Chapter Thirty-Three
Abbott
Rian left early this morning for business.
I don’t know exactly what that means. Legitimate business or not?
I work out and then shower before just walking around the house without anything to do.
I’m bored. There’s no denying that. I miss being at work, taking care of patients, but I’m also in this weird place where I don’t know how to do that anymore.
I wasn’t lying the other night at dinner when I told Rian I don’t want to lose myself in it again, that it’s hard for me to feel important outside of being able to fix people, and that’s not enough for me now.
I want more. I just don’t know what, and at thirty-eight, I should probably have that answer.
Conan is downstairs in the kitchen. If Rian is gone, he always leaves someone here with me as though a gang of masked murderers is going to break into his house to kill me.
It’s ridiculous…but also sweet in a very Rian way.
We’re going to eventually have to find a way around this though, because I’m not going to live my life locked in his house like Rapunzel, or with bodyguards everywhere I go.
“Good morning,” I say to Conan.
“I made coffee.” He nods toward the pot. He and I have been on better terms since the day Rian left me with him when he went to speak to Cillian.
I head over and pour a cup. “So…what are our plans today? Anything exciting?”
Conan chuckles. “You’re bored?”
“Out of my fucking mind.”
“Rian said you’re helping with the music stuff.” Conan knowing that is news to me. I didn’t realize Rian had shared it with anyone other than Cillian.
“I am, but there’s only so much I can do from here and…”
“And you want something that’s your own?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m not used to this. Between college, medical school, residency, and then practicing, all I’ve done is be on the go, and now I’m in this weird place where I miss it, but I don’t feel like the same person, so I’m not sure how to go back to it.”
He nods, then takes a sip of his coffee. “What do you like?”
What do I like? It shouldn’t be that hard a question. “Music.”
“Yes, and that’s fine. You can like that, but that’s also something you share with Rian. You need something that’s for you.”
He’s right, but Conan surprises me by saying it. He’s an interesting guy, and I’m not sure what to make of him. He can be so serious…but also not. So distant and cold, but also…not. I guess he’s made of multitudes just like the rest of us.
I walk over, open one of the kitchen drawers, and pull out paper and a pen. “Let’s make a list.”
He quirks a brow. “Of possible things you can be into?”
“Yes.”
So that’s exactly what we do. Some of them are ridiculous, like knife throwing, but others are more serious, like clinics for low-income populations and things like that.
Eventually, we end up sitting at the table together, me with my feet up on one of the other chairs, Conan across from me. “You don’t…have anyone? Like a partner or anything?”
“No.” Conan shakes his head, not looking at me.
“What about your family?”
“I lost them when I found my new family. My father is a retired cop. I was disowned long ago.”
Guilt ping-pongs around inside of me. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
Conan shrugs. “It is what it is.”
“Family is hard. I don’t feel like I’ve had any since my mom died.”
“You have us now,” he says without looking at me. “That’s the kind of man Rian is, which makes it easier for the rest of us to be. Before…when Sloan was in charge, we weren’t a real family. Now we are, and since you’re Rian’s, you’re now ours.”
His words fill me up in a completely unexpected way.
“Thank you,” I say, and Conan shrugs as if it’s not a big deal, but it is. “I’m serious.”
“I know.” His phone buzzes. Conan pulls it out and looks at it, smiling.
“Rian?” I ask.
“No. Tiernan.”
“The two of you are close?”
He replies to the text, then sets his phone down again.
“That was a dumb question. You’re all close, but—”
“I love Tiernan like a son,” he says, silencing me with his admission.
“He’s had it harder than most people will ever realize, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him.
” Conan picks up his phone again and stands, feeling more distant than he had a moment ago—more like the Conan he was in the beginning, only not as mean, just different.
“I’ll be in Rian’s office if you need me. ”
I nod, watching him walk away. I’d forgotten there was an exposed nerve there. I should have been more careful not to hit it.
I take our cups to the sink and rinse them before getting the laptop Rian gave me to use.
I spend some time working on what I can for the concert hall remotely, but I can’t seem to concentrate. I keep looking at the cell beside me, thinking about what Conan said about his own family, but also about Tiernan and the closeness between them. The love I know Rian feels for Cillian.
I haven’t spoken to my father since his one call after I got home from the cabin—somewhere he hadn’t even known I’d been.
Has he realized we haven’t spoken in a while? Has he tried my cell, and if so, does he wonder why I haven’t called him back?
I try to push thoughts of him out of my head and log into my email.
I haven’t checked it for a while because, without me working, what’s the point?
Nothing important ever goes there that’s not work-related.
But the second I’m logged in, I see numerous emails from my father’s private, personal account.
A moment of panic hits me, this fear that something is wrong because if not, then he wouldn’t be emailing me.
I click on the first one, some words feeling louder, looking bigger than others.
Rian O’Shea?
What the fuck are you thinking?
You’re going to ruin me!
Such a disgrace.
You’ve always been a disappointment.
Call me.
Why aren’t you answering your phone?
You don’t understand what you’re doing.
I’m sure that to him, I don’t understand what I’m doing. What other reason would I have for being with someone like Rian? I’m sure that’s what he means, but what he doesn’t see, what he would never see, is that Rian is a better man than he could ever be.
Rian, who loves me, just the way I am.
Fuck him. How dare he not give a shit about me, not want anything to do with me, and then he thinks he has the right to have a say in who I love? All because of what it will do to him and his career? The career he’s always loved a hundred times more than he’s ever loved me.
I know I’m not supposed to call him, but I can’t stop myself from picking up the phone and doing just that. It’s his personal cell that no one has the number to except people he chooses to give it to, so I know it will be my father who answers.
“Who is this?” he says instead of hello.
“It’s Abbott,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Jesus! Thank God. Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you.”
The audacity of his words feels like he threw acid on my heart. “Worried about me? You’ve been worried about me? You’ve never given a shit about me! Not once in my whole fucking life.”
“We don’t have time for this right now. You don’t know who that man is.”
“No. You don’t know who he is. Rian loves me. He’s a better man than—”
“He is using you, Preston.” I wince at his use of my first name, but still, his words stop me in my tracks.
Rian isn’t using me. I know that, deep down, I know that, but hearing him say it plays on all my insecurities.
“Rian loves me,” I say again.
His voice lowers, a tightness I don’t recognize in it when he says, “There’s more going on here than you know, son.”
I roll my eyes, not believing him. “Then tell me.”
“I can’t. Not over the phone. You’re going to get yourself killed. You’re going to get all of us killed.”
Something about his words stops my heart. Maybe it’s the true fear in them. I’ve never heard my father sound afraid—not once in my life. But the shake in his voice, the warning there, tells me that he’s very scared right now.
Is there more going on than I know? Probably, and I don’t think it’s coming from Rian.
Rian trusts me.
I trust him.
But I don’t trust my father as far as I can throw him. He’s got himself tangled up in something, something that has to do with Rian. “Tell me what you did,” I spit out, hand tightening on the cell.
“I can’t. Not over the phone. I already told you that. Come and meet me.”
“Where are you?”
“At the summer house,” he replies. We call it the summer house even though we rarely spent summers there. It had been my mother’s favorite place in the world, though—the Cape Cod house, surrounded by gardens and nature and outside of the business of the city.
I haven’t been in years, and the thought of being there again squeezes at my heart.
“I’m on my way,” I say.
“Come alone,” he says. “And don’t tell that monster where you’re going.”
I end the call, knowing that the only monster here is the one I’m going to see.