25. Declan
25
DECLAN
I an walked into the kitchen just as the doctor finished sewing me up. Riley slid him a glass of whiskey, and I held my empty one up for her to take.
“Frank’s here,” my brother announced.
I glanced from my new stitches to the guard entering the room. He was at the gala with us, still one of Cara’s primary guards, so I wondered why he seemed to just be getting here.
“He stayed to help clean up,” Ian said as Frank slumped to a stool at the island.
“I’m going to check on your father, and I’ll be off,” the doctor said, taking his leave.
“Thank you.” I turned to Frank, willing to give him two seconds of my attention before going to my wife. I didn’t care if she swore she wasn’t hurt. I saw that she had been. Maybe not from my shove to protect her, but by someone’s hand in the moment I’d left her alone.
“I was also one of the men near Cara when she slipped away at the gala,” Frank said.
“Slipped away?” I didn’t like the wording of that. I’d asked Ian to stick with her, but someone else had intercepted and found him. I didn’t fault him. Cara could’ve stayed near him, but she’d left his side too.
“She sought out her stepmother,” Frank said. “I saw from a distance. It was too crowded to get close quickly enough. Then her stepsister slapped her.”
“Saoirse?” I knew the younger woman was a bitch, but why?
“I wasn’t close enough, and another guest was blocking my view from the side, but I clearly saw Cara arguing with the stepsister, or both of them saying something heatedly, then I saw a hand connected with Cara’s cheek and her head flew back. Both of the Murray women walked away, but by the time I caught up to her, you’d found her.”
“Thank you.” This strange sensation of being in the dark had to stop now. I stood and left them all, heading straight to Cara’s room.
And found her in tears.
All this time, I wondered if she was so hardy, so tough on the outside, to be capable of crying. I had my proof.
“Cara?” I closed the doors behind me and hurried to sit next to her on the bed. “What is it?”
She sniffled and wiped her cheeks, so defeated that she didn’t have any fight left in her. No flinch at my presence. No smirk or smart remark to bicker with me like usual.
Instead, she faced me and killed me with her glossy, sad eyes. “The hospital called. My mother’s been taken to the emergency room.”
I didn’t move, caught in the memories of all the times Ian and I had been in and out of the emergency room for Dad. It never felt good, and the worry about a parent was no small thing. “I’m sorry to hear that.” I was, and I hoped to back up my words with a hand on hers. Her skin felt so cool to the touch, and I wondered if she was going into shock or something.
“Has she been ill? Or…” I felt stupid and unprepared. I knew nothing about her mother other than her past, that she wasn’t a Boyle.
“For years.” She sat up straighter even though she seemed so overwhelmed. “She’s suffered an autoimmune disease, cancer on and off, an infection… the list is long.”
Fuck. That sounded like a lot.
“And now she’s at the hospital. I obviously can’t go to see her because I’m here. Then the privatized doctor who’s been most helpful with her isn’t cooperating because I’m behind on all the bills.” She grimaced, pressing her free hand into a fist and shoving it into the mattress.
“What?” I stared at her, stunned. This was a lot to take in, but that didn’t sound right. Behind on bills? What bills? She lived here, and her mother surely had her own income at home.
She lowered her head but brought it right back up. “I’m sorry, Declan. I’m so sorry I wasn’t honest.”
I braced myself for a brutal hit of truth. I should’ve been happy that she was owning up to her dishonesty, but I loathed being manipulated or lied to.
“I agreed to marry you because my father said he’d do me a ‘favor’ if I did. He and Keira didn’t want Saoirse to marry you, so they used me. They’d never acknowledged me other than that one time my mother demanded he cover my hospital bill in the city. Otherwise, we didn’t contact each other. They’d erased me from their lives, but when it came time to preventing their beloved daughter from being married to you, I was a convenient backup.”
I’d wondered. “What was the favor?”
“He said that he would cover all of my mother’s outstanding debt. All the medical costs and bills. Everything. He also agreed to fund her placement on the list for a kidney transplant. If she doesn’t have that surgery, she will suffer for years, chronically.”
Anger started on a slow simmer, but now it heated up faster. The need to hurt that spineless man was almost too much to bear. “At the church.” I narrowed my eyes as I recalled the moment Cara had paled and so quickly agreed to stand at the altar with me. “What did you receive on your phone that made you change your mind?”
She wiped her cheeks. “I hadn’t really changed my mind. In exchange for my mother’s health and to not be drowning in debt, I agreed to marry you before I had any idea who you were. When I saw you, I was scared. You looked so angry and impatient, and I had a knee-jerk reaction. Fight or flight. And I ran, but I reminded myself what was at stake.”
I gritted my teeth. “What did you see on your phone, then?” I demanded.
“Keira texted me. She’d gotten a copy of a document about Mom being on that replacement waitlist, and she threatened to pay to have Mom taken off it if I didn’t go along with their deal.”
I stiffened. “That was the deal you mentioned that time.”
She nodded as another tear streaked over her smooth cheek. “It was. I’m sorry I didn’t explain.”
