Chapter Five
Liam
Ten fucking years she’d disappeared from my life to come jogging up the drive like she’d gone out for milk. Every summer, butterflies invaded my stomach in anticipation that this would be the year that she returned.
Only, she never did.
Her dark-red hair was tied on top of her head in a pile of curls that went every-fucking-where. Those leggings should be illegal with the way they hugged her curves, and there was no way she was wearing a bra under that vest top with the way her breasts bounced since her hooded top was unzipped.
She was the vision of wet dreams.
Niall paraded his latest trophy girlfriend out to introduce to his sister. There was something missing from Oonagh’s eyes. They didn’t shine with the inner light of compassion that she had for everyone.
I didn’t care. She was here and that was all that mattered.
“Hey Oonagh.” I grabbed her into a hug, needing so much to feel her warmth. “Good to see you home again.”
She tensed before melting into me the way she always did. She tried to pull back, but I’d waited for her to return for too long. “Can’t breathe here, buddy,” she teased and panted to make her point until I let her go. “I guess I need to change since everyone’s here.”
I didn’t hear what else was said around us, since my vision was trained only on her. She’d been the love of my life, and my world had fallen apart when she left. It had taken me years to piece myself back together again to be the man she deserved. She didn’t need a poor boy with no prospects and no way to provide for her.
So I focused on becoming a better man for both of us. Every year I came back to the cove, hoping she’d come home. I wasn’t going to come this year, only Niall had texted to say their mum had finally worn her down.
I fought the urge to drag her off to share everything that had happened to me. When she returned to the barbeque, she wore faded jeans that clung to her hips and accentuated her legs, her flip-flops showed bright-red toenails. Her white T-shirt displayed a hint of her cleavage. Oonagh rarely wore make-up and her hair was in loose curls around her face.
She was my first everything—girlfriend, kiss, sex. Every one of those first experiences had been with this woman on our beach. She cautiously wandered around, picking at the food and eating little. It was a habit she had when she was nervous. Her gaze darted about the people warily.
When she was with me, all the time between the last time I saw her, and now, melted away. That last summer she’d been here, we’d fucked like bunnies everywhere and anywhere until I thought my dick was going to fall off. Once we started, we didn’t seem able to stop ourselves .
“Hey.” Drawn to her like those moths from so long ago, I arrived at her side. Her lips tipped up on one side in greeting. “How’s things?”
It was corny, but I didn’t know what else to say, my mind going blank when her eyes had met mine. I stayed away before because she deserved better, there was nothing standing in my way now. Niall handed out information on his sister willingly: no boyfriends or significant other, always working. I never deserved to hope that she would be mine one day, but fuck me, I’d prayed for it often enough.
“Same crap, different day.” Her voice sounded slightly different, it held hints of where she’d lived around the world, and it was deeper and huskier than I remembered.
“Tell me about it,” I muttered.
“How’s Michael?” She always did have a soft spot for my youngest brother. He tended to follow her around since she fed him. He reminded me of a cat—feed it once and it kept coming back. The next thing you knew, it’s moved in and was demanding tummy rubs.
“He’s at university.”
“Yeah?” The first genuine smile crossed her lips and I knew she was visualising the small boy from so long ago. My heart ached for that smile to be for me.
“I finally got the last of them up and away.” I tipped the bottle of beer to my lips.
“I never imagined him grown up, he was always so little in my memory.”
“We’ve all grown up,” I replied, and fuck me, she’d filled out in all the right places as well. Oonagh had always been my ideal woman; no other had ever come close to claiming that title.
“Maybe.”
I hadn’t seen Oonagh since that summer we’d finally managed to admit our feelings for each other. It was also the summer that my life fell apart. She never knew why I left, but when I came back, she’d gone and never returned.
“Niall’s kept me up-to-date on your travels around the world.” It was a lame attempt at conversation, powered with the need to be close to her. For the first time in ten years, I could breathe properly again because we were both back here where we belonged.
“He always sent me chocolate packages everywhere I went.” A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “Every birthday, without fail, he always remembered my favourites.”
She’d walked away and refused to answer my letters or phone calls. I never sent a card with the packages, just a parcel filled with everything she loved from home. It never occurred to me that she’d think they were from Niall.
“Yeah? At least he knew when your birthday was!” I joked to cover the despair that settled in my chest.
Her teeth bit into her bottom lip. “Some days those packages were the only thing that kept me going. Every one of them was special to me.”
I sipped my beer and stared off into the party. Every year, I’d selected all her childhood favourites from the chocolate and sweets we’d shared on our picnics in the fields. Finding out that she never knew they were from me was like a kick to my solar plexus .
Oonagh wandered off after a few minutes to pretend to interact. She looked the same, but something had fundamentally changed inside her, the light in her eyes dulled. Every time someone touched her when they talked, she tensed for a split second before relaxing again.
Niall appeared beside me. “I was down at Mr. Wilson’s shop earlier. He filled me in on all the recent gossip of the redevelopment of the village. Some hotshot artist has bought the old lighthouse and boathouse. He said Callum’s construction company won the bid to carry out the work.”
