s the problem.
“Thank you,” I say finally, and she smiles this little smile that has me staring at her mouth.
Shit.
Shit shit shit.
“You’re welcome,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. And then, “Please don’t sleep in your car. Just stay here. There’s like a million bedrooms.”
“There are five bedrooms,” I correct.
“Stay here.”
“Okay.”
Okay.
Another beat passes, another moment where my body doesn’t listen to my brain, and then she presses a hand to my stomach.
Her fingers spread and my muscles clench, the thin cotton of my T-shirt doing nothing to keep out the feel of her.
She pushes gently and I step back, putting space between us again.
I’ve definitely had too much to drink.
“Now,” she says, peering up at me. “Are you going to pretend this is all about your big promotion, or do you want to look at my father’s custom Lego set?”
“Do you have any original artwork?”
She pretends to roll her eyes, and I want to touch her again so badly I have to shove my hands in my pockets.
“There are definitely some maps,” she says, leading me back through the bookcase. And if she notices how awkward I am for the rest of the night, she doesn’t say a word.