Friday, March 17th
Ronan
“Morning, Ran!” Tori chirps when I walk into the kitchen this morning.
I have to give myself credit for how I scheduled my classes this semester. Unlike last semester—when I had classes starting at eight a.m. five days a week—my Fridays are now short and sweet. It’s almost like I knew I’d need a built-in recovery day, because I’m running on empty.
“Hey, man,” Shane says, leaning his solid body back against the kitchen counter on which Tori sits, her short legs crossed and dangling off the edge.
“Hey, guys,” I say, my voice tired.
Shane’s eyes follow my movements as I fill a glass with water from the tap. “How was last night?”
I grab my pre-workout and scoop the powder into my glass. “Normal. We’re running low on Jameson, though.”
Shane pulls his phone from his pocket, no doubt to make a note to have his dad stop by the supplier and drop some off at Murphy’s this morning. Funny when you think about it: Shane is old enough to run a damn business, but not old enough to buy alcohol. “Which one?”
“Black barrel.”
“Got it.” He studies me for a moment. “Are you doing okay?”
I blink at the concern in his voice. “No.” No point in lying to him. He knows me better than I even know myself.
“I didn’t think so,” he says with a nod.
“What can we do, Ran?” Tori asks empathetically. I know she thinks I’m an idiot for breaking things off with Cat. I also know she spends a ton of time with Cat. So, I appreciate her checking on me when I’m sure she’d prefer to kick my ass instead.
“Nothing really,” I say with a shrug. “Oh, actually, Shay, can you cover me for about an hour this afternoon? I have a therapy appointment at four, but I should be at Murphy’s by six.”
Shane doesn’t hesitate. “Of course.”
“This might actually become a more regular thing again,” I say hesitantly, looking from him to Tori and back again. “I think I’m going to pick up more sessions.”
Shane takes a scoop from the jar of pre-workout and adds it to his own water. “Do you feel like you need it?”
I pinch my lips between my teeth while I nod.
“I think so. I can’t get out of my head.
It’s starting to affect my sleep again.” I omit the little tidbit about the nightmares I’ve been having almost nightly for the past few weeks, the 4 a.m. anxiety attacks fracturing my sleep for the past month and a half.
Nothing helps. School, Murphy’s, even the gym no longer provide me with the longed-for distraction.
Then again, they never did provide an effective cure.
The only thing that ever eased the hellfire within me wasn’t actually a thing at all.
It was Cat. She’s the only person who can make it better, and she’s the only person I cannot allow myself to have.
Of course, that knowledge doesn’t keep my thoughts from turning to her every waking—and sleeping—second.
The sleeping seconds are the worst; so often I’m a soulless monster in my dreams. Then I wake, and the shame and guilt dissipate only long enough for me to remember that I’ve cut Cat out of my life.
And the pain of hurting Cat is replaced by the pain of hurting myself and Cat.
“I promise, I’ll try to make my therapy work around my schedule at Murphy’s.” I know how important it is to Tori that Shane doesn’t overextend himself—which he definitely has a tendency to do—that he takes a step back to spend quality time with her, and I hate asking Shane to work extra hours.
Shane waves me off. “Dude, do what you gotta do.”
“Yeah, Ran. It’s fine,” Tori says.
It hits me yet again how lucky I got in the friends department when the universe completely failed me in terms of parents. I guess there’s an innate balance to everything. “Thanks, guys. Shay, I’ll work your shift tomorrow night, if you want. You can take Tor on a date.”
I grin at the way his blue eyes widen with happiness.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. I got nothing better to do.”
“Dude, that would be great!”
My phone vibrates in my pocket. “Yeah, you got it.” I retrieve my phone, noting the area code of the incoming call. It’s a Montana area code, but definitely not my grandparents.
I walk out of the kitchen and answer. “This is Ronan.”
“Hey there, Rony,” Miranda sing-songs on the other end.
“Hey Randi!” I walk the fifteen feet down the hallway to my room. “Did you get a new phone?”
“Yep,” she says proudly. “And not only that, I bought myself a new truck.” She squeals with delight.
I shut my door, grinning. “Way to go! What kind?”
Miranda giggles. “A sexy, cherry red Ram Rebel.”
“Wow, that’s a big truck for a little girl like you,” I tease. “Are you even able to see over the steering wheel?”
I’m met with an offended huff. “I can handle big things very, very well,” she says in a suggestive tone. “I know how to handle you, for example. Handled you really nicely for a while there.”
