Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
DECLAN
Sour lollis. Small meals. Don’t let the belly get empty.
Yes, of course I can do this for her. One could argue it’s my fault she’s pregnant—the least I can do is find her something to ease her misery. Or maybe I’m just distracting myself from the real problem, which is that I’m not sorted.
What I do know is that the obstetric hematologist we decided on is Dr. Flaherty, and his Thursday cancellation is mine.
I know because I spent fifty minutes on the phone with a receptionist, securing the appointment—because I know how to get what I want when I want it.
The question is always what it costs. This one costs nothing.
On a Tuesday, I stop by the chemist on the way to her flat to buy some “sour suckers, something salty and sweet at the same time,” hoping it does the trick.
I buy her some American-style kettle corn, salt-and-vinegar crisps, some electrolytes, turkey jerky, and a large package of chocolate because she always did like chocolate.
When she opens the door, she stares at me.
“You’re not wearing a hood.”
Maybe I’ve gotten too laid back about it. Still, she lets me in.
“What’s this?” she says with a smile, and I shut the door behind me.
“Some sour sweets. They’re supposed to help with the nausea.”
“That’s adorable, but you have to tell me when you’re coming. Erin’s supposed to be here in an hour.”
“What would Erin think if she saw me here?”
“I don’t know, but it’s too close for comfort,” she says as she sets the bag on the counter and peers into it.
“How did you know what to get? Electrolytes and sour?”
“I read a lot about things,” I say, scratching at my temple.
“When?”
“When I’m not sleeping.”
“Are you not sleeping?” she says, tipping her head to the side.
Christ. I haven’t slept since I shared a bed with her, so it’s been over a week, but I don’t tell her that.
Don’t tell her I’ve been standing in Seamus’s office, staring at the sideboard, fancying myself a drink even though I haven’t had one in a long time.
But I can already taste it, can already feel the way my nerves would settle and the world would go steady again.
“I also got the infant carrier situation sorted. Mostly, anyway. I’ve been going back and forth between the two safest models, and I finally found one that’s supposedly the easiest to carry.”
“Well, that’s nice.” She tries one of the sweets at the counter and makes a face so pure and terrible that I laugh out loud.
“Oh, this is genuinely horrible,” she says, but she’s laughing.
“It doesn’t have to taste good. Is it helping?”
She studies the sweet in her mouth with a look of serious deliberation as she rolls it over her tongue. “Now that you mention it, I think I’m so distracted by the horrible taste that I forgot to be nauseous for a minute.”
I smile at her. “Here, it can’t be that bad.” I pop one in my mouth, gag, and spit it immediately into the bin.
She snorts at me. “Well, you’re not the pregnant one, so it’s fine.”
The week’s been like this—stolen hours in her flat, in the strange domesticity of two people figuring out, in small and specific ways, how to make this work.
The right tea. The right sweets. The name of the doctor.
The minor details of a life neither of us has fully admitted we’re building together, when we haven’t even sorted the biggest things yet.
This is why I’m not sleeping.
“Have to go to a charity dinner tonight,” I tell her, scratching at my nose.
“I know. Cavin told me about it.”
“When did you see Cavin?” I ask her.
“I go to Erin and Cavin’s on the regular to work, you know. He mentioned it was tonight. Wasn’t too keen on having to wear a tux.”
“Aye. Kiss me so I taste you the whole night, will ya?”
And she does.
Then someone’s at the door. There’s a quick knock, then the doorknob’s turning—
My hand is on my gun before the door opens.
“Declan, no—”
Erin stands in the doorway. She blinks, staring at the two of us. Bridget, with her hair disheveled and her lips swollen, and Christ, her shirt’s still halfway pushed up from when I slid my palm up to cup her tits. And me, holding a fuckin’ gun and sporting a boner.
“Declan,” she says. “Put the gun away.”
I do, then turn to the side so she doesn’t see me adjust myself. Fuck, that was way too close.
“We got ambushed at Lickety,” I mutter. “Don’t come into Bridget’s without fuckin’ knocking, Erin.”
“It’s customary for sisters to go into each other’s homes unannounced, Declan,” Erin says, crossing her arms on her chest. “What’s not is for engaged men to be in a single woman’s apartment alone.”
“Leave it, Erin,” Bridget says. “Please.”
“I was just heading out,” I tell her. I feel like an arsehole for leaving Bridget to deal with this, but it doesn’t seem like Erin wants to talk to Bridget about why I’m here.
