Chapter 28 #2
Deacon could hear absolute carnage in the background: screaming, a television blaring, music playing, and Leanne yelling for someone to stop pulling hair.
It was exactly the life Cillian had always said he was going to have when they were growing up, with the girl he said he was going to have it with.
Cillian O’Grady had been in love with Leanne Porter since she walked into our third grade class.
His friend stared at the brunette with pigtails all day and did not speak.
Not one word. Not at recess. Lunch. Or P.E.
Then, on the bus ride home from school, Cillian announced he was going to marry the new girl, he was going to marry Leanne Porter, and she was going to be the mother of his babies.
It took some (a lot of) convincing, eight years, and the six inch growth spurt between junior and senior year really came in clutch because it shot him well past her five-foot-six frame which she maintained, to this day, he would have remained firmly in the friend zone if he had remained at eye level with her.
Thankfully, at six-foot-two, he easily surpassed her height requirement of six foot.
Deacon heard the glass back door slide shut, and then the voices were muted in the background as Cillian spoke quietly, his face very close to the phone, “I’m trying to convince Leanne to try for a fifth.”
“A fifth?!” Deacon exclaimed.
“A boy,” Cillian stated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world as he tipped back a bottle of IPA.
The door slid open behind him, and Leanne’s face appeared on the screen. She had baby Aisling, who was only three months old on her shoulder. “We’re not having another baby, Deacon. I don’t care what he tells you.”
“Hey Lee Lee, you look beautiful. How are you feeling?” Deacon asked.
“Like my uterus is closed for business. That’s how I’m feeling.”
Deacon chuckled as Cillian made a face at the camera as if that wasn’t the case.
“I can see you, Cil. If you want another baby, you get pregnant and grow one and gain fifty pounds and breastfeed till your nipples bleed, okay?”
Cillian leaned back in his chair and tickled Aisling’s feet, she giggled. “Okay, I will. I will do anything to have another one of you because you are a perfect angel.”
Deacon witnessed, in real time, Leanne starting to melt. It was the same dance they’d done when she said no after two kids. Then three. They did have really cute kids, so that worked in Cillian’s favor.
“No!” Leanne moved Aisling away from Cillian. “Don’t! Your voodoo perfect-baby powers are not going to work on me this time, Cillian Joseph Patrick O’Grady.”
She turned to go back inside the house and just as the door was closing, Cillian leaned his chair back and said, “Okay, baby, you’re right, I’ll go get clipped that way there’s no accidents.” And the door shut.
Cillian set his chair back down on all four legs and sipped his beer. Deacon was shocked at the offer. He couldn’t believe his friend cried uncle that easily.
Not even five seconds later, the door opened. “I don’t think we need to do anything that drastic, Cil. Everything with you is always all or nothing. Why are you so dramatic? Can’t we just enjoy our babies and live our life and see what happens?”
“Sure, baby, sorry. You’re right. You’re always right.”
The door shut again, and the smile that spread on Cillian’s face was that of a cat that ate the canary.
“Wow.” Deacon shook his head and grinned at his friend’s obvious manipulation.
Cillian raised his beer in toast to the screen and winked cockily at his friend. “That’s master-level marriage, right there.”
“Or it’s a wife who hasn’t slept in five years and is hormonal. Leanne, with sleep, who’s post-partum, would have seen right through that.”
“True,” Cillian easily conceded.
Cillian knew he was punching above his weight class, big time. His wife was a far superior being to him. He’d married up in every way, and he was proud of it.
“Okay, enough about me and my perfect wife and near basketball team of kids, what’s up with you? How’s Ladybug’s arm?”
“It’s driving her nuts, and she still has four weeks with the cast, but it is what it is.
It’s itchy and she can’t sleep comfortably with it.
She accidentally hit Rocco in the head, and that was a whole thing, she thought he hated her.
But she’s doing good in school, making friends, and she really loves it here. ”
“And how are things with your new siblings?”
Deacon hadn’t shared his findings about his newest siblings, his mom, or the fact that he’d reconnected with Jenna.
Not that Cillian would even remember who she was.
He’d seen her for a total of thirty seconds, if that.