I couldn’t be mad at her. She’d done the same thing I had. I’d forced Shane to give me his daughter in exchange for clearing his debt, only I’d changed my mind after the fact.
Shit. Did he do the same thing to her?
“Let me guess.” I thought back to her words. That she was behind on bills. “He didn’t pay, did he?”
She shook her head. “When you gave me my phone yesterday, I called home, and the stable hand who’s more like an uncle, like family, mentioned something that didn’t add up. So, I logged online and saw that everything was still owed. You walked in when I was about to call my father and ask what was going on, but then I planned to ask him in person at the gala.”
I shook my head. “But you approached Keira instead?”
She winced slightly. “No. I couldn’t find my father. She found me and laughed in my face when I asked about the debt being paid. She said that they never clarified when they’d pay it off, and she implied that they wouldn’t.”
You’re a dead man, Murray.
“Why did your stepsister slap you?” I asked, looking at her cheek again. “That’s what Frank saw.”
She sighed and lowered her gaze. “No. Keira did.”
I clenched my teeth and breathed through the rush of fury escalating within me even more.
“All my life, I’ve been working and trying to stay afloat. When they asked me to do something for them in order to cover Mom’s issues, I jumped on it. I had to. I have been so exhausted for years, thinking there would never be a way out of that life, nothing to look forward to but work and the worry that I wouldn’t be able to secure her spot on that organ transplant list.”
I sighed, hanging my head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She huffed a weak, teary laugh. “When? When you fucked me and left? When I thought you meant it that I didn’t matter as anything but a woman to give you a baby, an heir?”
That was my own fault. I couldn’t deny it. Before I got to know her at all, that was exactly how I’d treated her, too cautious that she wouldn’t last.
Now, though…
“And I can’t even do that.” She covered her face, burying it behind her hands as she cried softly again.
“What?” The sound of her tears tore at me, but I couldn’t reach out and comfort her until I understood. Can’t what?
“I can’t give you anything. I can’t give you an heir.”
I narrowed my eyes. No. That couldn’t be possible. Ian vetted her after the fact. The Sullivans’ private doctor would have noticed it on her record and told me.
If he had all the records.
“What are you saying?”
She lifted her face, blinking through her tears. “I can’t have a baby. I had complications with a ruptured ovarian cyst when I was a teen. They removed one ovary, and the other was damaged. I’m infertile.”
I stood, glaring down at her. She’d kept this all from me.
“You…”
She suggested that she stay my wife for six months unless she was pregnant, knowing damn well that she wouldn’t be.
“You can’t have kids?” I had to hear her repeat it so this new bombshell of truth could sink in.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I kept it from you. But I had to secure a way out. To look out for myself but still go through with what my father expected of me in order to get Mom taken care of.”
I paced away from the bed, whirling back to glare at her. Rage took over. Confusion swarmed within me too.
“You’re telling me…” I growled, unable to accept this.
“I’m sorry. I was just trying to do the best I could. And I still am. I’m trying my best to do the right thing.”
“The right thing is not fucking lying to me.”
She furrowed her brow, getting some of that sass back. “Oh, so when you told me you didn’t want to suffer through having a wife, just to get an heir, I was supposed to pipe up and say, nope, look around for someone else because I can’t do that? Then I never would have gotten Mom taken care of—or so I thought at the time.”
I stared her down, mesmerized by the fight that never died in her emerald gaze. No matter what. She’d stand up and fight until the end of any cause she set herself to.
“Are you telling me that it is impossible for you to have a child?”
I had to know. After all, that was the reason I’d married her in the first place!
Her slender shoulders lifted and fell. “I don’t remember all that the doctors told me. Mom wasn’t there, back at the farm to deal with an issue. I heard the doctors, and I was groggy and so confused, but the discharge papers listed it all. That I’d lost so much and wouldn’t be likely to have children. I grew up assuming I never would.”
“It was cruel to let me think you could.” I shook my head, walking away. Cruel, but I could understand her motives.
And now that we’d gotten close… I knew my reasons for having her in my life had changed.
I wanted her to be my wife because of something that I suspected was profound love.
I loved her, and knowing she’d been so scared she’d stayed strong and hidden her woes from me suggested that she’d never return that affection.
“Cara, answer me plainly. Can you have children?”
She chewed on her lip, lowering her gaze again. “I don’t know, Declan. I’m unable to tell you that. I can’t predict the future. All I can explain—too late to expect forgiveness—is that I likely never will.”
Likely isn’t set in stone.
A stubborn, almost zealous hope took seed in my mind.
If there were any possible chance she could…
I wouldn’t compromise that. She was my wife. And she would be my last.
Twisted up with her news, I stormed out of her room, unsure how to react without worsening the situation. Foremost in my thoughts was that she’d duped me, and that was a sentiment I wanted to shed right now.
I was supposed to be the one in control, always.
I’d never felt further from it as I hurried away from her soulful, sad eyes and soft, heart-wrenching sobs.