“Yeah, he seems to have big ideas about what he’s going to do to it. They have planning permission to make it into a massive dwelling or an exclusive resort.” I changed the conversation to Niall’s favourite topic of conversation—himself. “So, is this one a keeper?” I nodded toward his date of the moment.
He screwed up his face, wrinkling his nose. “No idea. I had too much to drink at an office function, and one thing led to another. It’s complicated since we work together, and both our fathers are partners.”
I whistled lowly. “You’re brave.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “What about you? No lucky ladies on the horizon?”
Over the years, Niall had met up with me for drinks in the city. I wasn’t a celibate monk, but neither was I emotionally attached to any of the women he saw in my life. My focus had always been to get my brothers out of the shit we grew up in and find a way to claim Oonagh one day. My last brother was in university and now the final piece of my puzzle had arrived back in my life .
“Nah.” I raised a cocky eyebrow and grinned. “There’s no taming this alley cat.”
He slapped my back, chuckling. “I hear you, man, I fucking hear you. What is it about women wanting to settle down and have babies? They need to take a leaf out of Oonagh’s book. She told me years ago that all she needed was her career because she refused to let any man break her again after that bastard at uni when she was twenty. We need more strong, independent women like my sister.”
Niall never noticed that I was a sponge for information about Oonagh when he talked about her. Someone broke her when she was twenty? We were twenty when we both lost our virginity to each other. He was away in Australia that summer ‘finding himself’. There was no way Oonagh was the type of woman to throw herself into a relationship after what we’d shared.
The table was filled with snacks and nibbles that I pretended to eat while discreetly observing Oonagh. Had I hurt her when I left? I’d had no choice when the police turned up at my door so long ago.
When I got back, Oonagh was gone and my youngest brothers were in care. All of Callum’s responsibilities shifted onto my shoulders overnight while he was incapacitated.
I’d been so focused on me, I never thought of what Oonagh had been going through.
She disappeared into the house and I left it a few minutes before I followed her. She tended to hide from the world in her window seat filled with books.
“Hey,” I interrupted her silent time, my hip braced against the counter as I stared at her .
A flush crept up her neck into her cheeks, and the side of her mouth puckered in as she chewed it distractedly. Finally, she met my eyes. “What do you want, Liam?”
That was a loaded question filled with endless possibilities. “Just checking you’re okay since you seem distracted.”
Her jaw tensed and a steely determination entered into her pale blue eyes. “That role belongs to my family and friends. We haven’t seen each other in ten years, so you no longer fit into either category, Liam.”
That hurt more than I cared to admit. “I tried to reach you, but you didn’t reply to my letters.”
She turned around to face out the window, leaving me with a view of her unruly hair that had always felt like silk running through my fingers.
“Look, I know we haven’t seen each other in years, but—”
Oonagh cut me off with an angry wave of her hand as she spun around to face me. Her eyes blazed like burning sapphires. “Stop, just stop. There is nothing left between us. Anything I felt for you died when you walked away without a backward glance.”
My body stilled as coldness settled in my bones. Every emotion drained from my face to leave me impassive under her scrutiny.
Her body stiffened, her hand gripping the window frame to steady herself. “I went to your house to find you, but your neighbours kindly informed me that I’d been nothing more than a distraction for you and that you’d gone to join Callum in the city for some real fun. ”
My feet were stuck to the ground and the dryness of the Sahara settled in my mouth.
“I may have been clueless back then, but I’m not that girl anymore and no man will ever make a fool of me again. They laughed in my face as they told me you only used me for my parents’ money and because I was an easy lay.”
Cold fury that would freeze the depths of hell emanated from my stomach to spread through me. There were many things I could be accused of, but every accusation that fell from her lips was wrong. The girls who lived next door to us when we were little hated us because we never gave them any attention. Plus, our dad had been having an affair with their mum for years.
“Have you finished?” I grated out in a tone that would freeze her mother’s pond outside.
“Just go, Liam. There’s nothing more to say.”
“You seemed to have plenty to say, Oonagh. Maybe you should have checked your facts before you decided to accuse an innocent man. I’ve spent years in love with a memory to find it was nothing more than the stupid dream of a boy. Have a nice life.”
Her gasp followed me out of the room.
In my childhood, I hadn’t possessed much, but I’d had a strong sense of pride that never left me. I’d given her everything that was precious to me, and now I found she’d walked away because she’d listened to worthless gossip.
“You going?” Niall called over as I stalked down the steps.
“Yeah, got a text. Business calls. I’ll catch up with you later.” I never stopped walking, the need to punch something pulsing inside me, strengthening with every step. My bike was parked near the bottom of the drive, and I flung my leg over it and dragged my helmet onto my head before roaring the beast to life.
The adrenaline junkie who lost himself on the waves still lived inside me, but my highs came from bigger sources nowadays. Every time one of the demons from my past came back to haunt me, I did something new. Last time had been throwing myself out of a plane in South America.
