Chapter 24
Sean
“We need a better plan than just you marching into a pub six days sober to pretend to be drunk and stupid,” Ciara clips out, and I thank God for her. I’m hanging on by a tether right now. But there is no way Oisin will come if he thinks I’m sober. He won’t risk it.
This is the only plan.
“We go tomorrow,” I say slowly. “Right now, we both need rest, and I need to…”
She nods briskly and turns from me. Her hands are shaking, showing the cracks under that tough exterior.
I feel like I should say something to her, but I’m at a complete loss.
All I can think about is the booze in that pub.
I turn from her as she climbs on the bed, her back toward me.
I slump in the armchair and stare out of the window.
My stomach clenches in the quiet. The itch under my skin is like a thousand fire ants crawling all over me.
I rub my arms, contemplating a cool shower.
Glancing over at Ciara, she has fallen asleep.
I don’t want to disturb her. Rising, I move quietly and pull the covers over her, staring down at her beautiful face.
I reach out to brush her hair from her face, but then I stop myself.
I’m destroying her. Ruining her life. Dragging her into the mess I’ve caused with Oisin.
Anger hits my gut. At Oisin, at Connor, at Donal, but most of all me.
Turning from her, I head for the bathroom before I do something stupid, like wake her just to ask her to fix me.
Cold water. Punishment. It’s all I’ve got that isn’t eighty proof.
I step under the spray and let it flay me.
Each needle of water is a tiny absolution I don’t deserve.
I brace both hands on the tile, count breaths, watch the rivulets snake over the black ink on my chest and disappear.
I stay until the skin on my knuckles burns and the tremor in my forearms evens out.
When I come out, Ciara is still curled on her side, hair a black spill on my pillow, the covers hiked to her shoulder like she finally remembered she’s allowed to be warm.
Her breathing is steady, but I see the faint twitch in her fingers.
She’s holding it together because I can’t.
The shame is a blade. I sheath it somewhere near my heart and look away.
I move silently over to the door and crack it open. Peering out, the hallway outside is clear. I slip out and down the stairs. The house is like a mausoleum.
Cold, dark and empty. Crossing the entrance hall, I enter the living room. The formal one, which I don’t think has ever been used. I set about lighting a fire, just to do something with my hands, shooting glances at the drinks cabinet that is only meters away.
As the flames crackle to life, I straighten up and stare into the fire, wishing my life were anything but this.
With a deep breath, I move to the drinks cabinet and open it.
My stomach lurches, my heart beats faster, my palms sweat as I stare at the display of booze ranging from Grey Goose to Glenfiddich to Bushmills 16-year.
I grab a crystal tumbler and place it in front of me.
My eyes skate over the array laid out before me like every sin I’ve ever committed, taunting me. Haunting me.
My hand hovers over the Glenfiddich. It goes down like water now.
It’s tasteless. It’s the crutch I use to face oblivion.
Swallowing, I move my hand over to the Bushmills.
Irish liquid gold. It’s my blood. My first taste of alcohol, sipped from Connor’s glass when I was ten years old.
With a shaking hand, I grip the bottle and lift it, remove the cap, and nearly whimper as the scent hits my nostrils.
I pour out a measure, staring at it, my mouth watering for it.
Replacing the cap, I lower the bottle back into its perfect place, straightening it so the label is facing forward. Forcing my eyes to the tumbler, I stand there, staring, my heart thumping wildly.
Leaning on either side of the glass heavily, I don’t touch it. I just stare at it as the fire crackles next to me.
That’s how she finds me.
I don’t know how much time has passed; it’s dark out now, but I hear her light footsteps, unhurried as she enters the living room.
“Figured,” she says quietly.
“It’s not what you think,” I croak.
I don’t move. I can’t. My hands are glued to the wood on either side of that fucking glass like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
She doesn’t move either. The fire snaps, a little hiss of sap catching, and the room smells like oak smoke and sin.
“It is exactly what I think,” she says, calmly. “You are standing on a cliff and pretending the wind won’t take you.”
“I didn’t drink it.”
“But you want to.”
Silence blooms—thick, alive, watching me. My shoulders tremble, just once, and I hate that she sees it. I hate that she’s the only person who knows it isn’t rage. It’s want. It’s an ache so deep it feels like grief.
