Chapter 10
Sean
My knuckles split on the third punch to the bedroom door.
Fucking Connor has had the bastard reinforced.
The windows are sealed shut. I’m a prisoner in my childhood bedroom with no way out, no booze and no gambling.
The walls close in, and I stumble back. I make it to the bathroom with a second to spare as I heave into the toilet bowl, but nothing comes up.
I’m completely dry. My stomach has been emptied, and despite food arriving three times a day for the last three days, conveniently when I’m throwing up or passed out from exhaustion, I haven’t eaten a thing.
Fuck him.
Fuck him and his fucking make-shift rehab.
I dry-heave until my abs cramp, and spots dance in my vision.
My throat tastes like metal and bile that isn’t there.
When it passes, I slump onto the cold tiles and press my forehead to the cool porcelain of the tub.
My hands won’t stop shaking. It’s a dirty beast ripping me open with its claws and rooting around in whatever’s left.
I close my eyes, and she’s there. The smell of bleach and coffee. The scrape of a fan drying a scrubbed wall. A neat, judgmental set of red nails on white leather. Ciara O’Byrne. My future problem, my future wife.
“Fuck you, too,” I whisper. She has to know. She has to know I’m here, going through this level of hell I didn’t realize existed. She hasn’t tried to contact me or see me.
Or maybe she has, and Connor has refused.
The thread of hope that I cling to, that she isn’t totally ice-cold, is pathetic.
The door to my bedroom opens, and I’m alert as a fucking rabbit scenting a fox.
I lurch back into my bedroom clumsily, tripping on my own feet as the door bangs closed and the lock turns.
“Irish stew,” the newcomer says with a bright smile. “Smells fucking delicious, so if you don’t eat it, I will.”
“Fuck you, Logan,” I growl at my cousin. “Don’t you have a flock to be pestering into believing in God?”
He swallows and places the tray on the nightstand. “I… had a crisis of confidence. I left the priesthood.”
The crack in his voice makes me frown. Logan O’Neill, pious as they come, the white sheep surrounded by black, has left the priesthood. That shocks me out of my self-pity for a moment.
Until I realize that was probably Connor’s angle, and I harden against it.
Turning to the window, I stare out, my stomach rumbling at the scent of the Irish stew and fresh, crusty bread wafting over from the bed.
But then the thought of eating it makes my insides roil, and I clamp my lips together, my hands shaking as I sway on my feet.
“Sit,” Logan says.
“I’m not opening up and having a conversation with you, cousin. I don’t give a fuck what you have to say. You might as well leave.”
He ignores me and sits in the armchair in the corner like he means to stay. I don’t look at him. If I do, I’ll see pity, and pity is lighter fluid.
“Connor asked me to make you eat,” he says simply.
“I figured.” My voice is sandpaper. “You’re the only O’Neill I can’t justify punching. Yet.”
“You’ve tried,” he says. “Remember? When we were seventeen, and I told you to stop lighting your cigarettes with the church candles.”
I snort and immediately regret it; the room tilts. “Fucking choir practice was the pits. I could manage to steal smokes from Father Landry, but he never had a lighter around anywhere.”
“You were a gobshite.”
“Still am.”
“Still are,” he agrees, and that defuses me a fraction. He’s not gentling me like a frightened horse. He’s just here, being the same old Logan he has always been.
“I’m not hungry,” I lie, and the lie echoes in the room like a confession.
“You’re shaking,” he says softly. “Eat.”
I stare at the tray like it’s a trap. It is a trap. If I eat, I’m admitting I’m staying. I’m admitting he’s got me. I’m admitting Monday exists.
“Why did you leave?” I ask, because if we’re trading injuries, I’ll take one from his side first.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me, and I’ll take one bite.”
“Oof, that’s nasty, Sean.”
“Take it or leave it. Do you really want to go back out there and admit to Connor, you could’ve made me eat if only you’d pulled your big boy undies up?”
“You have gotten meaner in your old age.”
“Nah, I’ve gotten meaner because the old man won’t let me drink.”
“Do you promise?” he asks after a beat.
“What are we, twelve?”
He ignores my scorn. “Do you?”