He usually didn’t share things with anyone until he had everything sorted out.
He still hadn’t met his new brothers, and he had no clue what was going on with Jenna.
“Things are going good.” Deacon leaned back against the couch.
“I really like Phoebe, Pippa, and Paulina, and their husbands are great guys, they’re all good people, but I’m actually starting to feel like Liam and Poppy are, you know, family, and that’s not something I thought would happen… maybe ever.”
“Really?” Cillian looked understandably surprised. He knew better than most that Deacon didn’t really let people in.
“Yeah, Liam has been so great with Tabby with her heart and her breaking her arm. And I don’t know if it’s the bastard thing that’s like the bond for us, Poppy named our group chat the Jon Snows.”
“You have a group chat?”
Deacon nodded, trying to decide if now was the right time to tell Cillian everything, he didn’t have everything figured out, but at this point he didn’t see any reason not to fill him in as things unfolded in real time.
There was something about having Poppy, Liam, and now, his mom, who he strangely somehow felt more connected to than he ever had to the mother who raised him.
Which might have been because he’d always had nannies and tutors and rarely spent time with the people who were supposed to have “raised him.”
His parents had given him so much shit when he hadn’t hired any help after Tabby was born, especially after he lost Kristen. But he hadn’t wanted anyone else to raise his daughter.
He had help. He’s not sure he could have done it alone, at least not well.
Cillian’s parents came to stay with him for six weeks.
Cillian’s mom, Susie, taught him everything he needed to know.
Cillian and Leanne both were pretty much camped out at his house for the first six months of her life before their first baby was born.
After that, he was on his own, and he figured it out.
They figured it out, him and Tabby together, just like countless single moms and dads did.
The difference was he never had to worry about money, and if he had wanted help, he could have gotten it, which had been a major point of contention with his parents.
They went nearly a year without speaking to him or seeing their grandchild because of it.
Appearances mattered to them, mainly his father, and it was beneath their station for Deacon to be doing everything on his own.
The hypocrisy of his father lying to him and then having the nerve to stand as judge and jury over him, especially when the whole time he had Mikayla working for him.
It infuriated him when he thought about it.
Deacon cleared his throat and set his phone down so it was propped up on his coffee mug, then leaned forward on the couch and rested his forearms on his thighs. “Do you remember I told you Poppy’s husband found out my connection to her and Liam?”
“That’s Niko Costas’ twin brother, right?”
Cillian was a huge baseball fan, and he’d always liked Niko as a player, he’d wanted the Red Sox to draft him and had been bummed when he’d gone to the Waves, but he’d still followed him his entire career.
“Yeah," Deacon confirmed. “AJ had a friend of his who is in cyber security do a background check on me and he found out that my mother didn’t die in childbirth, she’s alive.”
Cillian didn’t say anything, in fact, he stayed silent and still for so long Deacon thought the phone froze.
“Cil?”
“Yeah, sorry, that’s just… are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Are you going to…what are you going to do? Do you want to meet her?”
“I already did.”
His friend’s face was pure shock. “You did?”
He nodded.
“You didn’t have to do that alone. I would have flown out there.”
It didn’t surprise Deacon that Cillian would think if he hadn’t been there. Deacon would have gone alone, for most of his life, Cil was all Deacon had. “I wasn’t alone.”
“Oh, right…” Cillian blinked. “Did Poppy or Liam go with you?”
“No.”
“So you and Tab-i-lina?”
“No.”
“Are you trying to build suspense or something?”
“Do you remember the night after my parents’ funeral when I watched the bar for you because—”
“The false alarm? Yeah.”
“Do you remember the blonde—”
“The one you took back to the hotel?”
“How did you—”
“I’ve known you since you were five.” He stared into the phone. “Also, I saw her get into your car on the parking lot security cameras, and she came back every day for two weeks and parked across the street, waiting for you to show up.”
“She did what?”
“She parked across the street, and I'm assuming she was waiting for you to come back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you were dealing with enough, I didn’t want to add stalker to the list. I figured she clearly didn’t know who you were if she was staking out the bar, so it was harmless enough.”