I snatch up the glass, bringing it to my lips.
Just one sip. Just one fucking sip to ease the itch, to make me feel less crazed.
Just one sip with her watching me fail.
“Tell me not to do it,” I whisper.
“You don’t need me to tell you that.”
The disappointment flares hot. I spin to her, wanting to rage at her to fucking care. “You don’t even give a shit, do you?” I spit out.
“Is that what you think? Is that why I emptied your apartment and ran naked to reach the last bottle before you could?”
Her words make sense, but right now, she is acting like a cold bitch, and it pisses me off. I want to down this just to spite her.
Then I remember her fear when that cunt had his hands on her, and it disappears as quickly as it rose.
“Who hurt you?” I ask, the glass still perilously close to my lips. The air I breathe consists of Bushmills and nothing else.
Her gaze is a brand of fire and ice. “Are we really doing this now?”
“Looks fucking like it.”
Her silence is a blade. It slices the bullshit away until it’s just me, a glass, and the question hanging between us like a noose.
“Name, Ciara.”
Her jaw flexes. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll kill him.”
“Good.” I tip the rim closer. The scent floods my skull. “That’s the point.”
“We aren’t doing this.”
“Oh, but we are,” I correct her. “Name.”
“James O’Neill.”
My blood turns to ice at the mention of my uncle’s name. I lower the glass out of pure reflex. “Excuse me?”
She lifts her chin defiantly, daring me to contradict her.
“When?” The word is every ounce of violence I possess wrapped into four letters.
Her mouth flattens, the tendons in her neck tight. “Fourteen years ago,” she says. “I was fourteen.”
The room tilts. The glass is suddenly a live grenade in my hand.
“He cornered me in the stables at a fundraiser. Everyone was drunk. He wasn’t. Not enough.” Her eyes don’t leave mine. She refuses to give me the mercy of looking away. “He put his hands down my pants, violated me. I kicked him in the balls and ran.”
I imagine his hands. I imagine breaking every knuckle, one by one, listening for the soft sounds between the big screams. My uncle. My family.
“Does Connor know?” I ask.
“No.” Flat. Certain. “And Donal would have burned your house down with all of you in it if he did.”
She’s right. She’s also telling me she kept it to herself. Kept the peace. Kept the men with crowns from tearing Dublin apart while she stitched up her own wounds in the dark.
“I’ll handle him,” I say, every word a vow.
“No one is asking you to.”
“Dammit, Ciara!” I turn to the fire and throw the tumbler into it. The flames roar as the Bushmills hits it and then die off a little, just like my soul. “You are my wife! No one touches you, past or present or future and fucking lives.”
She stares at the fire, her face a mask of pure fury.
She marches over to the drinks cabinet and yanks out another glass, sloshing Bushmills into it and thrusting it at me.
“You don’t get to use my trauma as a fucking excuse to throw that away.
This is your choice, Sean. Take the fucking glass and do whatever you want to with it, but you won’t throw it in the fire for me.
You either do it for you, or you don’t do it at all.
The choice is yours.” She rams it into my hand and stalks off, leaving me reeling.
The glass is heavy in my hand. It’s a small, stupid thing, but right now it’s a gravestone, and I’m the bastard deciding what to carve on it.
I stare after her until she’s gone. The echo of her words leaves me alone with the fire and the whiskey and the ghost of a fourteen-year-old girl in a stable with my uncle’s filthy hands on her.
I tip the glass. The surface shivers. My mouth floods with longing.
Do it for me. Do it for her. Do it because I’m weak. Do it because I’m strong.
All the voices sound like the same fucking liar.
I lift the glass higher until the rim is at my lips. I tilt it back. The booze is millimeters from my lips. With a roar that wrenches my soul out of my body, I turn and slam that one into the fire as well.
The flames lick up, greedy and bright, and something inside me collapses with them.
I drop to the hearth, my hands shaking so hard I have to brace them on the marble, or I’ll put my fist through it.
The room hums. My skin crawls. My teeth grind.
I want to scream until my throat bleeds.
Tears prick my eyes, my nose runs, my heart pounds.
I turn from the fire and crawl away, needing to move but unable to stand.
I reach the doorway and slump against it, closing my eyes, wishing my life would just end and put everyone, including me, out of this fucking misery.