“Right, then. Let’s get some work done,” she says, stepping past me. “See you tonight at the charity dinner, Declan?”
“Aye.”
The dinner I’m taking Valentina to.
Sorry about that. Everything okay?
Bridget
We need to be more careful. It’s alright though
The function is at some hotel. The kind of charity dinner the family attends because not attending makes a statement, and we’re in the habit of making the residents of Ballyhock like us.
So I’m in a goddamn suit, and I’ve shaken hands with precisely seven people whose names I couldn’t tell you.
Valentina arrives at half eight.
She finds my eyes across the room and walks over to me. “Nice affair they have here.”
I almost choke on the word affair, but I pull myself together. She stands tall and lovely in her own sort of way, like a building you admire but don’t actually want to visit, and greets me with a placid kiss on my cheek and her hand on my arm.
“Drink?”
“Wine, please,” Valentina says, the same as she’s ordered at every opportunity she’s had with me since I met her.
So I do what I have to. I get the drinks and make the introductions.
I do my fucking job, wondering, as I do a million times a day, how I can possibly extricate myself and my family from this engagement. From tying my life to this woman whose family will wreak fucking havoc if they discover I have a pregnant girlfriend.
Is that what she is? It feels so fucking trite when she’s so much more.
My girlfriend. My everything.
My dirty fucking secret. Shite.
An hour later, Colm finds me at the bar. “Got a text from Cavin,” he says. “Says he’s been trying to reach you, and you haven’t answered your phone.”
I pat my pockets.
I don’t have my fucking phone. Christ. I must have left it in the car. I hate not having my phone. What if something happened to Bridget? What if she needs me? “Must’ve left it in the car,” I say.
Colm watches me as I head for the back door and out to the car park. There it is, gleaming in the overhead light on my front seat. I find it quickly, power it on, walk around the car, and scroll. Nothing from Bridget. I let out a long breath.
That’s when I notice the silhouette to the right of my car, next to the open door.
Valentina. She’s standing a few feet away, holding something in her hand. It takes me a second to realize what it is, and then I stifle a groan.
Bridget’s jumper, the one she left on the passenger seat three days ago, an oversized thing she’d pulled off because the car was warm. I’d meant to bring it up to her and hadn’t—just left it on the goddamn seat.
“This isn’t mine,” Valentina says, her brow knit together.
“Uh, no.”
A beat of silence passes between us as she folds the jumper, her lips pressed together, and I push my hands in my pockets.
“I’m not an idiot, Declan. This belongs to your ‘best friend,’ doesn’t it?”
I don’t respond, which is damning enough. Christ. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go.
“I don’t care,” she says in a low voice.
“Do you understand? I don’t care who she is.
I don’t care what she is to you. That’s not my business, and I’ve already made it very clear there’s no romance between you and me.
” Her jaw tightens. “What I’m telling you is that you are fucking marrying me.
Because if you don’t, my father will give me to that insufferable douche from Prague. ”
She looks at me then, and for just a second, the composed performance drops entirely. What's underneath it isn't anger but cold calculation, like she's already decided what happens if I say no, and she’s prepared to pull out whatever weapon she needs to.
I go still. “What?”
“Merrick,” she says. “He’s been asking for two years. And I’m not going to that man. So whatever you’re doing”—she gestures between me and the car—“don’t be so fucking sloppy, because I need this to happen.”
I take the jumper she holds out to me.
“I’m not here because I want to be. Neither are you. But what we’re doing matters, and we both know that.”
She turns and walks away, the sound of her heels clicking on the pavement, her back ramrod straight.
Christ’s sake.
I stand in the car park for a long while. The night is cold, and I can hear the function through the hotel walls. I stare at the jumper in my hands and barely refrain from bringing it to my face, knowing it would smell just like her.
I know enough about Merrick to understand what Valentina was saying underneath her words: I am as trapped as you are, and there is nobody else to ask. I fold the jumper and slide it onto the passenger seat. Jesus fucking Christ.
Valentina knows about Bridget.
I’ve been spending days researching doctors and sour sweets and hematologists, dreaming about a life I want and know I can’t have, telling myself this is temporary. Bridget will understand.
But I know things have to move. Things have to change. I’m just not sure how.
I pick up my phone and text Cavin.
Need a word. Tonight if you can
Then I sit there a moment longer, looking at nothing, slide my phone into my pocket, and go right back to being a loyal cousin to the McCarthy clan.