Had she done that? No. There was no way. Jenna?
Holy shit. The thought of her sitting outside waiting to see him… was that possible?
“She was probably coming back because she left without telling me her name or getting mine, she probably wanted to run into me.”
“Wait, are you telling me she found you in Hope Falls?” Cillian sat up straighter in his chair, his expression and voice showing concern.
“No, actually I found her…accidentally. She had already lived here for months before I moved.”
“She did?” Cillian looked like Deacon was trying to sell him ocean front property in Arizona.
“Yeah, and I lived here for six months before we saw each other.”
“So are you two…together now?”
Deacon could see that Cillian had the wrong idea about Jenna, and he hated it. “No, unfortunately she wants nothing to do with me.”
Cillian laughed thinking he was joking. When he saw Deacon wasn’t laughing, his expression changed. “Wait, are you serious?”
Deacon nodded. “Why, what? Why not? The woman sat outside in the heat waiting for you.”
“She thinks I lied to her, she has issues with people with money, and she is a single mom who runs a business, and I don’t think she wants people in a small town talking about her.”
“You lied to her?”
“I told her my car was a rental and that the room I was staying at was comped.”
“You didn’t tell her you were Deacon St. Claire?”
“She’d made her opinion known about rich pricks, and when I realized she didn’t know who I was, I didn’t want to be Deacon St. Claire.”
“Oh shit, D, she really isn’t eating out of the palm of your hands.”
“No.”
His brow furrowed. “But wait, I thought you said she went to go meet your mom with you?”
“Her daughter Blake was babysitting when Tabby broke her arm. Poppy told me the news when Tab was in the E.R. I asked her there to go with me as a friend.”
“Holy shit!” His entire face lit up. “You dirty dog. Did you emotionally manipulate this woman to get her to go with you to meet your mom?”
“No,” Deacon automatically denied the accusation.
“Are you sure? How could she say no when your daughter was lying in a hospital bed and her daughter was the one watching her when she got hurt?”
Fuck… had he?
“I’m fucking with you, D.” Cillian chuckled. “But damnnnn, Deacon.” Cillian did the voice accent of a viral video of a teenager saying “Damnn, Daniel” in the early 00s.
“What?” Deacon asked defensively.
Cillian sat up straight as if he were about to embark on a religious ceremony. “I have been waiting for this day for twenty-five years.”
“For what day?”
“For my best friend to join me in the club.”
“The club?”
“You, my friend, are now a card-carrying member of the She’s-the-One club.
” Cillian stared at him with a goofy grin on his face.
“As America’s Sweetheart Meg Ryan said in Top Gun about Maverick, there are hearts breakin’ all over the world tonight, because Deacon St. Claire is officially off the market, you are one hundred percent prime time in love with Bar Blondie. ”
He wasn’t wrong. “Her name’s Jenna. And did you not hear me? She doesn’t want anything to do with me. At least not anymore. She made that clear. We’re friends. That’s it.”
“How long has it been since she friend-zoned you?”
“A couple weeks.”
“Pfffft.” Cillian dismissed it with a burst of laughter. “A few weeks?! Child’s play. Try eight years, watching her go to prom with the captain of the varsity football team freshman year when you’re a pimple-faced fourteen-year-old and he’s a seventeen-year-old senior with a car.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you prick. Do you have any idea how incredible it is to find The One? How exclusive that club is? That doesn’t just happen.
How did I know that at eight and you’re still confused on the subject as a grown man?
For being so smart you can be a fucking idiot sometimes.
Some people live their entire lives and never experience what you have with her.
“This woman doesn’t like you because of your money, oh, poor baby.” He did a baby’s voice. “How do you not see that as a good thing? I would get out the world’s tiniest violin to play for you, but that would be an insult to the violin—”
“Okay, okay.” If Deacon didn’t interrupt him, he would go on for hours like that. It was one of the things he both loved and hated about Cillian His ability to talk, and talk, and talk.
But he had to admit, when his friend was right, he was right. Deacon had nothing to feel sorry for himself about. He did love Jenna. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Jenna. He was definitely a card-carrying member of the she’s-the-one club.