CHAPTER EIGHT #2
I smiled, glancing up to meet his amused gaze, and he gestured for me to take the phone.
“Go on,” he encouraged. “Swipe through and take a look at the others. My mom took those last Christmas.”
I did as he suggested and swiped through the entire Christmas album.
There were a few photos of an elderly couple, who I assumed were Declan’s parents, some with Cassidy and Orla opening presents, and a burst of images showing Declan draping his niece in wrapping paper, then sticking a large green bow to her forehead.
The last few images were of Declan holding a baby that looked no more than a few months old, with Orla hovering close by and staring down at the infant, while Cassidy prepared a bottle in the background.
“Boy or girl?” I asked, handing his phone back.
He seemed confused at first, but a quick glance at his phone screen, where the picture was still visible, immediately clarified the question.
“A boy,” he said with a proud smile. “That’s baby Ciaran. He’s six months old. And the reason I had to run out on you that night at the bar.”
I lifted a confused brow.
He chuckled. “Right, I should probably start from the top.”
I nodded encouragingly. “From the top would be best, yes.”
Declan took a breath. “A couple of weeks after Ciaran was born, Cassidy’s husband…
or I suppose her ex-husband, soon, started acting strange.
He became distant and borderline abusive with his words.
He didn’t want to hold his son or even help out with him, and he started snapping at Orla for the dumbest things, to the point where she was starting to become afraid of her father. ”
I sorted through my memories, trying to remember if I’d ever met Orla’s dad before, and came up with an average-looking man of average height, with brown hair and brown eyes.
I recalled catching a glimpse of him the few times he’d drop Orla off at school, though he never stuck around to converse with any of the school staff.
He merely took her as far as the end of the parking lot and watched her run up to greet me.
He hardly ever stuck around to see if she’d made it inside the building.
And I remember adding his errant behavior to the list of things that I wanted to discuss with the school’s supervisor during our first meeting of the semester, which would take place later this week.
“Of course, I didn’t know anything about his recent change in behavior until that night at the bar,” Declan continued.
“Cassidy called me crying. They’d gotten into some kind of argument, and Patrick—that’s Cassidy’s husband—grabbed Ciaran and started shaking him.
Apparently, the baby was crying, as babies tend to do, and Cassidy left their conversation to go make him a bottle.
She said she heard Orla screaming for her father to stop, and she rushed into the living room to find Patrick shaking the baby and screaming at him to shut up. ”
“Oh, my God,” I gasped.
Declan simply nodded. “As you could probably tell from the photos I just showed you, Cassidy is pretty tall—taller than him, even. And she was able to use her height to her advantage and wrestle the baby away from him. She grabbed Orla and then drove to my apartment in a panic. Then, when she got there, I wasn’t home, and she freaked out some more.
I guess she drove to my apartment on autopilot, because on the phone call she kept mumbling about her ‘messing up’ and that she ‘should have driven to the hospital instead to get Ciaran looked at’.
That’s when I knew it was bad. I didn’t have time to explain, so wrote my number down and left while you were in the restroom.
I really did plan on explaining why I had to run, but you never called.
And I felt like I’d lost the opportunity of a lifetime. ”
Well, now I felt like an ass.
Declan genuinely had a pressing family emergency, and I’d let my insecurities get the better of me and tossed his number.
Shame tap danced its way up my spine to settle over my shoulders like a weighted blanket.
I felt foolish all of a sudden. Still, had Declan mentioned having a sister to begin with, we wouldn’t have lost two whole months.
I’d genuinely felt a connection with him in the bar that night, and had planned on asking him if we could at least be friends.
He was easy to talk to, and I liked that he chose his words carefully before he spoke, as though he was aware of my battered soul and wanted to handle it with as much care as he could find.
Was it too soon to tell him that half of the misunderstanding was his fault? Had he told me about Cassidy, we could have had this date a long time ago.
No, this one was on me.
Declan had left his number. I was the one who’d allowed my insecurities to believe the worst of him. But we were here now, and I would make the most of it. For however long it lasted.
“I’m sorry they had to go through that,” I said earnestly, and I meant it. “Is Ciaran okay? No lasting effects of being shaken?”
Declan smiled. “He is. He’s a fighter, that little one. I did end up taking them to the hospital that night, and the doctor declared him perfectly healthy.”