Damn him. He has cornered me. “Sure,” I say. “I promise.”
“Someone very close to me died. I prayed to God to save her, and he didn’t.”
We lock gazes.
Is he for fucking real?
I blink as I realize he actually is.
The urge to mock him for being a complete prick dies on my tongue before it even fully formed. Who am I to judge other people’s actions?
“She must’ve been someone special,” I say eventually.
He ignores me and pushes the tray closer until it’s teetering on the edge of the nightstand. “Better be quick before it crashes to the floor and you have to eat it from the rug.”
“You wouldn’t—”
He nudges it, and I lunge, steadying it before it topples over. “You’re a fucking bastard. Now, who has gotten meaner in their old age?”
He grins, the first true thing I’ve seen on a face in days, and points at the bowl. “Eat.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, the world pitching once as I reach for the spoon.
The stew’s steam fogs my vision, and the scent sucker punches me.
My stomach twists, unsure whether to revolt or weep.
I take a small sip of the broth first. It scalds my tongue and settles like a hot stone in an empty pit.
It stays down.
“You’re not a total lost cause,” Logan says, like he’s remarking on the weather.
“Don’t push your luck,” I rasp, and take a proper mouthful. The lamb is tender enough to fall apart against the roof of my mouth. I hate that it’s good. I hate that my hands steady a little with each spoonful. I hate that he’s sitting there watching me like a hawk in case I do something stupid.
Halfway through, I break off a hunk of bread and soak it, forcing myself to chew slowly so I don’t scare my stomach into throwing it all back up too soon. Sweat slicks the back of my neck. The shakes ebb to a tremor.
He stands up, uncaps the bottle of water, and hands it to me.
I take it and allow myself a small sip. The water is cold and clean, too clean, scraping over my tongue like penance.
It hits my gut and stays. I wait for the upheaval.
Nothing. The silence of my own insides feels like a truce signed in bad faith.
“Again,” Logan says.
I take another sip, then another mouthful of stew. The room stops tilting long enough for me to notice him properly. He looks younger than thirty. He always did have that air of innocence about him. Maybe being outside the family business does that to a person.
I wouldn’t know.
I was handed my first illegal gun to learn how to shoot when I was twelve. Was in my first fist fight the same year. Was making my first street deal when I was fourteen.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I mutter.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m worth saving.”
He doesn’t answer, which is probably the right answer. I eat. The tremors settle into a fine buzz. When the bowl’s empty, I set the spoon down with stupid care, like a ceremony. I hate that I’m grateful. I hate that Connor was right to send him.
“You’re an arsehole.”
“Shut up trying to insult me and lie down. You need rest.”
“It’s all I’ve fucking done for the past three days. I need to get out of here.”
“No, you’ve been detoxing, Sean. Not resting. You’ve been starving yourself, so you feel worse. Stop being a dick and think about that poor girl you have to marry in two days’ time.”
“Oh, fuck you,” I growl. “Think about her, should I? Bet she isn’t thinking about me, sitting in my apartment, going to my gym with all those losers gawking at her, traipsing around Grafton Street buying dresses she doesn’t need—”
“She’s downstairs, you fucking selfish wanker.”
Logan’s words hit me like a blast of Arctic water.
He smiles smugly. “Still want to blast her to smithereens with your little temper tantrum?”
“Why?” I grit out.
“Why what?” he asks, moving towards the door and rapping on it loudly. “Why did she make you a homemade stew and bring it all the way here to ask Connor to give it to you? Beats the fucking shit out of me, cousin.”
“Don’t swear,” I mumble, feeling like the biggest shit on the planet. “It’s weird.”
“Tough,” he says. “Now, if you will pardon the bad pun, stew on that for a while, Sean and maybe you can think about someone other than your fucking self for once.” The door opens, and I’m on my feet in record time, but Logan has slipped out faster than I can currently move, and the door locks click back into place, sealing me in with the remainder of the bread that Ciara made.
Anger flares, bright and hot. I pick up the empty bowl and fling it at the door. It smashes into a hundred pieces of fine china, but it’s not as satisfying as I thought it would be.
If anything, it just makes me feel hollow.