The wind battered my body as I took the corners at speed, finally coming to rest where our old house used to be. It was one of the first redevelopments I’d carried out through my own company. Callum was a builder; he’d left school early and worked long hours on construction sites learning his trade. He insisted I finish my degree when Mrs. Munroe swept in to save us from a fate of separation, fostering some of my brothers.
I won a few awards and gained enough commissions to launch our own business. Each brother was trained in a different area of the business and we all worked together.
The memory of Callum and me standing here as the bulldozer demolished these cottages replayed through my mind. There was nothing we wanted to save from the old house. The only thing we took with us were memories. We’d buried our parents years before in the small graveyard beside the church at the edge of the beach.
“We have each other,” Callum had said.
Back then, I’d had a dream as well. A stupid pie in the sky dream that had just come crashing down around me .
A small café sat where our childhood home once resided. I didn’t want anyone to ever live there in case the horrific memories of our past infiltrated their lives. Callum dealt with most of the running of our businesses; our brother Finn, the accountant, ensured everything was above board. My only stipulation had been that there were always cupcakes in the café.
The urge to tear that house down again brick by brick burned through me, accompanied by nausea. The house belonging to the gossips was long gone as well.
Tell her the truth… A small voice inside me urged. If Oonagh cared for me even a fraction of what I did for her, I didn’t need to explain anything. She would already know that I would never walk away from her or be the man she suggested. Although, the ignoring my letters finally made sense.
Snapping my visor down again, I kicked my bike off and drove round the peninsula until my demons were lost somewhere in the hedgerow.
The Doherty boys had a new family home, one designed by me and built by Callum. It overlooked the point and the old lighthouse. I’d picked this place because it held so many memories of my childhood spent with Oonagh. The way I felt tonight, though, I wanted to transport it far away to somewhere else.
The tempting aroma of food wafted through the house, telling me that Declan was home. He was the best cook between all of us and couldn’t wait to hit the kitchen when he got home .
Kicking my boots off at the door, I stomped through the house until I reached the fridge dedicated to bottles of beer. Callum sat at the island in the kitchen, so I grabbed three and popped the lids.
“Are you not meant to be at a party?” Callum asked.
I glared at him before draining an entire bottle and throwing it into the glass bin. “Nope.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Nope.”
“You’ve spent ten years planning your big reunion and all I get is a ‘Nope’?”
I glared at Callum who stared back at me. He was worse than a father, because he was too like me and was privy to all my secrets.
“She accused me of leaving her to go and whore it up with you in the city. The bitches that used to live next door to us told her that I used her for her parents’ money and that she was nothing more than an easy target for me to get into my bed. That was why she left and ignored me. Oh, and all the packages I sent her for her birthday every year? She thinks they were from Niall. Happy?” I demanded.
His wide eyes, elevated eyebrows, and open mouth met my tirade.
Silently Declan went to the fridge and replaced my beer.
“Are you going to tell her the truth?” Callum asked in a hushed tone.
“Nope,” I replied, making the word pop. “The boy who made excuses for who he was died a long time ago.”
Callum swung around in his chair to study me. “That boy didn’t die. He grabbed life by the throat and changed it for all of us. He worked hard to drag his family out of poverty and ensure we all stayed together.” He stood up and grabbed my shoulder. “And he did all of it so he could claim the love of his life. You’ve been head-over- heels in love with that girl most of your life. Are you really going to walk away because of a misunderstanding?”
My eyes narrowed at my brother and I swiped his hand away as I trailed my hand through my hair. Callum had been my confidante since I could walk and talk. He’d had to listen to every one of my childhood fantasies about the girl who lived in the big house.
“She walked away first,” I muttered, bringing the bottle of beer to my lips.
“Yeah, but being right doesn’t keep you warm at night,” Callum retaliated.
Maybe he was right, but tonight my heart felt shredded by her words and my temples throbbed with a headache that threatened to incapacitate me.
After dinner, I dragged my miserable ass to bed. Dreams of Oonagh tormented me, and images of us together that last summer haunted me until I ended up sitting on the back step to watch the sun rise over the horizon.
Since sleep was no longer an option, I grabbed a cup of coffee and headed to my workshop at the back of the property. Inside was my own private area containing all my art supplies. I’d loved to draw as far back as I could remember, sketching the ocean and the raw wildness of the waves.
In university, I’d sold some paintings to pay for food. At the time, I didn’t know the buyer owned a gallery. He approached me a few months later about commissioning an exhibition. No one ever came here but me, and many of my private paintings that adorned my walls featured Oonagh in them. She was depicted as a mermaid in some, her eyes incorporated into the ocean in others.
My rage and disappointment were released onto the canvas in front of me, the paint dark and oppressive. Time became irrelevant as I lost myself in the creation process, emerging hours later, my torso covered in paint since I still wore my pyjama bottoms.
Everyone had left the house already to go to work, so I stood under the shower, allowing the water to cleanse me. For the first time in nearly ten years, tears streamed down my face into the water where no one would ever see them.
Yesterday replayed in my head and I screamed my rage into the torrent of water. The man who emerged from the shower was the calm businessman the world saw. I would always love Oonagh, but I would never let her anywhere near my heart again.
***