I shake my head and chuckle. Good to know some things never change. “You always know how to make things awkward as fuck.”
“Sorry, I’ve been stuck on the ranch for too long. Been a minute since I’ve ridden a cowboy rather than a horse.”
I pick yesterday’s shirt off the floor and toss it into my hamper. “Well, what about Elias?” I ask. “Wasn’t it your mission to pop his cherry?”
“Who’s making it awkward now, Rony?” Miranda laughs.
“I’m just checking up on your prior plans, that’s all.”
“He’s not really my type. I like them tall, blond, and green-eyed.”
I can all but see her wiggling her eyebrows from two thousand miles away. “Is this a competition over who can make things more awkward? Plus, I specifically remember you telling me you don’t discriminate when we were driving to Nashville.”
“That’s when I was looking at a topless picture of your feline.”
My breath hitches at her mention of Cat, my vocal cords constricting in my throat. “Right.”
“Your aunt told me. She told me you broke things off with Cat. Sorry, Rony,” Miranda says quickly, obviously picking up on my tone.
“It’s okay.” I’m straight up lying through my damn teeth because absolutely nothing is okay. I fall back onto my bed. “So, what’s new with you?”
“You mean aside from me getting my life back together like the badass bitch that I am?”
“Yeah, aside from that,” I chuckle.
“Oh, not much. Things are slowing down a little after calving season, which means your grandparents are fully transitioning into wedding prep mode.”
I run my right hand over my face. “God, I keep forgetting about my dad’s wedding.”
That’s also a lie. I know full well his wedding is in exactly eighteen days.
While I miss Montana, the ranch, and my grandparents, I’m no longer excited to go back like I was only two months ago.
And not because my dad is getting married to the woman he lived a whole different life with while my mother was abusing me, but because the stabbing pain in my heart is sure to reach bleed-out levels the moment I come face-to-face with Cat, have to stand across the aisle from her while my dad and Penny exchange vows.
Nothing made me more ecstatic than the idea of getting to share the ranch with Cat, live with her for a short time in a place that symbolized almost unadulterated peace.
It was there where I began to emerge from the darkness, where I found the strength to pick myself up by my bootstraps and began to heal.
Now I’m about to stain one of the only places in this world that I don’t immediately associate with pain.
“Well, you kind of have some other things in your head right now,” Miranda says. “I wanted to call you earlier, but things have been crazy and I figured you wouldn’t want to talk about it. You probably don’t want to talk about it even now.”
I chuckle dryly. “You know me well.”
“Just like you know me, which means you also know that I’m not going to let this go. So, at the risk of making you shut down, can I ask you what happened?”
I exhale deeply. “Well, it all started roughly nineteen years ago on the day my mother found out she was pregnant with me.”
Miranda’s rueful laugh makes its way into my ear. “Yeah, yeah, I figured it had everything to do with the incredibly loving relationship you had with your mom. But seriously, Rony. What changed? What happened? You were so fucking happy with her.”
So, I remind Miranda of the day my grandmother showed up at my dad’s and told us all about the Donahues’ violent family history, tell her again about the dreams I’ve been having, then tell Miranda about the birth of my half brothers and my fight with Cat over having kids.
And then I tell her about that kiss, the moment I found Cat locked in embrace with some dude whose face resembled a glossy, ready-to-be-pounced-on punching bag.
The part I leave out—the part I haven’t told a single soul about—is what Rashana shared with me the last time she and I spoke.
The piece of my family’s atrocious history that took my nightmares to a previously unreached level of terror.
The piece that was the last straw, the final drop, the ultimate point at which I knew that Cat and I could never have forever. Not in the way Cat deserves.
Miranda stays silent for a long while, her breathing whooshing in and out of the phone. “You didn’t break it off because your feline kissed someone,” she says like it’s a given thing.
She’s right, I didn’t. As much as it hurt to find her like this, I always knew the moment would come eventually. The moment when Cat—consciously or not—would realize she’s better off without me. “The kiss was just a symptom of a bigger issue,” I say so quietly, I’m surprised Miranda even heard me.
“The bigger issue being that you’re afraid your mom was right. That you’re not enough and can never be enough, no matter how hard you try, right?”
I nod but don’t say a word.
“You’re afraid of hurting her,” Miranda says, her voice diminishing to barely above a whisper. “Of being incapable of breaking the cycle.”
“I need to keep her safe,” I mutter.